Closed adoption for our grandson

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Suzie, FRG Adviser
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Re: Closed adoption for our grandson

Post by Suzie, FRG Adviser » Wed Sep 19, 2012 5:16 pm

Hi Driscjan

May I advise you to think very carefully before posting pictures of your grandson on the internet.

This is just a very quick post, but I will be happy to come back with more detail and reasons why I am suggesting this, tomorrow.

Best Wishes


Suzie

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Suzie, FRG Adviser
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Joined: Mon Jul 04, 2011 2:57 pm

Re: Closed adoption for our grandson

Post by Suzie, FRG Adviser » Fri Sep 21, 2012 3:16 pm

Hi Driscjan

Sorry I was unable to get back to you yesterday, as intended.

For fear of breaching your grandson's human rights, and being mindful of who could be accessing these sites, I would suggest that putting photographs of him on social networking
sites, under theses circumstances, may not be the best way forward.

I will also private message you.

Best Wishes


Suzie

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Suzie, FRG Adviser
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Joined: Mon Jul 04, 2011 2:57 pm

Re: Closed adoption for our grandson

Post by Suzie, FRG Adviser » Mon Sep 24, 2012 11:56 am

Hi Driscjan

I have private messaged you. Please come back if you have further queries, or a new question you wish to raise.

Best Wishes


Suzie

ange301126
Posts: 537
Joined: Thu Nov 10, 2011 1:27 pm

Re: Closed adoption for our grandson

Post by ange301126 » Tue Oct 09, 2012 3:55 pm

Dear driscjan, Think carefully before posting photographs or the name of your grandchild on line. Consider possible benefits alongside the FRG advice. You can always use the advice line. I hope the below advice is helpful and informative to you and others (although protracted).

First and foremost, don’t forget it is the C.S. which poses the immediate threat to your family and face the fact that the real, overriding danger to your grandchild comes from the child-protection system not from publicity on the web. Effectively, the system has condemned the child to half a life in care. The emotional harm he has suffered already is indefinable.

The likelihood that he will settle happily in any adoptive placement is low and he will continue to suffer harm and emotional disturbance throughout his life as one of the ‘unloved’. The damage done to individuals separated from their natural families is life long and can also have a knock-on effect on future generations of a family. Many babies are targeted by Children’s Services and torn from the breasts of their natural mothers at birth (surely one of the worst atrocities that could be committed against a mother and child) because of previous parental involvement with the care system. Thus your great -grandchildren will face problems and prejudice.

The General Public, lawyers and anyone on this forum would be wrong to take for granted that, in practice, Social Care Departments meet the needs of children in care, follow guidelines, rules and regulations and /or provide them with suitable adoptive parents or foster placements. On the contrary, violations of human rights, neglect, mistreatment and inadequate care of children are widespread and inherent in the child-protection system nationally. In practice, children in the care system are inevitably laid open to serious disadvantage.
• Low morality, spiritual poverty. Many children are denied their right to their cultural and religious identities on the grounds that placements take precedence over them. Their religious beliefs and birthrights are torn cruelly from beneath their feet; often no effort is made to make compatible placements. Baptised Christians are placed with atheists, Catholics with Protestants, Muslims are sent to Christian homes and so on.
• Financial shortages, staff insufficiencies and other endemic problems.
• Research shows that children in care are several times more likely to develop mental problems and to become offenders.
• Many end up requiring psychological drug therapy and develop a tendency to self-harm (as my children have).
• Many end up with drug problems, as prostitutes or rent boys and in trouble with the Law for violent and other crimes.
• Many are abused by care workers who have serious troubles with the demands (including overwork) placed upon themselves or by delinquent children in the care system as well as by predators that target children trapped within it.
• Many become victims of grooming for sex by adults, are trapped by criminal drug dealing gangs and also subjected to bullying and exploitation by their peers at school.
• Many become institutionalised or otherwise dysfunctional and unable to survive after they are thrown out into the world alone as teenagers.

It is a fact that not only those in the care system but also those who are permanently adopted and deprived of natural parents completely suffer much mental torture, anxiety and unhappiness not only whilst children but also later on when they develop an irrepressible, innate yen for their blood families. The difficulties and distress they suffer are immense and debilitating; they are disadvantaged throughout their lives!

Recent decisions by the Social Services Inspectorate around the country have found branches of the care system ‘unfit for purpose’ because time and time again they are unable to provide the protection which children are entitled to expect and give them a proper upbringing. In many or most cases (as borne witness to by the victims themselves later in life) their childhoods are ruined, they are forced to grow up very quickly and their future prospects destroyed. On all the evidence, it cannot be said that Children’s Services Departments are not criminally irresponsible and incompetent or that they do not present a grave danger to children.

Who in their right mind would want such a future for their children?

Under the circumstances of your particular case, I would say that any action you take to delay or sabotage any adoption is entirely rational and would be considered reasonable by the Public retrospectively. It has been reported that one method social workers use to make children more amenable to the prospect of ‘a new mum and dad’ is by misleading them as to their natural family. Trusting children can easily be told “your mum doesn’t love you and doesn’t want you” or “your father has gone away and left you”; “your parents neglected you”; “your grandparents are dead or too old and don’t want to know you” etc.etc. Social workers devise so-called story books for children without consulting parents and without allowing them to read and check the facts. You would be well advised to acquaint your grandchild with the truth at the first opportunity and leave him in no doubt that he has been taken into care against your will despite the fact you still love him dearly and have offered to care for him. Tell him also that you are doing everything you can to get him home with you and warn him that if he is adopted that would be impossible. Encourage him to be loyal to his real family and to trust you completely. Do not underestimate the child and think for one moment that he is too young to understand or to make his own decisions; this is a claim often made by social workers. Children as young as three are capable of thinking about events in their lives and they often have a very clear view in later years thus it is absolutely essential that the truth is given to them. It is essential you tell him the true nature of his predicament at the earliest juncture and let him know your view on the subject.
At the same time, you should do all you can to encourage him to behave himself in care because CS are quite capable of victimising children by cutting or stopping contacts, moving them far away from you, separating them from brothers or sisters, mental torture and manipulation of young minds, cutting privileges such as pocket-money and food or even beatings and ducking in cold baths if they feel you or he are going against them. For first hand information of what goes on in care you only have to obtain and read accounts given by those who suffered as children and have now left on reaching 18. In fairness, don’t take my word for it and it would be a great mistake for anyone to accept and believe Local Authority propaganda. Seek out the truth from the victims mouths!
I would also advise you always to ensure that you keep your child well supplied with new clothes, shoes, bicycles, appropriate books, comics, toys and sweets etc. when you see him at contact because it is unlikely that he will get much in care. When we gave our children sandwiches at a contact, my nine-year old son quite innocently mimicked his foster- mother. “Don’t eat too much Johnny; you’re eating our profits away!” Our 13- year old daughter recently arrived at a public park contact in her pyjamas! Address your child fairly without any leading questions, encourage him to inform you of any worries he has, the treatment he is receiving and especially any complaints.
If you are allowed to, send him pocket money too and always send cards and presents on birthdays and at Christmas. Then he will always look forward to contacts because he will know you are his best source of love and affection. I’m afraid it’s quite likely he’ll get little of either in care.

If C.S. is unable to find an adoptive couple for him, it would be clearly in his interests and give him some hope for the future. Of the two, enforced adoption is by far the worst evil than enforced long-term foster care. Although the child may remain in the care system at least he would have contact with you and his mother would share parental responsibility; you could not be denied access and if you manage to get the care plan changed, it would not be too late for rehabilitation home. Also, the order would expire when the child reaches 18.In the meantime; I suggest that, as grandparents, you explore the possibility of applying to the High Court who can grant you parental responsibility for the child with the agreement of his mother ( unless her parental responsibility has already been removed). Ask at the Register Office and they will give you instructions on how to go about it. In principle, you would then have to be kept fully informed and involved in future decision-making. Do not believe any social worker who tells you it would make no difference to the way they deal with your case.

The case of the East Anglian family which I mentioned previously has already alerted the Public to the widespread errors and miscarriages of justice which occur under the system. The lack of publicity given to cases like yours is one of the chief reasons social workers and lawyers get away regularly with such inhumanity. It is commonplace for Local Authorities to present flawed evidence from child-protection ‘ experts’ indeed they regularly engineer it by providing false and incomplete facts to Court. The Authorities rely on keeping matters quiet and it is an anathema to them to have the facts plastered all over the press or the web. They prefer to stifle free discussion and child-protection professionals have been reported quite recently even to discourage children’s natural parents from contacting the FRG. The FRG is a respectable organisation but a mother on this forum was ‘told the tale’ when she was advised that parent’s forums and professionals on such sites give wrong information. Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they? I see this as scandalous in itself. The C.S. will always oppose any avenue by which parents can resist their ‘authoritarianism’. They are unable to sow propaganda and untruths about families and cases in general if parents are allowed to propagate the real truth. In your case and many others, the actual truth is self-evident.

Having said all this, you must still be very wary about using social networking sites such as ‘face book’ owing to the setbacks such as trolls and confidence tricksters. On this site (FRG) it is not permitted to disclose personal identities and you should also question the wisdom of revealing names or printing images into the Public domain. What are the dangers?

You have to get advice as to the legality of doing so, it may be illegal and I believe folk have been imprisoned for disclosing children’s identities in the press. What are the potential benefits and outcomes? Will it do you any good? Are their any guarantees? Will your actions be held against you in the future by Courts, Guardians and Social Workers with consequences to future decisions? Will the authorities gain access to your ‘phone records and computer communications? You have already wrongly been branded as an unreliable witness by a (neutral?) judge. If you publicise the case, will you wrongly be deemed irresponsible or to have no respect for the Law? Will you be accused of not accepting concerns? Never underestimate the reach, guile and sheer offensiveness of Children’s Services workers out to justify themselves.


I cannot advise on all this but I suggest contributors to this forum like ‘forced adoption’ can help you and all of us in this respect if you message them. I suspect that they have all suffered under the system and can give good advice in good faith which will be better than the limited advice any lawyer will give.

You can then give information on the forum which will help the FRG especially if you have any success. The FRG exists to provide support to us all and we can all see on the boards, that the inhumanity which occurs is ongoing. Every other week a new case appears on the forum and it is a fact that citizens require support and protection from Children Services. In my opinion, passivity towards the system is definitely not the answer but can social networking sites help us at all? If so, how do we go about it and what can we achieve?
Whatever official complaints procedures, LAC reviews and letters to M.P’s can achieve, for the majority it is rarely any direct action. In our case, we have tried them all.
• Our M.P. sent us a copy of a letter C.S. sent to him in response to his enquiry and they misled him and gave him wrong information just as they did the Court. Most M.P’S either ‘prefer’ Local Authority statements to those of parents just as Courts do or appear to be powerless to act against the Authority in any telling way.
• We made an official complaint. As any competent investigator, arbiter or judge will tell you, the absolute priority when holding an enquiry is to call for all the evidence and to examine it meticulously. In our case, the complaints investigators refused to look at the evidence backing my complaint although I offered several times to show them it thus the investigations were a sham.

Because of smart lawyers amongst whom I include judges, the Local Authorities appear to be unassailable on any practical level and your situation will continue unless you do something about it yourself.

In the case of the East Anglian couple; they succeeded in getting Public opinion on their side because the mother was expecting another baby and when the Local Authority which removed their children on false evidence made it clear it planned to remove the baby at birth, she evaded them by fleeing to Eire and giving birth over there. The Local Authority pursued them but was unable to touch them and there was extensive coverage in the national dailies and the Sunday papers. Eventually, mother had to return and face the authority which tried to do its worst but by that time there was so much public interest that they were unable to get away with it. The Court allowed the couple to keep the new baby and they went on to win an appeal against the previous orders. They would have been unable to do any of it without the publicity they gained when they escaped the Local Authority clutches by the (illicit?) trip to Ireland. Many people (doctors, lawyers, reporters etc.) came forward to help them and the faulty medical evidence used against them was debunked. Their protests had been heard! Before no-one would listen to them and, of course, you, we and many others have that same problem! I am not suggesting that your daughter should have another baby but that something radical has to happen or be done by someone before we have any chance of justice in our individual cases. Even if the Law were changed tomorrow and current practices outlawed, this would not mean that our cases and all past cases would be reviewed. No way. Previous injustices would still stand and previous child-victims would remain in care.

Before we became victims of the system ourselves, we never dreamed that such injustice went on in what we always thought was a civilised country and from your posts neither did you. In my view, we face inhumanity as bad as that in the 20th century when families were persecuted and separated by secret police (the Gestapo). The mass of the German Public didn’t know then what was going on in their name and those that did were powerless against the wicked system which existed. Thousands were forced to flee to safe countries or go into hiding. Those families who became victims were not generally separated by the Courts because it was felt to be inhumanity of the first degree and they were even allowed to remain united in the ghettos or when transported in cattle trucks to concentration camps by secret edict of the Security Services. They were only separated by S.S. criminals at the point of a gun ( or the butt of one) when they arrived at the secret camps and ‘selected’ either for work or the gas chamber. The criminals justified themselves by reference to false dogma about those being victimised (mainly Jewish and other minority groups).We should never forget that human rights were taken away in secret by officials who the Public believed were acting in their own good just as these present day social workers tell us and that the Local Authorities now also give their oft-flawed evidence in secret. The social workers are badly trained and often flawed individuals who appear to base their evidence on their own arrogant opinions and false dogma without looking at facts as they should do . People had to fight a war against inhumanity then.

Why not risk imprisonment to save ones children from inhumanity? Who is to say that demonstrations such as ‘facebook’ campaigns, leafleting, sit-ins or even hunger strikes on prison roofs would be ineffective against it? Not me because I haven’t tried them but neither have I heard of them having a real impact.


I suggest that existing or future campaigns to change the Law by bringing Public Attention to the general situation will be ineffectual to our individual families as they will take too long and changes will come too late. For example, it was only recently that governments recognised and issued unreserved public apologies to victims of the gross inhumanity committed against them in the 20th century when they were taken from their families and sent to live on farms and other institutions as virtual slaves in Australia. They were bonded to remain in the work camps at least until they came of age. I believe many of them were told their parents were dead and that as orphans they were fortunate to be granted the opportunity! Now most of the parents are indeed dead. The walls of silence and lies came tumbling down eventually but the apologies came much too late!

As ‘forced adoption’ says we have to fight back now! ‘Forced adoption’ apparently knows people who have done and encourages us to do so but what results have they achieved? We have done our best but wasted our time up until now and need effective help and advice on this forum. As one has to identify oneself online on Facebook and Twitter thus putting children at risk of identification also, I have reservations about it and prefer to keep to the FRG site in the main. We need to bring the attention of the Public to our individual cases preferably without breaking the Law ourselves but how? I believe we have to take action ourselves, we can only do so through the Courts and that action would be much easier were the truth made known to the Public.

Especially helpful would be specific information, directions and pointers from any one on the forum who has succeeded in winning their own cases, the details and names of their successful solicitors who will contest cases more strongly than our own have done , apply for legal funding and so on. Every solicitor we contact tells us we are too late to appeal yet I know for a fact that when fresh evidence comes to light cases can be appealed after the normal time limits. Witness the aforementioned East Anglian couple. I would love to know what specific reasons they gave for their late application for leave to appeal. One or two of you who have posted on the forum have succeeded in your original cases against the C.S. but how? What were the decisive winning arguments and tactics you used and who were your lawyers? Such specific information can potentially have a real impact on other parents’ struggles with the system now and in the future.

Answers on the boards please!

Esme, Moderator

Re: Closed adoption for our grandson

Post by Esme, Moderator » Tue Oct 16, 2012 4:04 pm

In response to recent posts, I would just like to offer a few thoughts.

I am very mindful of people’s personal experiences, many of which have been extremely traumatic. Individuals have raised examples of extremely poor professional practice.

I am mindful also, however, that each case is unique and focused on an individual child. While it is reasonable for users to reference their own experiences and use these to draw comparisons and make suggestions, it is impossible for us to be aware of the full facts of someone’s case and it is not reasonable to make assumptions of fact about them.

Our discussion boards are a space for users to provide support for each other within a set of rules. These have been written for the benefit and safety of all users.

Different parents may come to FRG’s discussion boards for different reasons. Each of these should be respected and users should be careful about posting information and opinions that may cause distress to others.

It is the view of FRG that;

• While there are examples of poor professional practice in the child protection system, there are also examples of good, child focussed practice which manages to keep children safely within their families
• While some children in the care system have poor outcomes, this is not the case for all such children
• While adoptions can and, sadly do, sometimes break down they can also succeed and provide a stable and loving home for many children

Can I remind all users to be mindful of our forum rules in order to make sure that the discussion board stays safe, friendly and respectful for all users.

Best Wishes

Esme
FRG Moderator

ange301126
Posts: 537
Joined: Thu Nov 10, 2011 1:27 pm

Re: Closed adoption for our grandson

Post by ange301126 » Thu Oct 18, 2012 4:05 pm

quote/'Different parents may come to FRG’s discussion boards for different reasons. Each of these should be respected and users should be careful about posting information and opinions that may cause distress to others.

It is the view of FRG that;

• While there are examples of poor professional practice in the child protection system, there are also examples of good, child focussed practice which manages to keep children safely within their families
• While some children in the care system have poor outcomes, this is not the case for all such children
• While adoptions can and, sadly do, sometimes break down they can also succeed and provide a stable and loving home for many children

Can I remind all users to be mindful of our forum rules in order to make sure that the discussion board stays safe, friendly and respectful for all users.'/unquote

Dear driscjan, I hope I did not cause you any distress, I was responding with advice on the particular case of your grandson and the child-protection system does not seek to return him to you and I am aware you were already very distressed about what is happening to him.Of course there are some good outcomes for children in the care system, but this is not the case for many of them. Esme says that some adoptions break down. I wasn't aware that many do and I hope not because once a child has been adopted it is supposed to be final and that child cannot be returned to his real family.
Whether an adoptive placement suceeds or not and whether the decision to place for adoption is a correct one or not, it is still a fact that much emotional upset and angst is suffered by the children involved and it is lifelong. Thus, in your particular case,I would do everything I could to stop it.

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