{"id":8610,"date":"2015-07-13T20:48:19","date_gmt":"2015-07-13T19:48:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/?p=8610"},"modified":"2015-07-13T20:49:27","modified_gmt":"2015-07-13T19:49:27","slug":"what-does-taken-into-care-mean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/what-does-taken-into-care-mean\/","title":{"rendered":"What does ‘taken into care’ mean?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Danielle<\/a>
Danielle was moved 26 times in five years and raped three times while ‘in care’.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Birmingham Social Services oversaw some of the worst cases of child abuse,\u00a0including that of seven-year-old Khyra Ishaq, who starved to death at her home in Handsworth in 2008, and Keanu Williams, who was found collapsed in his mother’s partner’s flat in 2011.<\/p>\n

These high-profile cases, following after that of baby Peter Connelly, who was murdered by his mother,\u00a0her boyfriend and his brother in 2007 in London’s Haringey, which was already under pressure following the death of Victoria Climbi\u00e9 ten years earlier, caused\u00a0social workers to put caution before common sense.<\/p>\n

Children have been taken from their parents on the slightest whiff of abuse, which for today’s social workers involves any sign of corporal punishment. \u00a0But what happens then? \u00a0The BBC website is carrying a video of an interview with a girl called Danielle<\/a><\/strong>. \u00a0She was taken into care in 1998 at the age of 11 after marks from a belt were seen on her back. \u00a0If that were punishment, it sounds excessive, but what subsequently happened to Danielle makes it seem like the ultimate in compassion.<\/p>\n

Danielle, who is now twenty-seven, says she was moved six times in six weeks and had\u00a0twenty-nine moves by the time she left the care system aged just sixteen. \u00a0She was raped three times whilst ‘in care’, in addition to an attempted rape when she was only eleven and in a children’s home. \u00a0She ran away when she was thirteen but was brought back.<\/p>\n

The outcomes of children in care make shocking reading. \u00a0According to a Government study in 2013<\/a><\/strong>, ‘67.8%\u00a0have special educational needs’. \u00a0‘Around half of all looked after children aged 5 to 16 were considered to be \u2018borderline\u2019 or \u2018cause for concern\u2019 in relation to their emotional and behavioural health’, the study said.<\/p>\n

Their educational gaps ‘are still large, especially for key stage 4, where 15.3% of looked after children achieved 5 or more A* to C GCSEs or equivalent including English and mathematics compared with 58.0% of non-looked-after children’.<\/p>\n

Even according to the NSPCC<\/a><\/strong>, which has an interest in providing care facilities, the mental health difficulties of children in care are four times\u00a0higher than their peers.<\/p>\n

The Government report did not mention the staggeringly high incidences of sexual abuse faced by children in care, but the Independent newspaper reported<\/a><\/strong>:<\/p>\n

‘One in every hundred children living in care is abused every year in Britain, according to the most comprehensive study conducted into the issue.<\/p>\n

\n
\n

The research by York University and the NSPCC is the first of its kind to uncover and analyse local authority records on abuse in foster and residential care.<\/p>\n

‘Academics tracked abuse allegations \u2013 and their outcomes \u2013 between 2009 and 2012. They found that on average there are between 450 and 550 cases of proven abuse every year in foster care and between 250 and 300 cases of confirmed abuse a year in residential care.<\/p>\n

I’n residential care the rate of substantiated abuse claims is significantly higher than for foster families, with an average of between two and three proven cases per 100 children.’<\/p>\n

Would the children have done better and been treated better left with their parents under some kind of supervision with assistance in parenting? \u00a0It is hard to imagine their outcomes would have been much worse.<\/p>\n

There is little sign of social workers, whose jobs are under no risk if they take children from their parents, becoming more family-friendly. \u00a0But with being in care leading to such horrifying abuse as Danielle suffered and the poor outcomes reported by the Government, surely a rethink is overdue.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Birmingham Social Services oversaw some of the worst cases of child abuse,\u00a0including that of seven-year-old Khyra Ishaq, who starved to death at her home in Handsworth in 2008, and Keanu Williams, who was found collapsed in his mother’s partner’s flat in 2011. These high-profile cases, following after that of baby Peter Connelly, who was murdered […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,184],"tags":[1037,1511,1508,1507,1509,1510],"class_list":["post-8610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-social-services-child-abduction","category-uk-christian-constitution","tag-birmingham","tag-haringey","tag-keanu-williams","tag-khyra-ishaq","tag-peter-connelly","tag-victoria-climbie"],"aioseo_notices":[],"rttpg_featured_image_url":null,"rttpg_author":{"display_name":"Stephen","author_link":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/author\/stephen\/"},"rttpg_comment":12,"rttpg_category":"Social Services & Child Abduction<\/a> UK Christian Constitution<\/a>","rttpg_excerpt":"Birmingham Social Services oversaw some of the worst cases of child abuse,\u00a0including that of seven-year-old Khyra Ishaq, who starved to death at her home in Handsworth in 2008, and Keanu Williams, who was found collapsed in his mother’s partner’s flat in 2011. These high-profile cases, following after that of baby Peter Connelly, who was murdered…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8610\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}