"The lawyer mother who beat the social workers"
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- Created: Friday, 05 April 2013 23:30
- Written by Christopher Booker
A barrister who fought for parents trying to keep their children found herself a victim of the same system.
The more the mother expressed unhappiness about the situation the social worker had created, the more she was told she was being 'obstructive'.
Whenever I report a new story of parents struggling to prevent social workers seizing their children for what seems no good reason, I try to give a new slant on the wider picture of how our ''child protection’’ system has gone so tragically off the rails.What makes this week’s example so unusual is that it centres on a barrister who for 10 years fought hundreds of cases on behalf of parents trying to hold on to their children, in a system where she describes them as being “like lambs led to slaughter” – only to find herself a victim of the same system after she complained to the police over serious allegations made by her older daughter against the girl’s father.
The police called in Barnet social services, who initially shared the mother’s concerns, advising that the girl should have no more contact with her drug-addicted father. But when a new social worker took over, she took the opposite view, working for the child to live with the father. This made the girl so miserable that she took to self-harming by slashing herself, leaving her mother distraught.
The more the mother expressed unhappiness about the situation the social worker had created, the more she was told she was being ''obstructive’’ and that there were “concerns about her parenting”. Last December she was summoned to a meeting to be told that the council wished to apply for care orders on both her children. Knowing how automatically the courts grant such orders, the mother – who although British was also an Israeli citizen – saw her only hope of retaining her children was to escape to Israel.
Within 36 hours, having obtained written permission from the older girl’s father, she took her daughters, now aged 14 and five, on several flights across Europe, terrified each time they landed that she might be arrested by police.
Scarcely had they arrived in Israel than she heard that the council had been granted care orders. Barnet approached our embassy in Tel Aviv to arrange for the children to be deported to Britain, with the co-operation of Israeli social services. After assessing the family, however, the Israelis advised that they could see no reason why the children – now having nightmares about being returned – should not remain in Israel.
In Britain the matter returned to court before a circuit judge, who criticised Barnet for its “relentless” pursuit of the family, ordering a further hearing in February. At this, although the social worker testified that the older girl had said that she would be happy to live in foster care in England, the mother was allowed to take part by video link, along with a “guardian” from the court advisory service, Cafcass, who had interviewed the 14-year-old on Skype. When the guardian supported the children’s wish to remain with their mother, the judge ruled that the children were now out of English jurisdiction, ordering Barnet to withdraw its case.
The two overjoyed children are thus free to continue living with their mother in Israel, with no more nightmares about being bundled on to a plane to live with strangers 2,000 miles from what they now regard as their new home.
Says the mother, in words many other parents would echo, “It seems my only real mistake was to dare to seek help from the authorities in the first place.” (Source : http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/mother-tongue/familyadvice/9974950/The-lawyer-mother-who-beat-the-social-workers.html)
