IDENTIFIED being abused children are being let down from the very start, from the moment child abuse concerns or child abuse reports made for them are brought to the notice of the relevant 'child protection authorities'.

The sad reality is that the IDENTIFIED being abused, at risk children are being subjected to a child protection in practice situation and system which is NOT FIT FOR PURPOSE.

If as much reporting was done on social worker's success stories which I'm sure by far outnumber the ones that tragically went wrong the profession would be far more respected and would not be having as many problems with recruitment. However adequate funding is needed too and I don't have any faith in this government improving matters - look at the fiasco over the abandoned computerized co-ordinating etc.

This is a genuine query, because I don't know how the system works.
But:

In one case highlighted by the charity, a boy aged just under two was removed from home on an emergency protection order, and a full care order was not made until more than two years later, when he was four years and four months old.
It was another year and a half before he was placed with an adoptive family, after seven placements involving five sets of carers.

What puzzles me is this: "..seven placements involving five sets of carers."
Why was this infant not settled with his first foster family , or possibly the second, and allowed to remain there and develop a relationship?
I realise and admit I don't understand how this system works. Which is why I'm asking.
But moving, and causing massive upheaval each time, to such very small and young children (so young that, surely, they haven't had time and have not grown big enough to present real behavioural problems) seems counter-intuitive.

Why not do away with Job Seekers allowance or the dole and instead hire the unemployed and underemployed to mentor and help parent at risk and homeless children in cooperative care homes? If they get on especially well, perhaps there can be an adoption. Stop encouraging procreation in general and you'll see fewer Vicki Pollards. Parenthood is a privilege for the hardworking, responsible, and earnest - not a right for bored people or worse, people whose aspiration is actually to get a council house by virtue of misusing their reproductive organs. On a similar line, start monitoring what deadbeat parents pay in support regardless of the "arrangement" between the parents. The number of children I have met who are in dire need of parenting and resources has been appalling.

This situation amounts to severe abuse caused by the court which is charged with child protection. That this situation should be allowed to continue for whatever reason is criminal. Barnardo's is right - multiple placements have a lasting and horrific effect on young children, which cannot be "fixed" later, when someone in authority has finally got around to figuring out what the plan is.
How can incentives be implemented which would encourage more people to become qualified foster parents?

Barnardos run a state funded fostering service in Australia where kids suffer multiple moves and foster carers are treated poorly. Perhaps Barnardos should take a good look at what they are doing to Australian children before commenting of other failings. Very little of the millions the state gives Barnardos is spent on the kids, millions go on new cars, staff fly business class... Kinda like city bankers. The whole children in care industry has flourished at horrible cost to the kids and tax payers. Once kids are in care their plight can no longer be published. A kid I fostered long ago was forcibly moved to a children's home. There were 2 kids in the home one committed suicide, I had the lad out for an outing. He refused to go back said he would kill himself. I told the folk I was going to take him to a solicitor. They ordered the Police to take him, he was hancuffed and removed. The private for profit children's home cost the tax payers 4,500 pound a week per child. No schooling. These kids are treated like criminals, they were not allowed phone calls.

Considering the barriers put in place to 'vet' foster homes where the prospective carer is deemed a guilty potential paedophile until proved otherwise combined with the fact that social workers are reluctant (or forbidden) to share the child's history with foster families, then we (but mostly the Home Office) on have ourselves to blame.
The UK may be better off if we simply gathered these children or problem parents together and locked them up with a can of Zyklon B...

hi everyone am going though all this at min with my 2 children and it not very nice im doing every thing right what they have asked n all the socalworkers care about is taken them away they have got one of my girls going to school what i didnt want n i sent back the concent form to say where i wanted her n she got appect there but there have stoped tht they say one thing then do something else they really need stoppin they is many mums n dads out there who ive met n it been over a year for them too n it is very hard my girls was aload to stay together n in a nice foster place but tht not the point they sould be at home with me n it as upset both of my children my oldist is always askin to come home n there said bk in jan i could go to any hosp / heath apponiments but they have stoped tht 2 it is not far n us mums n dads dont knw where we can turn too for advice there send us to theses other places for asesments but there are all in toghter n what the socal want tht wht they say so it no win ive kept everything to prove it if anyone can give me some more advice please get in touch

to kitten 69 hi not every mum n dad is bad to there children the socail just take children for any little thing since this thing with baby p n it is wrong what they do

"The problem is without a stable and secure upbringing you get effects all through life"
"There is evidence that it damages their ability to form stable relationships"

I am 51 years old and i am this evidence, my life still goes from one upheavel to another, just as it did when i was a child, i have never been able to commit myself to a job or home, let alone a relationship. The rewards not only for the individual but for society as a whole in addressing this problem with the drive it deserves far outwiegh any cost now applied. Goverments should listen to people like Jonathan Ewen ( Barnardos director of fostering and adoption ) until they do there will always be people like me.

Publicity over the death of Baby Peter has led to many people turning away from key parts of the service. The tragedy has led to a "chronic shortage" of foster carers, and nearly six in 10 local authorities are reported to be having difficulty finding the right homes for children. Only one-third said they had been able to find appropriate placements.

For all the opprobrium and vitriol spewed at Sharon Shoesmith, the whipped-up "Baby-P" tabloid fest will have the net result of more abuse and more deaths. I wonder if we will have a whipped-up tabloid fest directed at Paul Dacre? Should he take responsibility for future abuse and death caused by his campaign?

Sadly what too many of the above comments illustrate is the limited understanding of that exists of the Children and Family Justice System.
Lets be frank nobody wants to leave children in abusive situations but the identification of such situations is far from easy as the continued existence of child deaths attests. Furthermore parental violence like all violence can not be isolated from the social context in which it exists the more unequal a society the the greater the levels of violence in this case family violence ( in which I include act of both commission and commission) Sadly the vulnerable bear the brunt of frustrations of those stronger than them. So expect an escalation of child abuse as our already hideously unequal society becomes more so with the wave of unemployment and austerity on the horizon.
However the current crisis in the Family Courts stems from the 'moral panic' ( see the previous pronouncements of Ed Balls and David Cameron post Baby P) driving so many care cases in the courts - perhaps appropriately but it illustrates chronic under capacity in professional time and resources which is unlikely to be addressed by the current government.
However we would do well to remember that 'tyranny ' always comes dressed in fine words like 'safeguarding' and child protection' . It is no less a travesty of justice to needlessly remove a child from their parents when they might have stayed under better material conditions and appropriate support than it is to leave children in abusive conditions. That is the great danger in rationalising court procedure and compromising due process.
This is a very complicated area of social policy that almost unequally has the capacity to raise anxiety levels - that it has been allowed to become and remain so under funded ( and I mean in its entirety from pre care family support through the court system all the way to post adoption support). Yes the immediate crisis needs attending to but this requires sustained investment and support.
A good place to start ? Perhaps the public's appetite for vilifying social workers who do this gruelling work day in day out with relatively poor financial reward and enormous opprobrium - damned often if they remove the 'wrong child' as much as they are damned if they leave the 'wrong child' at home.
Lets see if the Guardian can lead the way by giving this the SUSTAINED and in depth analysis it requires with call s for appropriate levels of funding.
Sadly the current crisis is to be understood as a manifestation of a much deeper and broader set of social process. If we want justice for children not simply quick fixes then we need to address these issues.

Knowing a barrister that works on such cases they often complain about having to represent their client in complex cases with only a night of reading case notes to go on. Not ideal justice.

What are we doing to children? This article is tendentious and ignores some big questions: why are there more children coming up before the courts to be taken away from their parents ( more often a father-less family)? Why are an increasing number of families unable to bring up their own children? Why is there are a shortage of good foster homes? Is it anything to do with the political correctness ( as opposed to real liberalism) that insists that foster parents have to tick all the correct boxes for being anti-racism, non-homophobic, etc? Why is there a general distrust of social workers? Is it because they themselves are the embodiment of political correctness (as opposed to real liberalism)? Why do other European countries not have this problem? Why is the family stronger in other countries? It is a cliche now to say that "Families come in all sorts of shapes and sizes." Yes, and some of these shapes and sizes are very cruel on the children.

I am in the middle of a family court case. It strikes me that there are many people making a very nice living out of dragging struggling families through hell. Think of all the lawyers billing by the hour, the social workers, the foster carers paid fat wads of cash every week, the coppers, the court staff. And apologies for any leeches whom I have forgotten to mention.
It is a pity that families are not given help before children are taken. There are precious few services for families out there, and they are not easy to find. And it is all too easy for the authorities to act in the most draconian way "in the interests of children" when in some cases preventative whole family counselling and help would be better, quicker and cheaper than taking the children away.
It is also a pity that the parents are not assigned a social worker during case proceedings. Surely if the parent(s) are at fault then they should be rehabilitated or whatever. My experience is that the parent(s) are left to rot most of the time.
My advice to any young adults out there is to stay single and not have any kids. The State seems to want to destroy families and terrorize individuals by threatening incarceration of parent(s) and adoption of children. We live the Orwellian nightmare: enjoy!

Cases that get into Court take a long time. Surprise!

Readers may have noticed that the Justice department is planning to close a considerable number of County Courts and Magistrates Courts, pleading low workloads for some. How is anyone else supposed to know what the stastistics are?

There are some cases where an allegedly under-used Magistrates Court (Waltham Forest) is only a few miles from an overloaded County Court (Bow). County Courts sitting in some of the Magistrates Courts buildings could improve the situation.

"It is an atrophy in respect for social workers," said Ewen. "Judges will ask for independent assessments rather than accepting social workers' assessments. These take time. Before you know it a child is waiting months. If they are lucky, they get just one foster family."

Well, in the case that affected parts of my family for going on two years - all but one 'independent' just went ahead and sent the Courts a pack of fiction. Psychology assessments and reviews by independent social workers could have simply been written about anyone. In many instances they even used the names of different children! It was as if they were making an educated 'guess' and just writing for writings sake. One of them, for example, who was very influential in the case to forcibly remove children from my brothers family, met the mother twice in 18 months for approx. 2 hours, and the father once for approx 1 hour (and exchanged no more than 50 words!)

This woman then went ahead and wrote about the parents as if she had been a fly-on-the-wall throughout their entire lives!! Taking every opportunity to vilify them and to brand them unfit to parent. It was an outrage!

What's more, this article simply says 'vulnerable' children. As if all children who have been forcibly removed are vulnerable - it is misleading. One reason these cases go on for so long is because the family solicitors that take on the cases on behalf of parents are in cohorts with the Social Services - they restrict access of parents to the full scale of the law, they do not do everything in their power to represent the parents in their struggle to be reunited with their parents. In effect they assist the Social Services to destroy families.

Not once in 18 months of initial care proceedings did the 'solicitor' make a single appeal against the renewal of the care order. Which she had the opportunity to do every four weeks (18 chances to launch and appeal/0 made).

I was able to gleam more information about the law from the internet than what the solicitor was letting on. When the mother attempted to use this information to challenge her solicitor to do more. I wrote a 36 page document to assist the solicitor to challenge the disinformation/propaganda and smears against the parents. the solicitor threatened that I could be sent to jail for interfering with the case.

They use unprovable psychological diagnosis to destroy the credibility of the parents. They never write down the word 'love' but use 'attachment'. They can write about the 'attachments' between children and their parents in the most misleading manner, and rejoice "the child does not seem to have any emotional attachment to the mother". And the court accepts this.

The family courts are a travesty of justice. The same standards that are applied in a Criminal Court must be applied there too. Heresay, conjecture, lack of evidence, fiction, lies, the manipulation of evidence rule the roost when it comes to the Family Courts!! The system is rotten to the very core. Judges should not tolerate this abuse of the legal system - but they do!

It's diabolic. Not until you are in this dystopian nightmare will you realise just how weak and powerless you are, and how the State and its SS can get away with treating you like you are serfs. A whole round terrifying ordeal.

My advice, if the SS come near your family, take out a big loan and run! or comply, obey, comply, obey, and lick dirt of the boots of the social workers, and comply some more!

Children left in danger by court delays

AND WHAT ABOUT THE COURT FEES?

In early 2008 New-Labour increased the child protection court fees for local authorities from a £150 to an outrageous £5,000 - a kick in the teeth fee for all those working hard in the interest of safe guarding children.

For that action alone I am glad they were kicked out of office and I'm not a Tory or a Lib Dem.

I hope they are sleeping easy in their beds!

In March 2010 it was reported in the Guardian:

'' Baby Peter's social work legacy continues. Last night the government agreed to scrap child protection court fees after a review, ordered by Lord Laming in the wake of the Baby Peter controversy, found evidence that fees deterred councils from properly responding to the needs of abused or neglected children. The report's author, Francis Plowden, called for fees to be scrapped. The Justice minister Jack Straw accepted the findings of the report, which his ministry shamefully slipped out, without fanfare, yesterday evening.''

And they said: ''things can only get better... can only get better...'' under New-Labour.

£150 to £5,000 it's unforgivable and they, remember, were forced to remove the fees. The B-----ds !!!

Where is the interview with the Labour minister previously responsible for this ?? It seems to me the Guardian should be asking serious questions about the delays ...but no - watch it happen: the Guardian predictably and boringly will no doubt use this issue as a stick to beat the new Coalition government with. Zzzzzz.

Yes, children and families in general are let down by the Courts. But then, what's new? If it ain't gown-up, male, white and entirely lucrative it simply ain't worth the 21st century time of day.

Right?

This suits the powers that be. Easier to rule these poor dumb kids. Unless they are going to Oxford or Cambridge their education doesnt matter to the Assistant recorder as no magistrate will want to sit these cases. Children are 3rd class citizens in the eyes of the law. Makes a fortune for the "legal profession "as well, not to mention all those case conferences with highly paid PHds in useless subjects from the social sitting around drinking tea and eating biscuits. The longer it drags on the better for all of them really. Plenty of money for those private companies who train foster carers but no money for them for making a placement. Drag it out as long as possible-what an earner!QED.

Barnardos.... aren't they that childrens' welfare charity that lost all credibility last year when they supported and encouraged signing up every adult who came within one hundred feet of any child to another New-Labour monster state database through Ed Balls' £64 CRB check?

Weird that Barnardos is so concerned about child abuse, when if you look at a great percentage of the child abuse that has occurred in the history of Canada and Australia, it was perpetrated by Barnardos or their agents.
I can't believe this is still a charity. Regular incidence of child abuse by Barnardos staff are also reported every couple of years.

Barnardos should be shut down.

Moderator, do your thing!

You mean "children harmed". Only things can be damaged.

"Parenthood is a privilege for the hardworking, responsible, and earnest - not a right for bored people or worse, people whose aspiration is actually to get a council house by virtue of misusing their reproductive organs".

Sterilise the poor. Institutionalise the poor. Only the hardworking, responsible and earnest should have children. Sounds just like the Daily Mail.

And I know of a paedophile who abused/raped his foster daughter; and am glad that stringent checks have been put in place, they are not adequate enough. The anti-PC lobby do not have any idea what they are talking about. They are just bandwagoners.

Until we as a society really demonstrate that we are willing to fund the lives of children properly then expect the shambolic.

Delays are causing children to be left for a considerable proportion of their early lives in atmospheres of violence, high emotion and parental dispute which, if prolonged, is bound to interfere with their longterm development and give rise to problems in adolescence and later life."

That says it all for me. Parents who are struggling do need help and intervention but there comes a time (and from this piece, sometimes that time is delayed for too long) that the needs of the children to be in a permanent and stable, loving family have to come first.

RideaPaleHorse @ "My advice, if the SS come near your family, take out a big loan and run! or comply, obey, comply, obey, and lick dirt of the boots of the social workers, and comply some more!"

I obviously cannot comment on your particular case but Social Security don`t just randomly pick on a family and label them proplem parents.

sorry typo.. ....should be Social Services"

It may not be 'random' but it's all a little fuzzy.

Just the fact of a social worker saying there's a problem can become the reason for exteme family break-down - however low level the occasion for a referral might have been.

That is not to say that all social workers create all problems all the time.

Thinking about this, It is a weird truth that the most likely people to abuse kids are not strangers, but, in order.
1. The child's own parents
2. The Catholic or Christian churches
3. Child abuse and support charities like Barnardos
4. Government agencies...

Any comment on this report from the NSPCC?

Parenthood is a privilege for the hardworking, responsible, and earnest - not a right for bored people or worse, people whose aspiration is actually to get a council house by virtue of misusing their reproductive organs"

I totally agree with this. Not necessarily your criteria however but I think if there was some sort of inspection into your ability to be a parent before you have kids the world would be a better place.

"Parenthood is a privilege for the hardworking, responsible, and earnest - not a right for bored people or worse, people whose aspiration is actually to get a council house by virtue of misusing their reproductive organs"

I totally agree with this. Not necessarily your criteria however but I think if there was some sort of inspection into your ability to be a parent before you have kids the world would be a better place."

'Is it your lordship's will to geld and splay all the youth of the city?' - Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

Yeah, inspection regimes have been extremely successful in education, why not subject parents to it as well?

It is appalling that so many children are left waiting for decisions to be made about their futures. As this evidence shows, it is time now to put the needs of children first and make decisions faster. Of course such decisions cannot be made lightly, but this delay means children are subjected to a life without love and stability for far too long, moved from carer to carer.

Until there is a radical shift to the system, we need to look at ways to prevent long lasting damage to these children. One example is Concurrent Planning which places babies with foster carers who go onto adopt the child if the courts decide the birth parents cannot care for them.

The UK’s first Family Drug and Alcohol Court has speeded up decision-making for children whose parents have serious substance abuse problems. The project shows the impact that the courts, social workers and drug and alcohol agencies can have if they all work closely together within set timeframes.
As a society we need to recognise how incredibly vulnerable these children are, and how it feels to be without anyone who cares enough to fight for you – something most children take for granted. We owe these children the care they deserve, and the best possible chance in life.

"Lets see if the Guardian can lead the way by giving this the SUSTAINED and in depth analysis it requires with call s for appropriate levels of funding.
Sadly the current crisis is to be understood as a manifestation of a much deeper and broader set of social process. If we want justice for children not simply quick fixes then we need to address these issues."

______________

Seconded.

I came across the pitifuly underfunded state that SS have been left in via a debate concerned with just such a "quick fix" issue.

For the life of me I don't understand why the evident heart of the matter isn't being dragged into the limelight by the independent agencies who are most closely involved with child protection. They appear to be more concerned with banging the drum calling for “quick fixes”. That makes no sense if their mission is as stated on their publicity material.

I’d also like to see more people who are forced onto the defensive in the “quick fix” debates to join forces and push for recognition of how the safety net that SS is supposed to be is more hole than net at this point when the topic is raised outside of their area of specific interest.

It is almost impossible to generalise. Obviously there is a lot of hurt around and a sense of injustice.
In our experience, the Social Services have been the only ones brave enough to challenge the corruption in the NHS. Even though complaints were made about non-intervention by NHS, right up to the Ombudsman, it seemed that no-one in the medical profession ever did anything wrong.
It was only when we managed to get a referral taken up by Social Services that the NHS sat up and took notice of our predicament. The NHS had rallied around a psychiatric assessment - backed up by absolutely no evidence. Only Social Services challenged it and contested the decisions that flowed from it. They could not override it in medical terms but have threatened the psychiatrist with legal action under the Children's Act if no evidence can be brought to bear.
Without this brave and upstanding action, we would have had to live with the consequences for ever, not just the three years or more that we have done so far.
I can understand that intervetion is messy. Organisations based on rational principles can't help completely in our irrational, emotional lives. Mistakes have been made on all sides. But well-intentioned help, however error-strewn has to be acceptable.
Apparently, the Victorians had proportionally as many one parent families as we do now. The reasons for their circumstances were mainly due to early death. In many ways, they were not a good example. However, they did get by without professionalising people's lives. Perhaps everyone involved should try to get rid of that particular mindset.

Good query CaptainJackHackett.

The answer to this may be found by interviewing the very good foster carers who have left 'the service'

Being aware of the reasons why they have done so may throw much light on what is going so wrong for so many of the children within the so called child protection 'system'

Parenthood is a privilege for the hardworking, responsible, and earnest

That would speed up the process, wouldn't it? The social workers could turn up to take the children into care at the same time as they're delivering your P45.

Bigoted rubbish. The freedom to have children is a basic human right, not a "privelege".

If you don't like the fact that unemployed people with children get benefits and council houses, that's something else. But when you stand in judge and jury over people and decide who is fit to breed and who isn't based on your own prejudices, well... that's a step backward into 1930s fascism.

Perhaps you believe they should be sterilised and their children sent to good Aryan... sorry, Daily Mail-reading homes?

A couple of friends of mine applied to be foster carers, were accepted, she gave up work in preparation. After 12 months and no placements she went back to work. Go Figure!

someone else i know, on limited means took her teenage step sister into her care so should wouldn't be put into local authority care following years of neglect from an alcoholic mother. She's been told she has to pay £175 for the residence order, can't get help because she works, yet she is saving the state thousands a week. She's been told she needs the order because otherwise the child's mum can just take her back at will.

As for parents not being given help before children are taken, i very much doubt. My grandson was taken into care a few weeks after being released from hospital (born prematurely). His mother was insistent she didn't need or want help and refused point blank to listen to any of the concerns the social worker had, Largely they revolved around allowing cats and reptiles to defacate all over the place including work surfaces. she refused to be even vaguely compliant with the temporary foster carers, turning up when it suited her, not when it suited them (bearing in mind they had other older children fostered there who were being disrupted by this). I'm not suggesting social workers are always 100% right, but service users do have to look at their own behaviour critically sometimes.

This call for a reduction in the time it takes for care proceedings to go through the court comes just a few weeks after the head of Barnardo's was calling for early removal of children from parents on developmental grounds. So there's clearly some sort of PR offensive going on - very successfully too, with this latest initiative getting top news coverage here and elsewhere.

The arguments for early removal are very powerful. Studies show that children neglected during the first year or so of their lives suffer huge setbacks which can be if not entirely reversed then at least for the most part ameliorated when they are placed in a regular, loving and supportive environment, as long as this happens pretty promptly, say before they reach two years old at the outside. So Barnardo's are taking the part of children and they are saying take them away as soon as is practical from the parents who are neglecting or abusing them.

I can be convinced of this and so should you. What I'm not convinced about is the argument that the main obstacle standing in the way of early removal is an atrophy of respect for social workers, particularly in the judiciary. In my experience, the rights and needs of the child are held to be paramount by the courts. However, it's in the nature of care proceedings that the rights and needs of the child are set against the rights of the parents. What Barnardo's is arguing for is effectively a downgrading of the rights of the parents. Court procedure could be organised more efficiently and proceedings could be time-limited but expert reports and assessments are needed when the parents oppose removal, as they usually do.

Barnardo's asks why don't the courts just believe the social workers when they come to court with care plan? Well the fact is social workers don't always get it right and parents are entitled to a fair hearing. The point of having a court is to provide a place where the argument between local authority and parents can be sorted out fairly to a high standard of scrutiny of evidence - because that isn't going to happen anywhere else.

The supposed atrophy of respect for social workers is a side-issue here. I think I first discovered what a social worker is between 35 to 40 years ago. In all that time, either in common conversation or in public debate, I don't think that there has really been a massive amount of respect for social workers. So, while I'm saying that I don't think that social workers have received much thriving respect for there to have been an atrophy of, it seems that it's this public perception of the profession is what's being fed into by Barnardo's PR, not the actuality. The actuality is that there's more need for child protection that child protection services can cope with. That's why corners are cut and mistakes are made. The Baby P and Victoria Climbie cases pointed the finger at Haringey, but most local authorities could ended up in the same position.

As for Barnardo's call for a reform of court practice, again this should not be at the expense of proper legal procedure. There are endless aggravating problems with the family courts that have nothing to do with either legal principles or an optimum time-limitation within which procedure can be conducted. Parents, children's guardians, social workers and their legal representatives often get a listing from the court listing office for a hearing that's months away. They can be waiting all day or longer to get on once they've got a listing. Hearings can be transferred to another court because of congestion on the list. I can remember a hearing in which everyone had to wait around for three hours at a magistrates court because someone had locked the court papers away in cupboard and the person who had the key was having a day off. I take the view that just sorting out court waiting times would probably achieve a fair proportion of the 25% legal costs cuts in this area that Ken Clarke says he wants to achieve over the next few years (the rest he could get by capping expert fees).

So rationalising the court system will be good for everyone and will enable children to be removed to care earlier and will help their life chances, just like Branardo's says. But it's not to be done because social workers are being unfairly maligned and it shouldn't be done to prevent parents from receiving fair representation.

The Housing Crisis can't help, or the other drastic cuts to HB and other vital services parents need.

I can only speak from personal experience and from reports of people I trust. The care system is horrible in this country. It manages to be hopelessly beaurocratic and inefficient at the management level, yet all to often farms out the actual care of children and young people to commercial organisations on the cheapest contract rate, with no attempt to check or monitor training of staff or quality of care provided. The entire system is so judgemental on the overworked staff that retention rates are very low and cases drag on for months or years, all the time inflicting irreparable damage on the mental health of their charges. The constant shuffling of children in and out of foster care as attempts are made to rescue dysfunctional families leaves the children emotionally scared and almost guarantees that they will grow up to a similar level of failure and criminality as their parents.

The luck ones are extracted into adoption at a very young age - stability and a permanent loving home is what they need more than anything else.

All too often, the parents of children taken into adoption are left to their fate, and that is to have more children who have little more prospect of a stable family than their adopted siblings.

Barnardos should think before they put these types of issues into the Press -it's irresponsible and, as is often the case with the voluntary sector, not anything like the whole picture. Let's be clear about one thing, any child who is suffering significant harm at home is removed either under Police Protection, an Emergency Protection Order or an Interim Care Order - so the comments that childfren are left in an abusive home for up to or over a year is seriuosly inaccurate. Secondly, much of the process is hampered by incompetent Chidlren's Guardians who seem to think it is their job to sabbotage and discredit social work plans just for the sake of it - they often make these decisions before they have met the children or looked at the children's filew -a nd for some reason only known to the Courts, they seem to back the Children's Guardian rather than the social work plans even though they are the agency have worked with the family. Their comments are all over the place - are the children being 'bounced around' foster care or are they at home in an abusive situation? Let's be clear please. I've never rated Barnardos and don't think they are good service providers - like a lot of the vol.untary sector they don't understand child protection or social work legal processes and procedures and what goes on up until the decision is taken to initiate proceedings (such as Public Law Outline). Volutnary Sector agencies are inclined to publish these types of articles as a publicity mechanism. Local Authorities are, to all intents and purposes, in control of their core business - o.k there will always be incidents - but the reality is that thousands of children are kept safe and well - if parents are intent on harming their children they will do so - it doesn't matter what is in place to prevent that. What is a more pressing issue is that of contact between children and their parents once they have been removed. My view is that there is too much contact and ultimately, it is not in the chidlren's best interest - but the Court's, Defence Lawyers and Guardian's don't think these things through properlty and make preposterous demands of social services - especially given the arrangements made in private divorce cases. The Court process is as streamlined as it can get in a complicated process dealing with children's lives. What the Courts need to do is to be more supportive of the Local Authority in these cases and not automatically defer to the Guardian's or the Defence Lawyers. Barnardos and other voluntary sector organisations should stick to making comments about the area of service they cover - which is not child protection legal work. I have had the misfortune to work with Barnardos and quite frankly, they are ill equipped to make these types of comments.

As I former foster carer I can confirm that in my experience the state fails its vulnerable children consistently and continuously. In my case it also failed its foster carers sufficently that I had to give up - thus failing another vulnerable child who by the age of ten had already had eighteen previous placements. This is a desperate and tragic situation that ensures our prison and psychiatric services will always be over-subscribed.

Its not the state's fault.

its the social workers and carers who don't give a sh&t and just take the money without a consideration for the kids. Over half of them dont put in a full days work, instead they spend their time sitting around moaning.

I'd advocate a return to the Family Group Homes of the 60s and 70s.

Houseparents, small groups of children, and, most importantly, close ongoing supervision of the staff. (I'd even go so far as to suggest CCTV) A mentoring system for each child, with outside care workers, and strong management by the State Services.

The trouble with many foster-care placements is that they break down, often due to the child's challenging behaviour, or changes in the circumstances of the foster-carers. It's nobody's fault, but the child is always the loser.

Very few people want to foster teenagers, which has led to the use of increasingly unsuitable and insecure placements ( in Ireland where I worked, we used local B&Bs regularly, out of desperation)

Foster-carers are an invaluable resource, and there are many success stories, but imo, society has changed to the extent that there are not enough stable family placements available. Rightly, training of prospective foster-carers is tough and probing, and a substantial number of applicants decide that it is not for them.

As to the delays in Court proceedings, they are, I suspect, inevitable. Emergencies are dealt with very quickly, and, with an enhanced Care system, there could even be an advantage to a measured approach.

These two comments are ill informed and ill-judged. Let's get one thing straight, child protection is not an exact science, it manages a very high level of risk to children which means there will always be cases that are extremely difficult to get right and which will always carry a high degree of risk. My experience is that social workers manage these risks very well overall and the children have generally good outcomes. What people are failing to realise it is not just a social work process - it involves GPs, Health Visitors, Teachers and the Police. In the case of Baby P - the main failures to identify the risk was with the health professionals. I have read consultant paediatricians reports that makes me wonder whether they understand risk at all. In many aeras, the Child Protection Police are way below par - their only interest is to get convictions on high profile cases without really working in partnership for the sake of the children. In other Areas. they have a very robust and braod view of child protection. The State is NOT failing children - it is doing the very best it can to protect children. Children are not put into the system for the slightest or smallest thing - the whole process is predicatated on the level of risk of significant harm - and trust me - the threshold is very high for this. I have worked with so many health visitors who say one thing to your face and then attend a child protection conference and not mention any of it on the basis that "they have to work with the families" - as if social workers don't. I am sick to death of the social work profession being denigrated by the Press - it is a highly skilled, profession which requires a high level of ability and experience - access to social work courses should be only at post-graduate level. Unfortuantely, it attracts people who do not have the skills or abilites to do the job and in order to chagne this, the profile of how much responsibility is involved needs to be made clear and there needs to be proper, unbiased reporting of cases by the media. Let's face it, thousands and thousands of people die every year as a result of medical negligence and malpractice - yet the NHS largely get away with it scot free - why is this? Unfortuantely, however well you manage your service, there will always be child deaths in child protection because people will sure as hell do it if they want to. With Baby P, social services had a very tight child protection plan but they were let down by the medical profession. I would like to see David Cameron raise the profile of the Profession and give it far more respect than it currently gets. I would also like to see papers like The Guardian run features that promote all the good work the profession does and interviews with practitioners and managers. I am clear that the voluntary sector have a very limited place in providing services - they aren't generally good value for money and are not often quality assured. In putting this article into the Press Barnardos are jsut scare mongering without justifrication and if i were a Director of Social Services I wouldn't be commissionng them any time soon.

i totally lost all respect a long time ago. a bunch of pen pushers with no room for subjectivity.