[Closed] Can any social workers explain this, is there something we aren't told?

I struggle to believe they were quite such victims, there's something we're not being told, conveniently.

If it had been written in their news section, it might have some credence, but it's by a columnist and thus written to provoke debate and discourse rather than be factually correct. I doubt very much that statements so blatantly untrue as this would be allowed in News.

[i]"To their neighbours, it was so shocking that up to 100 of them were ready to stage a public protest, until being banned from doing so by social workers and the police."[/i]

Whatever the truth, If you start with something so daft, it doesn't leave much confidence in the rest of it.

/edit Out of interest Googling Tony sims dog breeder yields
[url] http://www.theargus.co.uk/news/2046118.vet_could_smell_decaying_carcasses_at_dog_breeders_house/ [/url]

Ultimately it's down to the judge whether the child is removed. There will be more to it that meets the eye, obviously. And lol at Christopher Booker's hair!!

Agree, his dog 'breeding' has been an issue and, yes, it is in a 'column' - but this is The Telegraph, not the National Enquirer or the like.

And reading other linked stories/issues you've got to wonder what is going on.

Any 'expert' views?

Not an expert but there is a vast amount of spin and misinformation in that article; it's bloody hard work to get a child taken away, even for the ne'er do wells of popular opinion. There is much, much more going on than that bit of very poor journalism would imply.

it's bloody hard work to get a child taken away, even for the ne'er do wells of popular opinion. There is much, much more going on than that bit of very poor journalism would imply.

biiiiig +1

Paints rather a different picture than the 'standing in front of nice white door' photo:

[i]A vet told a court he could smell "rotting decaying carcasses" when he was called to the home of a dog breeder.

Tony Sims, 31, fed raw meat and bones to a pack of 22 dogs he kept in unventilated rooms in near darkness and forced to sleep in their own excrement.

Police officers, animal inspectors and a vet found rabbit carcasses scattered throughout the house which Sims had used as food because he considered it "natural".

Veterinary surgeon Julian Peters told Hastings Magistrates Court that Sims' conduct had been "totally inadequate and inappropriate".

Sims, of London Road, Hailsham, bred boxers and rottweilers from his home. He now faces nine separate charges of animal cruelty relating to 16 puppies and six bitches.

Mr Peters attended Sims' house with RSPCA inspectors and police officers on April 25 last year.

He said: "I could smell rotting decaying carcasses. It's something one gets used to in a knackers yard, and I thought "something died here"."

When he entered the house, Mr Peters found the dogs kept in darkened rooms, possibly to calm them, and an overpowering stench of ammonia emanating from sodden floors and carpets.

He said: "My nose was running and eyes watering. I am 6ft-something and I could smell it. The dogs down at carpet level would get a much stronger smell.

"We smell as if we are watching black and white TV. Dogs smell as if watching colour TV, widescreen with all the bells and whistles."

Mr Peters also criticised the way Sims had removed the puppies' tails, leaving them in agony with bone protruding from raw flesh.

He said: "Putting cable ties on is a totally inappropriate way to dock puppies. I find that a barbaric way of doing it.

"You are getting constriction of some of the blood vessels but you are getting sufficient supply to keep the tail partially alive."

New legislation, imposed at the start of April last year, means only certified working dogs may be docked, except medical exceptions. It has been illegal for lay people to dock dogs' tails since 1993.

Mr Peters was forced to remove the eye of one puppy, which he said could have been saved had Sims acted differently.

The rottweiler puppy had been banished to a separate locked room with only a dead rabbit for company, a mincing machine, and a freezer full of rabbit carcasses, the court heard.

Mr Peters said the cornea had been punctured but criticised Sims, who claimed to have bathed the eye in salt water.

He said: "I couldn't see any evidence that it had any treatment. Bathing in salt water would be totally inadequate. If the solution was too strong it could have a detrimental effect on the eye.

"If this eye had been treated adequately at the beginning of the problem it would have been possible to treat."

Sims had earlier told the court he never took any of his dogs to the vet because they "mess around with the dogs".

Sims, who is representing himself in court, denies all the charges against him. The trial continues.[/i]

As the adoptive parent of two lads, I'd advise that there are always two sides to every story. Kids dont end up being freed for adoption without bloody good reasons, believe me, I know. Christopher Brooker has a long standing crusade regarding adoption, and whilst I'm not naive enough to state that mistakes arent made, I hardly feel he presents a balanced argument. Also, he does boil my piss when he talks about 'kiddie snatchers'. If my two hadnt been taken into care, they wouldnt be alive today, I have no doubts about that at all.

I've adopted 2 too,first one's mother had a long history of drug use,when he was 15 months old,she was found with him on an isolated patch of waste ground,off her head on glue,with all the paraphenalia around, and small child with no-one to care for him,second's birth father is a serial paedophile,got his mother pregnant,ghe was told if you leave him,you can keep the baby,she didn't belive police reports,and child was removed on day of birth.Which would Brooker have left with birth parents?
Ian

The purpose of all this, funded by hundreds of millions of pounds of public money, is partly to keep in being the vast fostering industry, run by dozens of agencies, often owned by ex-social workers, which also receive £20,000 a year for each child they place. Of course, there are many good and responsible foster parents, but statistics show that children in care do very much worse on almost every count, from health to performance in school, than children living with their birth parents.

Another purpose of the system is to ensure that as many children as possible are adopted (at a cost of £36,000 per placement), in accordance with Tony Blair's personal commitment a decade ago that the target for adoptions in Britain should rise by 40 per cent. Councils are still receiving millions of pounds a year for meeting adoption targets.

from another of the authors articles.

tin foil hat required?!

The moral of the story would appear to be that crazed right wing loonies do actually write for the Telegraph... Amazing, but true.

My Sis-in-Law is a social worker and occassionally has to do 'child-snatching'. TBH, based on some of the stories I've heard from her, they're more reluctant to child-snatch than I think most people would consider reasonable - they really do everything they can to give the parent(s) chances to avoid it.

Sure there's a lot more to this story than told in one massively biased article, as the second (possibly equally biased, admittedly) article shows.

Can't believe the child would be told her parents were dead? Article convieniently doesn't say who is alledged to have told her that - the big bad social workers or the foster carers?

I've worked from a healthcare point of view cases that have required kids to be removed from parents by social services, and none of them have caused me to loose any sleep, but if I came across a house as bad as that described, I'd be concerned about the welfare of the kids and involve social services.

Social services are damned if they do, damned if they don't - with all that dog shit alledgedly lying around the taken child was probably lucky not to be blind already, and it'd make you wonder whether unsanitary conditions contributed to the miscarriage experienced by the mother.

There's certainly money in private fostering agencies. A friend of mine has just left a very senior council position in social care (where he is on 50k+) and is taking a management place in a private fostering company. His package will now be the best part of 100k per year + car + pension.

mad and bad journalist

remember that all children in care/at risk are regularly reviewed by "safeguarding" commitees made up of councillors, local do gooders and senior managers and that these bodies are subject to further scrutiny - social workers can't just randomly decide a child needs fostering or be subject of a court order

is there more to it - possibly remembering that the courts are charged with acting in the childs interest and that mean maintaining confidential the concerns for the child

and no it couldn't happen to any of us

it would be impossible to do as they in that article you cannot easily persuade a judge that a child should be adopted. Some of the worst parents do love their children dearly.
If you saw the outcome for loked after kids no one would do this witha light heart

it would seem the journalist is economical with the truth re the dog situation. Imagine that eh a right wing journalist with an agenda to bash public servants misrepresenting facts ...you could not make it up ..ah yes you could apparently

[i]There's certainly money in private fostering agencies[/i]

So there bloody should be; we are talking about childrens lives after all, rather than selling hair products or playing football.

Peanuts, monkeys, you get the idea.

n 43 years of medical practice, said the family’s GP, he had “never encountered a case of such appalling injustice”. To their neighbours, it was so shocking that up to 100 of them were ready to stage a public protest, until being banned from doing so by social workers and the police.
This was the case of Tony and Debbie Sims, which I first reported in July 2009 under the headline “?'Evil destruction’ of a happy family”, and whom I can now name because their daughter, torn from them for no good reason, has finally, after three years of misery in foster care and 74 court hearings, been adopted.
The story of Mr and Mrs Sims was my first introduction to that Kafka-esque world of state child-snatching which I have so often reported on since. It illustrates so many of the reasons why, hidden behind its self-protective wall of secrecy, this ruthless and corrupt system has become a major national scandal.

Until April 2007, [i][b]Mr Sims, a professional dog breeder[/b][/i], and his wife, then a branch vice-chairman of the local Conservative Party, were a respectable middle-class couple living happily with their five-year-old daughter, who was the apple of their eye. Shortly after Mr Sims was interviewed by the RSPCA over his unwitting infringement of a new law banning the [b][i]tail-docking of puppies[/i][/b], their home was invaded by two RSPCA officials and 18 policemen, who had been given a wholly erroneous tip-off that there were guns on the premises.
When the dogs were released from their kennels and [b][i]rampaged through the house, ripping apart his daughter’s pet boxer[/i][/b], Mr Sims strongly protested – verbally but not physically. He and his wife were arrested and taken away, leaving their little girl, aged five, screaming amid the chaos. Social workers were called and the child was removed into foster care. While Mrs Sims was being held for several hours in a police cell, she had a miscarriage. She returned home that night to find her daughter gone.

When the couple next saw their child – months later, at a “contact” – she said she had been told they were dead and had gone to heaven. For three years they tried to get her back through those 74 court hearings. The social workers claimed the child had been maltreated, because her home was an unholy mess. But this was only because of the police raid and the dogs – a WPC who had visited the house a month earlier on other business reported that it had been “neat and tidy”.

[i][b]The child could not understand why she was not allowed to go back home with her parents[/b].[/i]of course not! She was 5! [i][b]The courts were unable to consider a report by an experienced independent social worker which the couple were told described them as responsible and loving parents.[/b][/i] The only evidence the court heard was that from the social workers and their own [i][b]“experts”.[/b][/i] (Why the speech marks? Are they implying that the social workers were in collusion with the police? Who has the greater credibility? The independent social worker does not work for free)

When the couple were eventually told that their child would be adopted, they appealed. In a judgment last year, which the media were permitted to report, [i][b]Mr Justice Boden ruled that because the parents had not shown sufficient co?operation with the authorities[/b][/i] (after four psychiatric assessments of the couple, the father refused to submit to a fifth), the adoption had to go ahead.

One of the first people to contact the parents when this was made public was that independent social worker, who expressed astonishment, saying he had assumed that, because the social workers’ case seemed so flimsy, the family would have long since been reunited. Last week, however, Mr and Mrs Sims had a two-sentence note to say their daughter has now been adopted.

Since I first wrote about this case in 2009, I have come to recognise many of its features in dozens of others I have followed: the mob-handed involvement of the police; the seizing of children for no good reason; the inability of social workers to admit they have made a mistake; the way lawyers supposedly acting for the parents seem to be on the other side; the refusal of judges to look objectively at all the evidence, and their willingness to accept nonsense [b][i]if told to them by social workers and their “experts”[/i] [/b] (I thought he was complaining that they didn't liste n to an "expert" social worker) .

Too often, these proceedings get away with standing every honourable principle of British justice on its head.

Such is the Frankenstein’s monster created by Parliament in the 1989 Children Act. Yet apart from the tireless John Hemming, and a handful of other MPs shocked into awareness by individual cases in their constituencies, the majority seem wholly unconcerned. So what do we pay them for?

But he scores well for the rant. Is he a regular poster here?

As I pointed out earlier, Mr Brooker has formed a one man crusade against social services / adoption agencies. Yes, mistakes have been made, but this man's attitude helps no-one. It's bad enough being a nurse in this day and age, social workers appear to be damned whichever decision they make.

From my own experience working in schools with the LA with regard to looked after children, all I can say is I don't recognise that situation as one I'm familiar with at all. LA's, social services, the courts, hell even the police go out of their way to make sure children have every chance to stay with their parents (even, in some cases beyond what 'the man of the Clapham Ominbus' would consider reasonable, I suspect)

I would hate to be a social worker. Such a thankless task.

Don't remove them - Baby P
Remove them - Kiddy Snatchers

it is very hard to remove a child, various agency's involved and ultimately it goes before a judge. Also very rare for it to be done first time with no warning.

My mother is involved in child protection and "kiddy snatching" as it has so elequently put. A job that is vastly under resourced both in money and people as to be honest who here would want to be vilified by everyone for trying to make things better?

Of course, there are many good and responsible foster parents, but statistics show that children in care do very much worse on almost every count, from health to performance in school, than children living with their birth parents.

This from the author, has he taken into consideration that many children that have been adopted will have been born from parents with drug/drink addictions therefore more likely to have learning difficulties, ADHD and various other health or mental health problems attributed from those early years with their actual parents.

That article just cannot be called journalism. I think more fabricated to fit the means. (plus it makes my pi55 boil reading such things)

So there bloody should be; we are talking about childrens lives after all, rather than selling hair products or playing football

+1

Bear in mind as well that private fostering agencies attempt place all the kids that are too troubled for whatever reason and can't be placed by the LA. They don't pick off all the trouble free 'perfect kids' with no issues.

Social worker seems to be a lose lose job. I am surprised we have anyone willing to step into the dark places and actually try and help children and families, to be the pilloried by the rags no matter what.

and it's really really poorly paid

We've heard the 'really really poorly paid' line on here before, you're wrong.

The pay is pretty reasonable. No, it doesn't compare well to Premiership footballers or investment bankers, but then whose pay does?

A reasonable comparison would be with police officers, teachers and nurses. The pay is on par with or better than those professions.

If people want to make 'serious' money they don't go into social work, it's no loss.

Back on topic, utterly bone article. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. I hope I never end up in a CS department.

3 years post qulaification social worker with 2 years experience prior to qualification: £26K for 50+ hours a week without a sufficient support network, too many cases and no overtime. It's amazing they manage to recruit anyone at all. Teachers certainly start getting paid more very quickly.

Social worker seems to be a lose lose job

They don't do it for the glory though do they.

My sister in law is a social worker and yes it's tough but she loves the job. Being able to make a real difference in peoples lives is a good thing. I don't think I could do what she does.

I do wonder what's wrong with some people- when they read something that's unbelievable, they think "That's unbelievable- must be true". Seems the sensible starting point is "That's unbelievable- perhaps I shouldn't just believe it" The clue is in the "un" really.

We've heard the 'really really poorly paid' line on here before, you're wrong.

I'd be really interested to know what you know that, indicates that everything else is wrong.

Daily Telegraph reader I suspect.

You know until quite recently Daniel Hannan used to, for many years, write editorials for the Telegraph.

Daniel Hannan btw, is the Tory MEP who thinks the NHS is a "failed experiment" and should be scrapped. He also sang the praises of Iceland's "economic miracle" and their banks........before it all went tits up - obviously. Clearly a man who knows what's what.

God, it's no wonder local authorities are so over spent, surely it would be easier and cheaper to actually snatch a child, rather than go through the whole process of convincing a range of agencies and a court that you should legally snatch them. Talk about making a job for yourself, where will this madness end??????

I heard some madman ranting with various conspiracy theories about the EU and Ireland on the radio the other day, was amused to discover he was the chief political editor of the Telegraph - they also got into trouble a while for reprinting sports articles from news agencies, but with made up names of correspondents as if they had actually written it themselves.

Complete joke of a newspaper.

Having worked on child protection cases, and working closely with the police on Child protection cases, I would say it feels like there is a lot more to this story. Apart form anything else, there is a lot of paperwork that goes into removing a child in a case like this, the police would not do this lightly as police, as a rule, will do anything to get out of unnecessary paper work.

bravohotel9er - Member

We've heard the 'really really poorly paid' line on here before, you're wrong.

The pay is pretty reasonable. No, it doesn't compare well to Premiership footballers or investment bankers, but then whose pay does?

A reasonable comparison would be with police officers, teachers and nurses. The pay is on par with or better than those professions.

The pay of teachers, nurses and police officers are not comparable, so how can social workers be on the same level?

he means between 20 000 and 40 000 I guess

Very poor or even libellous article by the looks of it.

From the pic - 'middle class chav scum' anyone?

[i]Having worked on child protection cases, and working closely with the police on Child protection cases, I would say it feels like there is a lot more to this story. Apart form anything else, there is a lot of paperwork that goes into removing a child in a case like this, the police would not do this lightly as police, as a rule, will do anything to get out of unnecessary paper work. [/i]

Like I asked, I wasn't looking for a 'view' as we can all read into it, but a thought from someone in the 'business'. I'd have thought that this case would have made it into your 'professional' magazines etc?

And I do support what goes on in Social Services (most of the time), with my ex-wife working in that area - its just this story just seems so wrong - and we all know how once you are in the/any 'system' its very difficult to get/stay out.

"100 neighbours". Where did they live? What sort of area is it?

I've no idea what my neighbours do- I just say hello and they say hello so can not vouch for them in anyway if Im honest.

Yes there are failings in the system but not at every single level in appeals etc etc.

The pay of teachers, nurses and police officers are not comparable, so how can social workers be on the same level?

Basic newly qualified pay is probably similar, but to say any of those professions are not poorly paid is a manipulation of the truth.

When the govt adverts state "earn up to........£k", they're either talking an average, or they cherry pick the top end of a payscale, and in any of those careers most staff will never see the top of the payscale.

Strangely enough, i would quite like to become a social worker - it would be one hell of a 'career' change from manufacturing.
However, a lack of suitable qualifications & i suspect the wrong emotional mentality is a pretty big barrier 🙁

I liked this bit [i]"it was so shocking that up to 100 of them were ready to stage a public protest, until being banned from doing so by social workers and the police."[/i]

Is there no end to the powers invested in Social Services these days?

"100 neighbours". Where did they live? What sort of area is it?

Hmmm... Dog breeder...100 neighbours, I wonder if they rounded down?
[img] [/img]

Is there no end to the powers invested in Social Services these days?

Yeah, I had noticed that one too......made me chuckle 😀

MrsSwadey spent 15 years as a child snatcher - believe me, that article is a joke. It is a VERY hard and complicated process to remove a child, and the final decision is never down to just the social worker. As others have stated, the parents are given every chance even when most right thinking people would suggest that they don't deserve it.

And while I am sure there may have been cases where children were taken into care who shouldn't have been, I bet the self same "journalist" would be jumping up and down the next time there is another Baby P case - and there will be. No system is perfect or foolproof, and as MrsSwadey says each time they occur "There but for the grace of God...."

Tend to agree about the costs of adoption companies though - MrsSwadey has been investigating jobs with them as it will fit around childcare quite easily, and it is quite a lucrative option - so why can't councils do more of it in house and save the costs 👿