Suicide: Family and foster parents at odds over 15-year-old’s funeral arrangements
Category: Social Services
Aug 15 2023
Prayer needed for a family
Please pray that a baby taken into care by Social Services because the parents expressed misgivings over the neo-natal Hepatatis vaccine will be returned home
Jun 11 2018
Southampton heads adoption lottery
Research into adoption and care rates has revealed a postcode lottery. Children in some areas in England are 12 times more likely to be removed and adopted by child protection units. The BBC and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism sent Freedom of Information Act enquiries to all English local authorities. Half provided full responses. The …
Sep 11 2017
Medway Council’s Emotional Abuse
A mother who says her two youngest children were wrongly taken into care by Medway Council was given a six-month suspended prison sentence at the end of last month by Judge Richard Polden Sara Root told Christian Voice her children were taken seven years ago for ‘emotional abuse’. District Judge Graham Green made a judgment …
Jul 19 2017
Medway dispute Mother guilty of ‘contempt’
A mother in dispute with social services was found guilty yesterday of contempt of court. The case has not yet concluded so we shall refer to her as ‘SR’. Sitting at Maidstone County Court, in open court, Judge Richard Polden held ‘SR’ had breached an injunction forbidding her from naming her children and reporting on …
Jul 13 2017
Medway Council took children because home ‘untidy’
A local authority took two children into care because a house was ‘untidy’, a mother has told Christian Voice. And now, seven years later, Medway Council are trying to send the mother to prison for speaking out about her case. This is despite both children now being over eighteen. Care proceedings end at eighteen. Medway …
Jun 22 2017
Bexley children finally go home
Four children from a family rent apart by false allegations two years ago have finally gone home. In early March 2017 Judge Diane Redgrave approved an agreement worked out between counsel for the parents, Hilary Pollock, and the London Borough of Bexley. Bexley returned the children to their parents on 29th March. The Lord’s hand …
Jun 20 2017
Judge finds father in contempt of court again
A father in dispute with Medway Council narrowly escaped jail for contempt of court in Canterbury County Court last week for the second time in six months. Eugene Lukjanenko was charged with five breaches of an order made on 30th September 2015. The Order prohibited him from naming employees or ex-employees of the Council online. …
Jun 13 2017
Tories promise family courts reform
The Conservative Party promised reform of the family courts in their manifesto following a rooftop protest. It is of course open to argument whether the manifesto commitment was a response to the protest at the home of Edward Timpson. Mr Timpson was Minister of State for Vulnerable Children and Families in the previous government. It follows he …
Jan 18 2017
Family Court Restrictions: father ‘in contempt’
A father fighting a local authority in the family court narrowly escaped jail for contempt of court yesterday. We may only identify him as ‘EL’ and his fourteen-year-old son as ‘J’ on instruction from Judge Richard Scarratt, pursuant to rules designed to protect the secrecy of the family courts. [At the time of writiing, we …
Jan 17 2017
Father fighting Medway Council faces jail for contempt
Medway Council is asking a court to jail a father for contempt of court after he posted a picture of his in-care son online. Medway Council took son into care Canterbury Family Court heard the father, a concert pianist, had breached an order made by Mrs Justice Theis in 2015 banning him, or anyone, from …
Nov 04 2016
Walsall Children Go Home!
Three children taken into care by Walsall Metropolitan Borough Council on the strength of a false allegation of sexual abuse were returned home yesterday. Walsall’s decision to return the children came after their barrister Richard Hadley reviewed the evidence in the case following a failed prosecution of the family’s eldest boys in Wolverhampton Crown Court. A …
Oct 20 2016
Walsall dither over child care case
P.S. (26th October 2016): Walsall’s barrister, Mr Richard Hadley, today undertook to complete his examination of all the evidence by next week. He gave Mr Justice Keehan, sitting in the High Court in Nottingham, the clearest possible indication that he expects there to be no case of abuse to answer. In that event, he said …
Sep 22 2016
Council look anew at child care case
In legal cases what is said between advocates in a conference room is often as important as what happens in court. And so it proved on Wednesday last week (14th September 2016) at Walsall Family Court, where a local authority was forced to go back to the drawing board in a child care case. ACQUITTAL …
Sep 12 2016
Judge: ‘Not Guilty’ doesn’t mean ‘Innocent’
Update 22/09/2016: Click here for Council look anew at care case. A senior family court judge told a court last Friday (9th September 2016) that a ‘Not Guilty’ verdict in the criminal court did not mean the defendants were innocent. Judge Rosalind Bush said a ‘Not Guilty’ verdict merely meant the jury had not been …
Jun 21 2016
Bexley opposes children’s return
By Stephen Green (Update 22nd November 2016: At the latest hearing yesterday, instead of agreeing to a plan to return the children forthwith, the local authority opposed it. There will now be a contested hearing in early March 2017. So the injustice and the emotional harm being done to the children by Bexley continues, at …
Jun 07 2016
Worcestershire loses adoption bid
By Stephen Green A local authority has lost its bid to put four children from a Christian home up for adoption. Sitting in Worcester Family Court in Worcester’s impressive old Shire Hall building, His Honour Judge Richard Rundell ordered instead that the children should stay in long-term foster care and enjoy regular contact with their …
Mar 02 2016
Judge rules Bucks girls can go home
A Family Court judge has ruled two children should go home after criticising a local authority for failing to admit that they were suffering emotional harm in its care. District Judge Patrick Perusko made the order on Friday 26th February 2016 in Milton Keynes Family Court. A series of exchanges between the judge and Mr …
