Editor's note: We have now been informed by Ms Penny Mellor that she did not, in 2005, take up the position of family advocacy co-ordinator for the organisation Justice For Families set up by John Hemming MP. We are happy to clarify this point.
Spare a thought for Christine Hemming, wife of the Birmingham MP John Hemming and mother to four of his five children. Last Thursday, as Hemming continued his extraordinary one-man crusade against the nation's social workers (or, as he prefers to call them, "baby stealers"), she felt obliged to post a qualifying online footnote to a series of articles and comments provoked by her husband in Community Care.
Hemming, she noted, had said that he had "experienced 'lies from social workers in his private life'. I would like to make it clear," she said, "that this was in relation to child protection action relating to a local councillor and her child and not in any way to our family."
In an article published last month in the Mail on Sunday, Hemming had claimed that social workers were "literally snatching newborn babies and children from good, stable, loving homes" for no better reason than to rake in millions of pounds of money offered as an incentive for hitting government adoption targets.
Give us back our children
- Details
- Category: UK Child Protection
- Created: Thursday, 26 July 2007 22:36
- Written by Sue Reid - Daily Mail UK
Six weeks ago, the Mail told how social workers tore a baby from her loving family to put her up for adoption. Since then, scores of parents have contacted us with horrifying stories of children stolen by the state. How dare the courts continue to gag them?
The harrowing film of a young mother with an IQ of 63 cuddling her much-loved toddler daughter for the last time before handing her over for adoption was always going to be controversial.
As the cameras roll, the 18-year-old mother cries pitifully.
Her bewildered child reaches out to hug her when the moment comes to say goodbye for ever.
This raw, emotional footage was to be the centrepiece of a new BBC series called Family Wanted, spearheading a national campaign to increase the numbers of children adopted in this country.
In a bid to find them new homes, children removed from their real parents have been paraded publicly during the TV series. It is, say critics, akin to a human auction.
Baby in Alessandra Pacchieri forced caesarean case adopted
- Details
- Category: UK Child Protection
- Created: Tuesday, 15 April 2014 19:13
- Written by Press Association
Judge announces adoption in UK of child born to Italian woman who was forced to undergo a C-section in 2012
The daughter of an Italian woman who had a forced caesarean section while in the UK has been adopted by "good and loving people", the country's top family judge has announced.
The case, which first unfolded in secrecy, was later reported and commented on around the world and led to Sir James Munby, president of the family division of the high court, calling for "radical changes" and greater transparency in the family courts.
Hundreds more children 'farmed out' to care homes miles from where they live despite pledge to cut number‘.
- Details
- Category: UK Child Protection
- Created: Friday, 08 June 2018 20:18
- Written by Eleanor Busby - UK Independent
These children are being targeted and preyed upon by paedophiles and criminals who know they are vulnerable,’ says Labour MP Ann Coffee.
Vulnerable children who are sent far away from their home towns are more likely to be targeted by paedophiles and drugs gangs, Labour MP says ( Getty )
Hundreds more children have been ”farmed out” to residential homes many miles from where they were brought up despite promises to cut the number of out-of-borough placements.
The number of children who were sent to residential homes far away from their home town in England rose by 64 per cent between 2012 and 2017, Labour MP Ann Coffey has revealed.
There has also been a surge in the number of sent-away children going missing from their care homes, with the number of incidents more than doubling – from 4,380 in 2015 to 9,190 in 2017.
How social workers failed Yorkshire schoolgirl abused by gang of 12
- Details
- Category: UK Child Protection
- Created: Tuesday, 06 December 2016 22:59
- Written by David Behrens & Mark Lavery - Yorkshire Post
Twelve men have been sentenced to a total of 130 years for sexually exploiting a young schoolgirl in Keighley.
Professionals ‘believed children chose to consent to this type of crime’.
A CATALOGUE of mistakes and missed opportunities by police and social workers was blamed today for failing to protect a vulnerable schoolgirl from West Yorkshire who was systematically abused by a gang of Asian males whom, a court heard, saw her as “utterly worthless”.
The girl, identified only as “Autumn”, was aged 13 and 14 when she was repeatedly raped, sexually abused and passed around by the men. In one sustained attack she was raped by five of them in succession. Today, a “serious case review” published by Bradford Safeguarding Children Board criticised police for “not prioritising intervention in this type of crime”, and for a belief that “children involved in this kind of harm were actively consenting and choosing to become involved”. On one occasion, police treated information that Autumn had performed a sex act on an Asian man in a park as a case of prostitution, the review’s authors say.
Government ignores social workers, campaigners, Lords and more than 100,000 petitioners and forces child protection opt-outs back into Children and Social Work Bill
- Details
- Category: UK Child Protection
- Created: Monday, 12 December 2016 22:43
- Written by Liberty Human Rights.org
The Government has ignored social workers, children’s rights campaigners, more than 100,000 members of the public and the House of Lords and revived plans to let councils opt out of more than 80 years of child protection laws.
The Education Secretary Justine Greening will announce in the House of Commons this afternoon that she will plough on with proposals letting her exempt local authorities from almost any duty imposed on them by child protection legislation since 1933.
Ministers defend care system after 'forced adoption' comments
- Details
- Category: UK Child Protection
- Created: Monday, 05 September 2016 19:00
- Written by UK Daventry Express
Ministers have defended the care system after a former Liberal Democrat MP said council social services departments in England and Wales were "under pressure" to get children adopted. John Hemming, who campaigns for improvements in the family justice system, said the process of assessment used by judges who make decisions about children's futures was biased towards council management objectives. He said he believed that ministers would have to apologise for the harm done to children ''wrongly put through forced adoption''.
Bodnariu Family and the permanent destruction of families
- Details
- Category: UK Child Protection
- Created: Thursday, 04 February 2016 23:58
- Written by AgainstChildTrafficking.org
Since weeks there have been demonstrations against the Norwegian child protection services #stopbarnevernet, in support of the Budnariu family.
And it continues. Massive protest of Romanians are being organised all over the world. See the above picture taken in Brussels.
Sadly it rarely gets connected to the broader child rights policy issue.
The European Parliaments Petition Committee heard horror stories about what happens in the UK. Forced adoptions. Instead of temporary child protection, children are permanently taken from their families. Adoption as child care measure? Like in the United States, where children are also “freed” for adoption?
Member of the European Parliament Victor Bostinaru about forced adoptions, adoptions without consent:
The US has not ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and sees adoption as a child protection measure. That was not the European view, in 2004, when the European Commission was monitoring Romania’s child rights policies. And thus forced Romania to stop this practice. See report of the Independent Panel of Experts on Family Law.
But, the EU took a u-turn. And now promotes adoption, including intercountry adoption, as child protection.
The first results are there. Denmark, for example, has now legislated forced adoption. So does Bulgaria. Bulgaria now is one of the biggest exporter of children. Portugal now sends children to the Netherlands, Belgium, France.
The European adoption agencies have difficulties to get children from abroad. The intercountry adoption system has imploded. Some 70 % down over the last years.
They are all financially dying. Scandal after scandal about trafficking, abduction, corruption brought the system down. So, now the agencies are exploring new markets.
Euradopt, the European Umbrella organisation of adoption agencies, now invited speakers from the UK to their 2016 conference. To speak about adoption from foster care.
The migrant families in Norway and the UK are now getting support from their home countries and fellow country men. But that is not the case for families who lose their children to their national child protection services.
Bulgarian families are crying out loud that their children are put for adoption. Child rights workers complain that there is no support for families. Just take their children…
When Indian families of children that were taken by the Indian child protection and placed for intercountry adoption were protesting, there was no massive outcry.
Some of these children were even kidnapped and sold on to “orphanages.
India is now implementing the new gold standard: Integrated Child Protection System. Target: to increase adoptions with 500%.
The American Agency Holt International Children’s Services estimates the costs of such adoptions between 30.000 and 50.000 dollar.
In the meantime, the European Parliament seems to have forgotten the crying parents, and is pushing for cross-border adoption rules and EU wide acceptance of domestic adoption decisions, to cater the LGTBI (because not all EU Member States accept adoptions by LGTBI couples).
The Bodnariu case is a terrible drama. And exemplary of what we will see anywhere in future. Children taking permanently away from their families. A disproportionate measure that should be an extreme measure. But not a “normal” measure of child protection.
Child protection should be about empowering families. Not destroying them.
It is high time to connect worldwide and stand up!
TIME TO ACT UNITED.
Source : http://www.againstchildtrafficking.org/2016/02/bodnariu-family-and-the-permanent-destruction-of-families/
