Children's Services are not moral guardians

The actual guardian does not get off lightly either!

Finally in this case http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWFC/HCJ/2015/11.html

there appears to be light at the end of the very long tunnel.

The President of the Family Division goes to town on social workers and the children's guardian overturning an application for adoption and allowing the child to live back with the father.

This is despite the father having a history of sex with an under aged girl, cannabis use, and drink related domestic violence. Plus to top it all membership of the English Defence League. 

The highlights:

The President refers to previous decisions 

That approach was endorsed by the Supreme Court in In re B. There are two passages in the judgments of the Justices which develop the point and to which I need to draw particular attention. The first is in the judgment of Lord Wilson of Culworth JSC where he said (para 28):

"[Counsel] seeks to develop Hedley J's point. He submits that:

'many parents are hypochondriacs, many parents are criminals or benefit cheats, many parents discriminate against ethnic or sexual minorities, many parents support vile political parties or belong to unusual or militant religions. All of these follies are visited upon their children, who may well adopt or "model" them in their own lives but those children could not be removed for those reasons.'

I agree with [counsel]'s submission".

The other is the observation of Baroness Hale of Richmond JSC (para 143):

"We are all frail human beings, with our fair share of unattractive character traits, which sometimes manifest themselves in bad behaviours which may be copied by our children. But the State does not and cannot take away the children of all the people who commit crimes, who abuse alcohol or drugs, who suffer from physical or mental illnesses or disabilities, or who espouse antisocial political or religious beliefs."

If this is so how are so many cases pushed through on the flimsiest scraps of hearsay evidence?

The President tackles this ;

i) In a significant number of very material respects the local authority has simply failed to prove the factual underpinning of its case.

ii) SW1’s work was seriously flawed. Neither SW2 nor CG seems to have explored or analysed in any detail the underlying factual basis of the local authority’s case. In large part they simply accepted SW1’s factual assumptions. Insofar as they conducted independent investigations with the father, each met him only once, SW2 for about 75-80 minutes, CG for only 45 minutes.

iii) The local authority was too willing to believe the worst of the father, which led to it being unduly dismissive of what he was saying.

 For how long have parents been saying this?

Should social workers be policing public morality ?

There are two things about this which, to speak plainly, are quite extraordinary. First, what is the relevance of the assertion that the offence he committed was “immoral”? The city fathers of Darlington and Darlington’s Director of Social Services are not guardians of morality. Nor is this court. The justification for State intervention is harm to children, not parental immorality. Secondly, how does any of this translate through to an anticipation of harm to A? The social worker ruminates on the “current risk he poses” to “vulnerable young women”? What has that got to do with care proceedings in relation to the father’s one year old son? It is not suggested that there is any risk of the father abusing A. The social worker’s analysis is incoherent.

This case resets the bar

How many times have we read , children removed because of lesser "offences" than outlined here.

It's about time and perhaps now social workers, or perhaps more importantly their managers would have had a sufficient prod with this case to actually start supporting families instead of splitting them up on hearsay. Or perhaps I'm just dreaming zzzz