ByCharles
Pragnell
March 29, 2007
Supporters and followers of the FASSIT website will be aware that I have
submitted a
Petition to the Prime Minister of Britain, the Rt Hon Tony
Blair, to appoint a Royal Commission to conduct an investigation into the
Child Protection system in Britain and to recommend appropriate reforms and
changes to that system.
Every year in Britain there are some children who are being abused by their
parents or carers and in a very small number of cases, by strangers. Such
children have the right, under national and international laws, to be
protected from such abuse by not only the State Authorities but also by
their relatives, neighbours, and by other adults in the communities in which
they live.
But for over thirty years the Child Protection system in Britain has been
lurching from crisis to crisis whereby children under the care and
supervision of child protection workers and professionals have been
seriously harmed and many have died whilst such professionals looked on,
squabbling among themselves as to who should take responsibility for the
child, or occupying themselves with pursuing cases which would bring them
personal esteem and enhance their reputations amongst other professionals,
such as occurred with Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy. The dead children could
not speak during or after the occurrences which destroyed their lives and
the relevant professionals ignored their plight.
On the other hand, there have been repeated and frequent instances where
groups of children and their families have been subjected to unnecessary and
unwarranted and intrusive child protection investigations from professionals
who had been brainwashed into unquestioningly and uncritically accepting
unproven and scientifically fraudulent theories of child abuse, such as
Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy, Satanic Ritual Abuse, Repressed Memory
Syndrome, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, Shaken Baby Syndrome etc, etc.
Invariably such events destroyed and devastated the lives of numerous
children, their parents, siblings, and often their wider families.
After many of these instances, Public Inquiries were set up to inquire into
what had gone wrong and on each occasion these Inquiries were dominated by
the agencies which had caused the these disasters who invariably sought to
blame the cause of the disasters on `a shortage of resources’ and inadequate
legal powers. Repeatedly these Inquiries found evidence that the primary
reasons for the failures was in the respective agencies failing to work
together and although they were urged to do so in the future and systems
were changed to make them do so, such working together has failed again and
again. Many of the Inquiries also recommended massive increases in resources
for the agencies involved and increases in their workforces and changes in
legislation to considerably increase their powers. Many new and improved
bureaucratic procedures have been introduced which have largely been to
protect the agencies involved from criticism, rather than providing a valid
system of protection for children.
“Lessons have been learnt” was an oft repeated statement by agency heads
after these Inquiries but it is plain to anyone with a modicum of
intelligence and rational thought, that lessons have not been learnt when
the same mistakes are repeated over and over again. “Damned if we do, and
damned if we don’t” has also been a familiar excuse yet no professional can
be condemned if they carry out their legal duties in a conscientious and
fair-minded manner. The problem has always been that such basic principles
were absent from the way they conducted themselves.
At the time of the Cleveland Scandal, I was a senior manager with the
now-defunct Cleveland Social Service Department and was responsible for
research and management information systems and having previously been a
trained child protection social worker, I and several other managers within
the Department, voiced my concerns at what has happening many months before
it became a hapless tragedy for so many children and their families. (My
account of those events is already recorded on the Internet). Our voices
however were powerless. The subsequent Inquiry uncovered some of the truth
of what had occurred but by no means all of the truth as agencies disclosed
only information which was favourable to themselves – after all, they were
unlikely to be self-critical. The children involved in the Cleveland Scandal
received only a meager amount in compensation for their traumas – if they
had been imprisoned wrongly they would have received far more.
I left Local Authority social work management three years later, still
deeply concerned at the systemic harm which had been caused to those
children and their families and within a very short time I became a advocate
and representative for children in State Care and for their families. This
was a very chastening experience for me as social workers treated me with
contempt, hostility, and gross disrespect, as they did the children and
families who I sought to represent.
This became an enormous learning experience for me as I quickly realised
that the major events in Cleveland, the Orkneys, Rochdale, Nottingham,
Durham. Shieldfield Newcastle, the Isles of Lewis etc etc, were not isolated
events but were part of a much bigger pattern and picture. That Cleveland
was dwarfed by the numbers of individual cases where injustices and
unfairness were occurring every day of every week of every year somewhere in
Britain but because such occurrences were not within a single geographic
area like Cleveland, then it was unnoticed by the media and by the public.
Some of these injustices were that parents and children were denied legal or
any other kind of representation in child protection proceedings and when
the matter came before the Courts, they were often denied legal aid, or
effective legal representation. This was often in the face of what parents
claimed was evidence which had been embellished, distorted, and even
fabricated in order to prove the case against them.
Since that time, I have been avalanched with letters, emails, and phone
calls from distraught children and parents and relatives, telling of the
injustices they have suffered by the abuses and misuses of powers by child
protection workers and how their lives have been devastated and destroyed by
the interventions of those child protection workers. Such correspondence
continues to this day.
I am not alone in my concerns regarding the Child Protection system in
Britain as many of these concerns are shared by researchers, academics, and
many fellow medical and social work professionals, some of whom are trying
to change the system from within, but fruitlessly and despairingly.
Sadly, my advice and support for children and their families is of little
avail, mainly due to the intransigence and rigidity of the system, which
even when proven to be unfair and to have acted inappropriately, cling to
the belief that the system is always `right’. This can be seen for example
in those who still cling to the belief that the professionals involved in
the Clark/Cannings trials and the child protection workers on Cleveland did
nothing wrong.
Some parents formed themselves into Protest and Campaign Groups and made
some inroads into bringing these matters to public attention but it was nor
until the tragic cases of Sally Clark and Angela Cannings that a small tip
of a huge iceberg of false accusations of child abuse began to be exposed.
Their cases were eventually exposed by the more transparent processes of the
Criminal Courts and its appeal systems, but the thousands of children who
have been wrongly condemned to a life in State Care or adoption by
strangers, cannot be similarly exposed because of the secrecies of the
Family Courts and the lack of an effective appeals system.
Some politicians have become involved and have similarly seen some of the
injustices which have and are occurring but they are also limited in what
they can do. Probably every politician in the British Parliament has at some
time received representations from parents who feel they are wrongly accused
of child abuse and have been frustrated in their attempts to defend
themselves, but such politicians quickly realize their impotence in such
situations and cab be easily dissuaded from further involvement by the
prevarications and procrastinations of the child protection agencies. They
too are constrained by not being able to make fully public these instances
of injustice and unfairness due to the need to protect the identities of the
children involved. The interventions in Essex by politicians on behalf of
children families and their subsequent efforts being repulsed are not
uncommon.
If a Royal Commission is
acceded to, then of critical importance is that the testimonies of the
children and their families who have suffered under the present Child
Protection system are given utmost priority by the appointed Commissioners.
Only that will the full truth immerge and the requisite reforms and changes
are identified.
Appoint a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Child Protection Services.
Please sign the Petition:
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/ProtectChild/
ByCharles
Pragnell
March 29, 2007
Diploma in Social Work and Letter of Recognition in Child Care
Expert Witness – Child Protection
and Social Care Consultant
and Child/Family Advocate..
Please read...
The Silence of the Media Lambs!
Doctors in a Dilemma
Are you an `Appropriate’ person?
Childrens Plan
State Terrorism
The Seriously Unhealthy State of Paediatrics
RAD – the Return of a Nightmare
Persecution of Children and Families
Why I am Petitioning the Prime Minister
Vaccines and Child Abuse Accusations
Why did Sally Clark Suffer and Die?
Perverse Reversal of Child Custody
Child Protection in Kangaroo Courts
Fabricated and induced illness in Children
A History of Man’s Inhumanity
A System out of Control
Forced Adoption
