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Sunday, 6 July 2014

Social services disregard the law

Christopher Booker writes:
I can only now name both Haringey council (of "Baby P" fame) and the Musas, thanks to three very remarkable recent High Court judgments by Mr Justice Holman, which he ordered to be published on the Bailii court website, specifically allowing both the council and the parents to be identified.
Holman only came into this case at the end of a four-year long saga that had already been before more than half a dozen other High Court judges. What he had to decide was whether, as an earlier judge had ruled they must be, the five older children, now in different foster homes, should be allowed to maintain contact with the two youngest (who have been sent for adoption and whom Haringey wishes to be given new names). Holman discovered, first, that Haringey had secretly and blatantly disobeyed that earlier ruling, by last year breaking off the children’s contact for several months until, in December, they were allowed to meet for a final "goodbye session".
Holman repeatedly expressed his astonishment that the council had knowingly broken a court order in this way. But he was then even more astonished to discover that Haringey had managed to get the court website to remove the very judgment he had ordered to be published. In his own words, Haringey had, "gone completely behind my back", to persuade "Bailii to remove from the public website" the judgment that he had "deliberately placed" there, "pursuant to the practice direction of the President of the Family Division" (Lord Justice Munby, who has been valiantly striving to open up the family courts to "the glare of publicity").
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/10946414/Judge-slams-Haringey-council-over-my-most-shocking-family-case-ever.html

There are many other instances when social workers have acted outside the law. For example:
Judge Gareth Jones blasted social workers who he said illegally withheld a nine-year-old boy from his mother
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2675395/Judge-blasts-social-workers-telling-not-law-remove-nine-year-old-family-away-without-consent.html#ixzz36EGK8kZG

Two Edinburgh social workers were found in contempt of court for restricting a mother’s access to her children, against conditions set by the court.
http://www.communitycare.co.uk/2013/12/20/social-workers-found-contempt-court-denying-mother-access-children/

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