GRANDPARENTS4JUSTICE4Baby 'P'?

GRANDPARENTS4JUSTICE SPEAK!
Yes they do exist and Sir Bob Geldof is patron, more to the point have many of you considered when a couple separate, it is not only the father that a child may be deprived of but extended family too, is this fair to that child?: Could the fabulous Gloria Hunniford hold the key to all this?
The Hypocrisy of the UK Government.

The Prime Minister is to apologise for forced deporting of children from 1930 to 1970.
They are still at it. Social services are still snatching children and telling them falsely that their families do not want them and also telling grandparents and extended family that the children do not want to see them either. (Parental Alienation) This confuses and demoralises children into accepting forced adoption to complete strangers. An excellent cost cutting business plan! But children are not commodities.
Extract from the ‘Social Work Action Magazine’ Social work conference.
Quote “Social workers said they did not become SW so that they could be ‘case managers or have to make decisions based on money rather on what was needed” End Quote.
He will combine it with an apology to the 7,000 child migrants from Britain who still lives in Australia.
As they were compulsorily shipped out of Britain, many of the children were told - wrongly - their parents were dead, and that a more abundant life awaited them.
Many parents did not know their children, aged as young as three had been sent to Australia. Child care agencies (guess who they are) worked with the government to send disadvantaged children to a rosy future and supply what was deemed "good white stock" to a former colony.
Full story. http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/-/1/hi/uk/8361025.stm
Jimmy Deuchars
Grandparents Apart UK
http://www.grandparentsapart.co.uk
"Seems to me like the Grandparents,the bastions of commonsense and stability, could be the route of sorting this appalling law!" Comment by Davey


Could Baby P and others have justice at last?
I received an E-mail from Lynne Featherstone LIB-DEM MP for the constituancy that includes Haringay Council;
Here's my latest column - it's about the lessons to learn from the death of Baby Peter. You can comment about it online at http://bit.ly/2jU78L
Best wishes,
Lynne
Member of Parliament for Hornsey & Wood Green (Lib Dem)
www.lynnefeatherstone.org
Serious Case Reviews - Baby Peter and beyond

I have reached the next stage in my quest to get the Serious Case Review into Baby Peter's death published - and beyond Peter - the publication of all Serious Case Reviews. A Serious Case Review (SCR) is produced immediately after any such case by the agencies involved in that child's care. It tells the chronological story of who did what and when. It is an invaluable document - but it is kept secret.
I have been battling to change this. I have asked the Information Commissioner to find in favour of publication in the public interest. I don't believe that the ambition of that over-used phrase 'lessons must be learned' can ever be fully realised if the causes and actions are hidden as they currently are.
The Information Commissioner recently came back to me to ask for more information as to why I thought it would be in the public interest for the SCR to be published. I sent him my reasons (below) and now the Information Commissioner is going back to Haringey Council for further information.
As I await the decision - although I have previously blogged about this - I regard continued public scrutiny as so important that am putting all of this in the public domain again.
This was my email in response to the Information Commissioner's request:
Having been Leader of the Opposition on Haringey Council when Victoria Climbie died and now MP in half of Haringey during the Baby P tragedy - I have come to the conclusion that a contributing factor to cases like these (and others) is the secrecy, the closing ranks culture and the lack of transparency.
The Serious Case Review (version 1) which I was allowed to read virtually under lock and key in the Department of Education (where I could not make notes or record any part of the document) was an eye opener to me. The executive summary of the same document which is published did not reflect the key problems, in my view, that were at least part-causal in the eventual tragedy.
The thing that struck me most was the litany of casualness with which people did their jobs (appointments missed, not followed up; files lost, handovers not done, meetings not attended). There was a litany of failures like these at every level, virtually by every person and every agency. I think that most people would expect that once a child is on the protection register and their case being brought to the Safeguarding Board - that there would be a rigour about all aspects connected with them.
This casualness and lack of care is only really demonstrated if you get to read the whole document. It does not come through in the summary and itself is cumulatively causal in my view.
Literally hundreds of professionals across the country emailed me about their knowledge and experience - as did the general public. I believe that the phrase which is dragged out 'lessons will be learned' won't be fully possible if the facts of the case and the failures in the case are kept hidden. As I say, the Executive Summary does not reveal the extent of the small, but cumulative failures - which I believe many professionals would recognize in their own fields and therefore be able to do something about. Therefore it must be in the public interest to be able to see the whole document.
Simply issuing another 150 Laming-like recommendations every time a tragedy happens simply adds procedures that take professionals away from their work without ever being able to see the why and wherefore of such recommendations - nor to judge or be able to critique the new ways from an informed position. The issues are kept between local authority, the other agencies and the Government - so keeping out those who would, could and should benefit from reading the whole story.
I am not an expert nor a professional - but unless and until we really open out all the issues around cases such as these - there will continue to be an air of defensiveness and self-protection which work against the safety and well-being of children at risk.
Social workers need to work in an atmosphere of support and good management - which can only come from opening up the real events, letting them stand there for all to see - and those in the professions taking those lessons away.
(Click title heading for Nervres Kemel's story!)
Lawyers for Nevres Kemal, a former social worker in Haringey, north London, wrote to the then Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt and three other ministers last year calling for a public inquiry into social services in the borough which she said were "out of control".Davey has long held the view that there should be a Whistleblowers amnesty so those who come forward can sppek in confidence when things go wrong, I would just ask Ed Balls when he is going to get round to the root and branch reform this Deptartment needs NATIONALLY and as he promised in the wake of these horrowing accounts? (Ed Balls will be the subject of my blog this coming Sunday)

The argument Ed Balls makes to me against publishing the Serious Case Review is that staff would not speak freely if they knew that what they said might be published. My view is that anyone working in any field where there is such an event has a duty to speak and say what happened. They would have to if the case goes to public inquiry or hearing. Names and personal information should be anonymized. It was anyway in the SCR I read and social workers were referred to as social worker 1 or social worker 2. It is also the case that quite a lot of time elapses between the event and the publication as the SCR is written immediately (usually) and the case and the trial and exposure comes much later.
OFSTED did an audit of Serious Case Reviews and found that nearly two thirds, I believe, were inadequate. So - additionally - this would not have come to light without OFSTED's exposure. If they were published - these inadequate SCRs would have been exposed much earlier. So - whilst the Serious Case Review I am most concerned about is obviously the Haringey one - it is clear there is a wider issue too.
So - I believe it is totally in the public interest for the Serious Case Review to be published. Secrecy, lack of transparency and openness and closing ranks are at the heart of the problem in Haringey.
I hope you find in favour of publication.
Kind regards
Lynne Featherstone
My thanks go to Lynne Featherstone M.P. and Jimmy Deuchars, Grandparents Campaigner, for bringing these two crucial stories to Davey's newsdesk this week!