Why the removal of children is more abuse.
Abuse of children in care.
Stockholm syndrome
noun
feelings of trust or affection felt in many cases of kidnapping or hostage-taking by a victim towards a captor.
Placing children into situations where they are told they must stay will eventually have an adverse affect on how a child thinks.
Many children after their placement with foster carers try to run bacl home, but parents are threatened with the police and prison if they do not return the child to the foster carer.
Stockholm syndrome develops when people are placed in a situation where they feel intense fear of harm and believe all control is in the hands.
The psychological response follows after a period of time and is a survival strategy for the victims. It includes sympathy and support for their captor's plight and may even manifest in negative feelings toward those who are trying to help the victims.
Situations in which the victims have displayed this kind of response have included hostage situations, long-term kidnappings, members of cults, prisoners of concentration camps, and more.
Focusing on families, do children need to be in care?
There is no simple answer but a vast majority of the children in the UK care system do not need to be there, and a huge amount of children are being placed for adoption each year who could safely remain with their families. I have seen an ever increasing amount of families seeking help from people like myself, due to intervention from the local authorities, in most cases the removal of their children. In a large portion of these cases the parents could have provided “good enough parenting” if they had been given the appropriate support. A demon social worker with an attitude problem barking concerns and making the family stressed and frightened is not going to solve any of the concerns. This is where ESCAPE ( Evidence Significant Change And Parenting Education ) comes into play. ESCAPE is a social media page that I set up to help parents. I have personally done 106 of the training courses listed on the page and found them to be useful at reducing the concerns of the local authorities, I personally advise parents and tailor course plans to suit their needs and their children’s needs to help them towards better outcomes. What I have come to understand that there is always going to be risks it is how the parent addresses and manages those risks that matters, there is no way of eradicating concerns only ways of reducing them. The fact that parents have been able to do the courses listed on ESCAPE and then either successfully keep their children or managed to get their children returned to there care gives the impression that social workers do not want to help these family’s stay together, and there is of course an issue of funding these courses. I believe I have managed to successfully pull together the best “free” courses and the “cheapest” free courses available for the parents. Once the parents have successfully completed the courses they need to do and have their certificates they are then steam lined into our sister group “Changes” this is where Thomas Jones, Catherine Love and myself help and advise parents on building their cases to return to court, we help with just basic advice on filling out forms, to helping produce statements and helping find case law and informing parents of the laws and their rights. We have had a extremely good feedback coming back from both ESCAPE and advice , were are now beginning to see an increasing number of parents and grandparents successful at winning their cases on court or stopping their cases from ever going into the court arena. The question I ask myself often is “if we can provide this help and support to parents and help them keep their children or get their children home, why can’t social services”?
Lorna Sutton Admin of Advice.