Kinship Carers

Community Care posts an article about a recent judgment concerning a Local Authority’s financial duties towards kinship carers. Although the citation is not provided in the article I believe it is referring to the case of R (on the application of A) v A Local Authority – [2010] All ER (D) 49 (May). In a [...]

Social Workers: Arrogant and Enthusiastic Removers of Vegetarians?

I’m a bit slow off the mark this week but I do want to report this: Lord Justice Wall has been widely reported as criticising social workers for being “arrogant and enthusiastic removers of children from their parents”. It doesn’t look as if he will be a wallflower of a President, does it? . In [...]

Who Needs a Lawyer Anyway?

Not social workers apparently. At least so says the British Association of Social Workers which offers representation from non-lawyers as a perk of its membership. Barristers (incorrectly referred to by BASW as solicitors) offering their services for free via FRU or the Bar Pro Bono Unit may not have the necessary expertise in social work [...]

Reporting the Reporter

I have a current bugbear, but don’t get me wrong: I don’t want to add to the mass of negativity surrounding the dread word ‘social worker’. This post really only concerns the cases where the quality of s7 reports prepared by social workers in private proceedings falls far short of the expected standard. Most reports [...]

CAFCASS Given Funding Boost

The Times reports on p 23 this morning that Cafcass has been given an extra £1.6m to help with the backlog in care cases.

‘Don’t you lot EVER think about the kids?’

No, you are absolutely right. We have spent years acquiring expertise, passed up the opportunity to earn three times as much money in any other area of law you care to choose, regularly work into the night reading graphic details about head injuries and abuse and neglect, and spend 50% of our time telling our [...]

Protecting All Children – jus’ like that

Jill Kirby, Director of the Centre for Policy Studies writes a piece in the Opinion section of Wednesday’s Times entitled ‘It’s not hard to spot the children really at risk’. Self evidently it is a little harder than we would like to think or we wouldn’t have had to add Baby P to a long list of other [...]

New Blog About Young Care Leavers

Just happened upon an interesting new blog ‘corbysays’ which is tackling the difficult topic of young care leavers. Its only a fledgling blog at the moment but already has some thought provoking material on it. (h/t to @waugaman)

Fear or Favour

Camilla Cavendish writes an excellent article about (amongst other things) the tendency towards back-covering in child protection and the consequent fear of professionals that many good parents now have. She is right – I am anxious each time I take my son to the GP for a routine appointment that whatever minor knock or scrape he may [...]

Access All Areas?

A piece appeared in the Times last week accusing Family Courts of hiding information from parents, in particular relating to social services file. I must admit to being rather puzzled by this slightly muddled article. In the first instance within care proceedings the Local Authority is under a duty to provide a wealth of information at the outset of a [...]