|
|
 |
| |
Salma ElSharkawy: spotlight on social services |
An urgent need to abolish secrecy in the family courts
It is impossible to defend a system from accusations of bias and discrimination if it operates in secret. Family courts must be open, argues Trevor Jones
THE tragic death of Salma ElSharkawy while in the care of Camden Council has placed the spotlight very much on the workings of social services and in particular the decisions made in secret in the family courts.
As a seasoned campaigner wanting to open up the secret family court system to scrutiny you might expect me to say that “it is quite indefensible that there should be no access by the media and no access by the public to what is going on in courts where judges are day-by-day taking people’s children away”.
However, these are not my words but the words of the Hon Mr Justice Munby, an experienced family court judge, giving evidence to Parliament last year.
His informed opinion was echoed at the time by Harriet Harman, the then family justice minister, who said that the status quo – in terms of the closed nature of the family courts – is not an option when in July 2006 she launched a full consultation, Confidence and Confidentiality: Openness in the family courts, admitting that “it is impossible to defend a system from accusations of bias and discrimination if it operates behind doors”.
A year later the government felt no need to open up the family court system and actually laid out plans to make the family courts less transparent by extending the secrecy to family proceedings in magistrates’ courts which are currently open to the press in most cases.
This blatant U-turn was justified by the then Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer, who had listened to the views of 200 children and young people and had concluded that they had “overwhelmingly rejected the idea” of opening up the courts. However, the Consultation Response Paper, published in March of this year, revealed that most of the children agreed that it should be up to the people involved in the case – there certainly was not a clear agreement on banning the press from all or part of the proceedings.
What is abundantly clear, though, is that the pressure to keep the family courts closed came not from the children but from organisations who say they represent the children.
An important part of the consultation was to identify relevant interested parties and those whom the policy will be likely to affect. These groups, termed stakeholder groups, were contacted and engaged in discussion in the policy development process.
The 41 stakeholders included social services, judges, magistrates,
lawyers, healthcare professionals and many organisations representing children. Not one stakeholder was a parent group representing the thousands of parents who are in danger each year of having their children removed permanently from their care.
Twenty years ago there was only Parents Against Injustice actively supporting falsely accused parents who were in the process of having their children wrongly removed by the family courts and over that time it has dealt with 13,000 cases. Today, there are more than two dozen such organisations helping families each year cope with the prospect of losing their children forever via a secret court system.
To suggest that there is nothing wrong with this system completely ignores the common themes that have become apparent in cases over recent years and their sheer volume points to a potential injustice on a colossal scale.
Many parents complain of the bullying tactics and intimidation that social services use to stop them speaking out through fear of it being used against them in court.
In a recent survey of 1,200 records of families who have contacted Families anti-Social Services Inquiry Team (FASSIT) an organisation offering support and advice to parents, nearly all parents claimed that social workers and other court officials were committing perjury in the family court to secure the taking of their children into care or to be adopted.
The system allows for social workers to be able to work on an almost totally subjective rather than objective basis and to manipulate evidence to suit their needs. Meetings with social workers are invariably prevented from being recorded and it is common practice once the local authority has set its objective that it only submits information to the court that is negative and deliberately withholds the redeeming features about the parent from the proceedings.
Independent assessments ordered by the court into a parent’s ability to look after a child can be undertaken by family centres directly funded by the local authorities who are therefore under pressure to perform to ensure their contracts are renewed.
However, the most worrying trend is the use of the catch-all phrase that the child might be in danger of harm in the future even in cases where there is no evidence of any abuse in the past.
Innocent parents cannot possibly defend themselves against someone’s opinion that some time in the future they might harm their children.
There are just too many contested cases to suggest that the system is operating fairly and while the government justifies the secret nature of the family courts by saying it is to protect children, it also protects other bodies, such as social services, and that is very worrying.
|
 |
|
| |
|
|
|
