A. Introduction:

A1. I hereby add my submission on behalf of all birth parents, children subjected to Care Proceedings and the Fostering system. It includes those adoptees whom have been subjected to Forced Adoptions post 1976 as part of my role as founder of TaKen UK and that of a birth parent personally impacted by the current Adoption and Children’s Act of 1989 and 2002.

A2. Within this submission I wish to add my own experiences of the system and the experiences of those who have contact TaKenUK for assistance.

A3. As the Committee will already be aware, Forced Adoptions within the borders of the United Kingdom has received international condemnation with multiple media outlets from both within the UK and International, covering the injustices that are taking place with the secrecy of the Family courts. The UK Government and the Family Justice legal fraternity have elected to ignore these concerns to the detriment to the families and children concerned.

A4. We have a serious problem in the UK. We all accept child protection procedures and protocols are important to protect children. What we must not accept is the manner in which these investigations are currently being carried out. In 2010, I watched Sir David Omand's address of Securing the State - a question of Balance wherein he notes "we gave the Local Authority some power for the use in child protection, but we did not take into account the imagination of how they would use that power - but this can be corrected as we are learning by those mistakes".

B. A Families Story

B1. I would like to tell you a tale one that begins with a child of 9 months old being

taken to the hospital because there is an unusual swelling on his head. As a concerned parent of two children, the mother asks the medical staff to check her baby's head for fear it may be a brain tumour. The medical staff, although acknowledging that the baby is healthy, ambulant, feeds well and shows no sign of anything untoward, immediately accuse the parent of child abuse by fracturing the child's head with violent force, this diagnosis being made without first examining or obtaining any x-ray or ct-scan. The parent, along with her husband and older child, is then placed under immediate hospital arrest whilst medical tests are carried out on their children.

B2. Two days later, mother is told that there are no concerns and no fractures are found.

She is informed that the clinician who did the x-rays following admission was not qualified to carry out the examination. The family is sent home to continue their lives.

B3. Within a few days, the family is informed by a social worker that child abuse investigation was underway and that an application has been made to remove the children from the parents care. The family have never been known to social care and both children had been cared for during the day by childminders whilst the parents worked.

B4. Crown prosecution services, following their own investigation, found no case to answer.

B5. At the first court hearing, the parents find out that the basis to remove the children is based on two factors:

B6. The First: an anaesthetist's letter some 3 years earlier raising concern of MbProxy in the mother because the mothers medical history is extensive following numerous surgeries to repair bone damage from an early age. The anaesthetist had not taken the

effort to make enquiries from the couple's home country, nor from her UK clinicians treating the mother prior to circulating her report. The report further states that I am never to be informed of this diagnosis or document.

B7. The Second: At the mothers insistence for the hospital to obtain a second opinion as to why there was a swelling on her child's head as the hospital was not able to offer an explanation, a well known consultant paediatric radiologist court expert offered his opinion, without ever having examined the child, that the baby had indeed suffered an extensive fractured skull rendering the child at extreme danger.

B8. Both children were removed and placed into immediate foster care

B9. Two years into the legal battle and after a fact finding hearing where a Lancashire finding was reached where one of the parents was to blame but the other could not be held accountable.

B1. Both children were subsequently adopted by their senior, widowed Irish foster carer despite numerous attempts by the parents to challenge the findings and requesting reviews of their case.

B2. The mother, believing that a miscarriage of justice had taken place, following an application to the hospital for her sons medical records using the data protection act, discovered that her son had never suffered a skull fracture and that the professor of radiology had diagnosed a fissure, which is a nature suture line of the skull. The parents had never been informed of this differential diagnosis, so mother began to make further enquiries. With the help of Mr Hemming, an investigation was carried out and it was found that the hospital had only made social services aware of the diagnosis and had purposely withheld this information from the parents. The Council admit they never disclosed this information to the parents at any time during proceedings. The council included this document buried deep within the five files of the court bundle but no reference was ever made to them. As many legal professionals here will understand, these court bundles are only made available to their clients once proceedings have concluded. The parent’s legal teams have refused to answer the questions as to why the parents were never informed of this information and why this evidence was never properly examined.

B3. Imagine for a moment, these are your children what would you do?

B4. I am the mother of these children and I continue to fight for my sons. Since I undertook to get to the truth of what has happened, many practice and legal irregularities have come to light. Incidentally, I have also subsequently received a written letter from the anaesthetist acknowledging that she was unqualified to make such a report of the MbP or fabricated illness and that she had not explored my medical history. As for the report by the consultant paediatric radiologist, well, he went on to alter his report four more times, finally reaching a conclusion that he was uncertain as to the diagnosis. Of interest, the Guardian ad litem in her own evidence at the final hearing admitted to only spending a total of four hours with us in the 25 month period it took to reach the final hearing and that her evidence was based solely on the records of social services and that all her reports were copy and paste of social workers reports. I cannot begin to tell you what we have been subjected to as you just simply will not believe me.

Professionals in the legal field that have studied our case, agree our case was grossly mismanaged from the onset and that we would have a case to pursue if we so chose, but we would have to do so privately.

B5. As parents, we were not financially well off to privately fund a legal challenge calling for a full enquiry, and legal aid in the UK has been going through some extensive harvesting. Since the start of the case back in 2008, we approached our South African embassy, only to be told, "UK soil, UK rules" and "our embassy is an invited guest in this country and we do not wish to lose that invitation". Why was our extended family in SA

not considered for adoption despite their numerous requests to do so? Simply because to carry out the international assessments would be too costly and secondly, the SA legislation only permits SA social workers to carry out the assessments on South Africans citizens and rightly so.

B6. We were left with no recourse to a resolution and no way of correcting what the system had got so terribly wrong. As foreigners to the system, we were disadvantaged from the onset. We have no contact with our children. Our children have lost us and their entire family. How can this be what is in my children's best interests?

B7. Throughout this entire experience, my sons were never offered any help or guidance let alone counselling to help process being ripped away from their loving parents. Neither my husband nor I were ever offered help, support or guidance to navigate through the whole process. We had multiple nervous breakdowns and lost my business. We were diagnosed with PTSD which is still triggered to today and we have lost hope or trust in the system. We were subject to appalling treatment by social care staff from being strip searched because they feared we were wearing recording devices to being threatened with our lives if we challenged the adoption of our children at our first meeting with the social worker at the start of proceedings. We have had to endure racial slurs and racial profiling by social care staff and the appointed guardian ad litem. We have been threatened with contact being withheld if my husband or I ever spoke in our home language to each other. Threats of withholding contact were used by social care to carry our numerous intimidation and illicit acts. We were even advised by court clerks that they had seen questionable acts and corruption taking place in our case whilst we were in the court and advised to grab our kids and run.

B8. Given my own experiences of going through the process, I was shocked and appalled by what I was seeing in a legal process that was purported to act in the child’s best interest and to act in true justice. As a result I began to do my own investigations and was horrified by what I uncovered. The result of my findings led me to start a non-profit organisation called TaKen UK to help other families through the process and to offer support.

B9. Medical staff too scared to speak up for fear of personal reprisals from Social Care and some Medical staff thinking they have more they governance over God. Legal professionals not acting in their clients best interests for fear of professional suicide despite acknowledging having evidence of corruption. Governing bodies confirming they do not having the powers to act and that there is no accountability for social care departments or their staff.

B10. My experience has meant I've gained a unique prospective of the family justice system and as a result, I now also help other families facing what we faced by acting as their McKenzie Friend/lay advisor.

B20. Our case began in 2008 at the same time as the news of Peter Connelly broke and took some four years to finalise. Whether the failings in our case were as a direct result of a knee jerk reaction to the news of Baby P, is still an uncertainty. What happened to us is happening to many more families across the UK. I have sat in many a hearing having heard some atrocities that have been carried out on families in the pursuit of meeting protocols and targets that just do not work. A social worker has admitted to me to submitting a falsified report to court. She subsequently disappeared when this evidence came to light and yet her report still stands as a valid document within the case. On

another case I spent two years working on, where the father was found in a fact finding hearing, to have physically assaulted his new born son deliberately breaking his arm.

Father faced criminal prosecution and imprisonment. Again this family case was closed but we managed to prove that the whole family had a genetic condition which predisposes this family to broken bones.

C. TaKen UK

C1. In 2008, I set up TaKen UK to help parents and anyone impacted by the system navigate their way through it with support and knowledge. I cannot in good conscience allow another parent to go through or be subjected to what we experienced and not have somewhere to turn for help and know they will get that help.

C2. Since setting up TaKen UK, we have had thousands of emails and calls for help from birth parents, adoptees, grandparents, foster carers, adoptive parents and even social care staff.

C3. One thing that became very clear is that when Adoption , Fostering and Forced Adoption is at play, nothing is off the table for those involved in the act of removing a child. It is striking just how many unrelated cases have all the same hallmarks of lack of support, unethical behaviour by social care and their staff, rubber stamping by judiciary purely on the evidence of the social care team.

C4. Whilst it is generally accepted that there are indeed cases where placement outside of the family home is acting in the best interests of the child, but in far too many cases all the family needs is support and transparency.

C5. It's now 2022 and mistakes have increased and lessons have not been learned. Instead, the process is spreading and is being introduced within child protection practices in other countries. Since I first became aware of these practices as a result of our own case, unrest in the numbers of families affected is building to the point where we are reaching catastrophic proportions resulting in potentially disastrous consequences.

D. Voice of the Adoptee for Revocation

D1. Over the years we have received a high level of communications from adoptees wishing to revoke their own adoptions. Reasons to revoke range from abusive adoptive parents, reunification with birth parents, seeking to regain their own identity back the

reasons are numerous.

D2. There is a growing voice within the arena of Adoptees wishing to self revoke their own adoptions, voices from both the adult and minor adoptee fields. Whilst some adoptions are successful, many are not. Abuse and neglect in the adoption home is further traumatising to the child, who is further let down by the system when they are unable to or ignored when raising complaints. The Government publishes adoption statistics but fails to publish/disclose the number of adoption breakdowns within a given year, despite numerous public calls for it to do so. There is a clear bias on the part of the Government in its transparency pertaining to Adoptions and feeds the interest in pushing the Adoption agenda in place of supporting families to stay together safely, thus driving an Adoption Industry. Adoption for Profit is becoming more widely public

and by its very nature, is starting to leave a foul taste in those adopters who are truly in support of the child’s best interests.

D3. Given the current legislation and the difficulties associated with revoking an adoption order, many are now opting to change name via deed pole, however there still remains a formal legal link to the adoptive parent/s. The Adoptee has no outlet and their voice summarily dismissed validating their feelings of abandonment.

D4. We recently published a petition on the Governments portal (https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/574599) to help Adoptees gain the right to revoke their own adoptions. For the brief 6 months the petition was live with the limited number of places the petition was published, we had 425 adoptees sign the petition. Imagine how many signature would be gained if the petition was published nationwide. (Exhibit: Listed as Exhibit: D4a below)

E. Lack of Support for Birth Parents

E1. There is an overwhelming lack of support offered to Birth Parents who face life without their children who have been removed under Forced Adoption.

E2. Right to Family Life is an overriding right to every individual and is ingrained into us from the day we are born. Every essence of our existence, from what we are taught at school to advertising is directed to Family Life. This right is controlled by who controls the narrative and within the UK that is the UK Government. When the right is removed, it is done without any support system in place. Support is in place for the most criminal elements in prison, yet support is completely withheld from individuals who need it most.

E3. Parents find themselves being victimised by social care staff and in many cases by the very solicitors representing them. Parents are being told to ‘shut up and comply’ by these ‘professionals’ or face reprisals by social care teams. These reprisals can range from contacts being stopped, further restricts placed upon them and harsh unsolicited unethical behaviours and indeed, unlawful and human rights breaches forced upon them. Parents find there are no avenues to challenge these actions/behaviours and when they lodge formal complaints, the courts view these as ‘unable to work with professionals’ despite there being validity to their complaints.

E4. The Local Government ombudsman is inundated with requests for investigations into social care departments with the LGO making public their findings. These findings are however being dismissed and ignored by social care and more importantly, the very Family Law Divisions that should be abreast of what is truly transpiring over cases where they are making determinations for the very futures of children. The courts are by this very action ignoring what is in the child’s best interests and further losing public confidence and trust.

E5. Parents are not offered their own social worker for support nor are they offered counselling by professionals who actually understand what that parent is going through. There is a high level of suicide rates amongst parents who have lost their child to forced adoptions. There is a high level of adoptees wishing to end their lives because of lack of support for them following removal from their birth homes.

E6. Since the push to increase care proceedings to 26 weeks, so has the increase to reduce support for families. This push has also meant a high level of case mismanagement occurring along with proper protocols not being followed or completed thus failing the families which directly fails the child.

E7. Since the Children and Families Act 2014 came into place, no real prospects of positive change have occurred for the very families at the heart of the cases being brought to court. These amendments have only brought with it an extension to the Children and Families Act of 1989 to allow further social care and judicial impunity. A Children and Families Act MUST be wholly encompassing of the views, treatments and rights of the families and children that fall within its framework. They individuals must no longer be left as side notes on the legal files left in filing cabinets.

E8. The government has invested millions of pounds into the Adoption Support Fund, yet zero of that funding is used to help and support Birth Families or Adoptees. It is all earmarked for Adoptive Parents, who ironically complain they too also receive little help.

E9. It is remiss of the entire system to ignore the media and public interest into the secret courts of Family Law. Whilst the justice system mistakenly presumes to protect the child, with the increase of social media and technology developments, the once so secret courts can not contain or prevent disclosures. Adoptees and Birth Parents alike can and will trace each other via technology and it’s becoming increasingly easier with the DNA matches and genealogy websites. By enforcing Closed Adoptions, the harm placed on Adoptees increases tenfold. Adoptees report intimidation by their adoptive parents with threads of disownment and exclusion from wills if they address the topic of Birth Parent searches. By having Open Adoptions, a link is permanently created between all parties leaving the child to choose how they wish to proceed instead of having biased parties dictate the route for self identification and self ownership. When individuals are forcibly isolated from one another, ways will always be found to reunite, but closed adoptions delays that process causing further trauma.

E10. In 2021, we set up a survey (https://app.easyquest.com/q/L4XW7) Birth Parent Pilot Survey on Adoption Support to see just what support is being offered and benefited from. Again, this Survey was sent to a limited number of arenas. We were shocked at the results. Of the 70 respondents, most were not offered any support.

Moreover, none of the children remaining with their Birth Parents were offered any support to cope with the loss of a sibling to Adoption.

E11. This Survey is still currently live with the hope to publish to a wider audience nationally to get a bigger vantage point of just how big the problem is.

E12. Please find attached below as submitted evidence the current results of this survey (Exhibit: E12a-r)

F. Comprehension of the Process

F1. The entire process of proceedings needs to be better understood by those facing proceedings as many are often too traumatised to comprehend what is happening or the process is not properly and appropriately explained to them by their respective solicitors.

F2. Many law firms I have spoken with agree that due to funding constraints, there is simply not enough time to spend with a parent to ensure they fully comprehend the processes.

F3. There is of course another side to this and that is some solicitors can become complacent and presume to expect that their client understands what is happening because unlike the client, this is part of the solicitors everyday life and there is a tendency to forget which clients they have done the check lists with and which clients they have not.

F4. This subsequently leaves many clients with the "why did my solicitor not tell me that" question. Perhaps a mandatory pamphlet explaining in laymen terms the processes and where to get more answers from, can populated to every respondent as part of being served, once an application has been sealed to proceed matters through the courts.

F5. It must be reminded that again, due to lack of LAA funding, many parents face proceedings as litigants in person and will not have a solicitor to turn to with their questions.

F6. Furthermore, some local authorities are having their social workers try and explain the process to the parent, but to expect many parents to take on board legal advice from the very party bringing them before the courts is perhaps a step too far. This must and should be something addressed between client and solicitor, not the social care team.

G. Disclosure of Court Bundles and Notes

G1. A problem experienced by many respondents is that the case bundles are not being systematically shared with the client, either in part or as a whole during and post proceedings. Vital documentation and information, such as important medical diagnosis within NAI cases, are being withheld and often only come to light once the case has concluded and where respondents have the understand that they are entitled to full copies of their bundles. Despite there being practice directions to supply these bundles to the clients, many respondents are finding that the law firms are either refusing to supply the bundles or are asking exorbitant fees to do so. Again, when bundles are supplied, there is clear indication that some of the paperwork is missing. A further matter that appears to be becoming the norm is that solicitors are not handing over copies of the contents of the communications file and more importantly, notes with counsel. Whilst counsel is appointed by the law firm, there is still the matter of transparency for the client to know they are being appropriately represented and have the confidence in that representation.

G2. Once again, funding plays a substantial role in the above and many law firms have stated they simply do not have the time or the funding available to meet these simple yet all important rights of the client. Many respondents don't choose to face proceedings and whether the respondent is innocent or guilty of the accusation, they deserve the right to have full access and full disclosure. I, as a matter of course, ask all my clients to make subject access requests and it is through this process that we are finding the problems of where clients appear to have been kept purposely in the dark. Having said that, many respondents find that despite their rights under the Data Protection Act, they are systematically being refused part or all of their data under the use of "legal privilege" by the relevant local authority or solicitor. Whilst this may or may not directly affect their care proceedings case, for those respondents whom it does affect, again, by the time they receive disclosure and there is relevant withheld information that may have affected the outcome of the findings, it is either too late to challenge this or they do not have the financial status to bring this back before the courts, and few law firms are prepared to consider applying to reopen Fact Finding

hearings for example, on a pro bono basis despite agreeing there is or may be merit to such an application.

G3. It is all very well having the media scrutinise documentation, but it can also prove costly and embarrassing for the judiciary when the media start to publish the shortcomings as listed above. Not only will the respondent have been publicly humiliated and ostracize by being named and shamed in the press by being found guilty of the crime, it will come as a substantial blow to the justice system when it turns out that the respondent was innocently accused.

G4. There is currently no recourse within the system for any such respondent who, once matters have concluded and have been irrevocably separated from their child/ren by adoption without consent, then finds themselves unable to challenge the process and the adoption based on new evidence without the financial means to do so. Once the child has been adopted it is too late, even though there is a clear miscarriage of justice that has taken place.

G5. By forcing transparency of the process and documentation from the start of proceedings to the respondent, perhaps it can help prevent these traumatic miscarriages happening in the first place. The hope is that this may also help alleviate the high listings of appeals and perhaps may start putting back some honour and confidence back into the legal system.

G6. We need to first start with the basics again before we can fix the end result.

H In Conclusion

H1. Social Care has been given far too much power and has become creative with that power at the detriment to innocent families.

H2. Adoption should always be the very last resort when it comes to protecting the most innocent of the population. Adoption should not be used as a bargaining tool or to fill an adoption quota. Secrecy within Family Law is only aiding the actions of social care staff that are being protected by the Tort law laid down many years ago.

H3. For families to have a fair playing field to fight for their own children the current legislation must change and I submit the following as a start:

H3a) We need an acknowledgement of Forced Adoption for past and present from the UK Government as has already happened in Australia

H3b) Support to be a mandatory requirement made available to Birth Parents and children free of charge and not subject to care proceedings

H3c) Adoptees allowed the legal rights to revoke their own adoptions with the support of Legal Aid

H3d) Mental health support made available free of charge to Birth Families, Adoptees and Looked After Children and not subject to care proceedings scrutiny

H3e) Family Court Judges to be retrained with the knowledge of impact and consequences a Forced Adoption order has on those affected by their judgements and for systems to be put in place to help the Birth Family once an Adoption Order has been made.

H3f) Legislation to be amended to allow for prosecution of professionals and social care staff who have failed to act under the guidance’s within their professions, where it is proven they lead to the harm or death of a minor and/or where they have failed in transparency, have falsified information/documentation or having perjured themselves.

H3g) Legislation to be amended to open closed adoption orders and to have a proactive system in place to assist with reunification.

H3h) Professionals in the legal, medical and social care arenas to be trained on mental health impacts of adoption.

H3i) Transparency and accountability for professionals and those working within the family law framework must be legislated within all aspects of Family Law.

H3j) Various investigations into the Children and Families Act, such as the BASW Adoption Enquiry Report produced by Prof. Brid Featherstone and Prof Anna Gupta, to name but one, should be considered as part of this enquiry (Exhibit: H3ja Attachment) or https://www.basw.co.uk/media/news/2018/jan/basw-unveils- adoption-enquiry-report-and-key-findings. Whilst this report is dated 2016, the findings are still very relevant to today. Failure to consider the detailed investigations and findings would add weight to the already overwhelming views that those involved in the design of any further legal, protocol or process frameworks within or as part of the Children and Families Act, as being tone deaf and that the Select Committees are disingenuously only going through the motions. I truly hope the Select Committee proves my viewpoint wrong.

Submitted By Jacque Courtnage 25 April 2022

Founder of TaKen UK