thank you for reading Lyn

Is it legal to force a child by court order to visit a convicted sex offender/pedophile? Is it even decent to do such a thing?

Is it legal to force a child to have a solicitor for 18 months and yet not allow that child to even meet the solicitor who is meant to be representing their best interests, even though that child repeatedly expresses a desire to meet with his solicitorin order for that solicitor to assist them with a legal problem? Is this good practice for the legal profession?

Is it legal to force a woman to sign documents against her will and best interests and the best interests of her child by trapping her in a room for two hours and threatening and bullying that if she does not sign her son will be taken away, 20 minutes of which the woman is screaming and repeatedly banging her head against the wall and making so much noise that the security men come into the room, with the man she has accused of raping her sitting directly on the other side of the door, and preventing her from soliciting support from the two Victim Support workers who accompanied her to the court house in order to give their support? Is it not inhuman to subject someone to this kind of treatment?

I pray to God that he will open the eyes of the people of this country to see how the legal system that they were once so proud of has become something so tainted that whenever they hear the theme tune of the children’s program “Skippy” they ought to be reminded of their daily work.

The role and potential long term care of babies in Foster Care needs to be seriously understood, valued and supported where atall possible. The question should be ‘Is it possible for this child/baby to stay in this Foster Care family?’ This question, as a matter of routine, is tragically ignored by those involved in the long term planning process.

Many thanks,

But then coming from someone who makes a living out of extending the abuse
of children caught up in these unfortunate parental wrangling, it is not surprising.

The contradiction in the statement that only 9% of cases are proved to be false,
is there for everyone to see. In say 10,000 cases, that’s 900 people who are wrongly
accused of something, which cumulates in the parent and the children missing
out on countless years of happiness together.

It is upto the expert witness to spot this. Not poo poo it as a fictional existance,
because as the people above and myself can expertly witness, it really does exist.

It is not difficult to spot, however with an article like this, and unfortunately people like
Charles Pragnell, then the hard work done it getting PAS recognised as a 9%
certainty, and therefore getting children residing with the responsible parent goes to waste.

Yes PAS will have its apeal to the 91% of true abusers, but for gods sake
don’t be pathetically stupid enough to ingore the 9% in the other direction.

Gardner may have had some weird idea’s but PAS was not one of them.

I hope this OPEN EYE petition can open the eye’s of our government and that they will listen to the people who are really looking out for the interests of our children…….US

They did not charge for the Love they gave so freely.

Perhaps, now we are seeing how Patriarchal society rewarded male oriented professions but not female ones.

Surely, if foster carers get £400 pounds per week, then why do natural parents not get the same if they are full time carers.

After all it is the very same child and best interests of all children would tell me that something is not right, because we have so many poor families in our so called caring society.

I am 55 years old & 2nd of 6 children and recently discovered that my younger brother & cousin were sexually abused by my Mums two younger stepbrothers,
when our brother told us we were so angry & hurt, when ask ask why he left it so long to tell.he said shame & fear of what our Dad would have done if he knew & don’y want our Mum to know..so he kept stum for 37 years.
the other so called uncle we believe is still alive and living in Yorkshire somewhere and is a man of the church apparently! he had no children thank God but was married.he would be about 67 to 70ish now..That is all I can say right now as it is still sore and I need time to think…so all the best Sandra & take care of you and yours regards Josie Cooper

Siobhan Maclean

Mary

Once I finished reading Jane’s book I stood at the end of my daughter’s bed and watched her sleep, knowing her only fear at night is if her teddy falls on the floor.

To be honest, I am not really sure how to end this message but I think that is the point of Jane’s account. It is just incomprehensible how someone could do this and be protected by so many.

(parent of a young disabled child who has been subjected to unreasonable restraint and consequently is now under the care of a paedeatric psychiatrist!)

Keshav Duwadi

Children at Risk adviser
United Mission to Nepal
Thapathathali
Kathmandu
Nepal

Dennie Briggs

I am now fifity three and have worked in the field of social care all my life, including two concept based TC’s I am currently a fostercarer, working with difficult to place older children. Foster care is a positve choice for some but not all children and young people. However when it breaks down, the alternative is often poor and sought when a crisis occurs and can end up being a “Bum in a bed” situation. I would be happy to contribute my views from both ends of the spectrum. My main concern is the foster care provision is at breaking point.

I know a number of extremely able and committed carers who are expressing deep dissatisfaction and are considering giving it up. There is no one single issue, but what is being mooted is lack of support, poor communication and information, unreasonable expectations of foster carers, lack of concern for other family members especially birth children and the increasing culture of PC.

One carer put it simply “They want these children to live in a family, then they place them outside by dictating different rules for them, then the reasonable rules and practises, operating within an average family.

Whilst things have improved radically for looked after chidren since my day, the type of child now coming into the system, is far more likely to have a range of complex needs and issues which have to be addressed. The system is failing these children badly. The Children Act whilst laudable in its intentions, seems to have turned into the Parent Act, where despite care orders being in place, the birth parents are able to negatively interfere in their children’s lives and come and go as they please. Leaving in its wake distressed and traumatised children who take out their anger on the carers they live with.

We are also failing to meet the needs of young people who develop serious addictive problems, often in their early to mid-teens. None of the TC’s are willing to take them until they’re eighteen, by which time it may be to late. Provision for this group is poor and is very much geared at low level “At risk” intervention, rather then a full treatment programme to address their specific needs.

I would be happy to discuus any of these issues further if you are interested?

Regards

Jo Sugrue

[editted]

thank you soooo mutch if we do recieve a letter from you and we would reply if you left us a address to sent it back to.

PAS is real.
I never thought in my wildest dreams that my children would not stand by me. Their dad never wanted children. He was emotionally and physically absent for most of my children’s lives. He treated e with utter disregard, and he was abusive to all of us occasionally.

I did everything I could to save our marriage, and to faciliatate the bonding of our children with their father, because that is their best chance at a healthy adulthood. He did not and does not return that favor. Now I am wiser, and I have managed to regain two of my children, but my first born son still rejects me. It is due to his father’s influence, and his father denies that this is wounding to our son.

I think that the information on this site is heavily biased and does not allow for any differing experiences.

You are doing people a GREAT MISJUSTICE by writing an article about something with obvious biasness AGAINST it before you even thoroughly research and understand what it’s all about. When there is ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE supporting abuse and therapist and GAL alike are saying it never happened, then PAS is definitely a possibility. Don’t be so narrow minded that you throw the baby out with the bath water.

Question:- Why do so many past residents and other people keep in touch, I think the answer lies in Keiths book.
Best Regards.
Alan.

I thought the ending was sad and unexpected. And Boyne is right. Nobody should ever come to such a fence.

Here is my review of this book!

This article raises some interesting points and I thought it would be helpful to respond briefly to some of them and to clarify some points about the inspection approach which are not entirely accurately reflected in the article.

First, to be pedantic, the grading system we are using does use a six point scale but “three to four being adequate” is not a correct description. The details are on our website but , in brief, the six points of the scale are Excellent, Very Good, Good, Adequate, Weak and Unsatisfactory. It is important to note that the bottom two points in the scale reflect a judgment that the level of quality is below a tolerable level.

The article comments that “providers have been given to understand that the Excellent marking will rarely if ever be awarded.” My concern is that this will be seen as implying that we have somehow instructed our officers not to award this grade. This is certainly not the case.

If a service merits this grade on any of the aspects we inspect then this grade will be awarded.

However no system which lightly awards top grades is likely to have much standing. I am sure all scientists would like to be awarded the Nobel prize but only a few get this because if it was too lightly awarded it would no longer be a real mark of the best achievement.

In grading care services there is a balance to be struck between the needs of providers to feel acknowledged for the good work they do and the need to inform users and others about the real quality of services. All providers want to be seen as excellent but to award such a grade too lightly risks destroying the very meaning of the grade. Excellent providers should be seen as leading lights and so by definition this grade is likely to be awarded infrequently. This seems to me to be hardly an earth shattering conclusion.

The Care Commission system works in such a way that it is possible, but difficult, to earn an Excellent grade on individual aspects of performance within each of the main areas or Quality Themes. Grades for each of four Quality Themes are calculated from the more detailed gradings. At the Quality Theme level an Excellent grade becomes still harder to achieve but not impossible and I refute the assertion that good providers will not strive for this. There are some providers who are very unrealistic about the quality of the services that they are providing and some will feel they merit an Excellent when they are clearly far short of this.

The article refers to concern that “a temporary failing in just one of the four or five areas could drag down the marking for an otherwise excellent establishment and that the reduced marking would feature on the care Commissions website for long after the failing had been addressed”.

There are a number of aspects of this that I wish to address. First it is true that any finding of Weak or Unsatisfactory performance within one of the Quality theme areas does indeeed result in the whole Quality Theme being graded at that level. But if you refer back to my explanation of what Weak or Unsatisfactoory means you will see that this is as it should be.

These are findings that the performance is less than tolerable. We cannot hide such fndings from the public or users and carers as we produce the overall set of grades. One thing our system does do however is allow providers to be quickly regraded if they address the problems which have been found. This provides a great incentive for improvement.

I also dont agree that this could drag down an”otherwise excellent establishment” - in our view Excellent services dont have inspections which find below tolerable performance - thats why we are prepared to grade them Excellent !

The issue of objectivity and subjectivity is a complex one. Judgments which are about QUALITY as opposed to QUANTITY almost always involve some level of subjective judgment. Its not whether there is subjective judgment involved that is the real issue though. Its whether that judgment is guided and “constrained” in ways which ensure that it is applied as consistently as possible across different raters. We can all measure things like bed occupancy in Care homes, staffing ratios and so on and pat ourselves on the back that we are doing this very objectively. the problem is that looking at these things alone often misses the point because they often dont really measure QUALITY.

The Care Commisison has taken extensive measures including significant training inputs for its staff to ensure that the grading system is applied as consistently as possible and we will continue too monitor this closely as the new approach is implemented.

Finally in regard to appeals. The gradings represent a systematic way for the Commission to express its judgment about the Quality of services. As a regulator we have a statutory duty to advise on the quality of services and this is one of the ways we are fulfilling this duty. It is our judgment and therefore not something that is in that sense appealable.

Having said that our approach also is built on providers self assessing themselves and self grading and we encourage real dialogue between the provider and the Inspecting Officer at the conclusion of the inspection about the findings. We will listen to what providers have to say but at the end of the day the Commission has the responsibility to assess the quality of the service and it will do so and express this in the form of the grades that it awards.

The Scottish Government

Thanks for reading my comment ( enjoy the book )!!!!!!! =D

Love Abbie xxx

These Service Standards are referenced in the National Contract and identified as needing to be met by those services calling themselves “therapeutic”. The standards are evaluated through an annual cycle of self- and peer-review. Visit the website for futher informtion.

At Level 3 I can earn a whopping