INTERNATIONAL CHILD AND YOUTH CARE NETWORK

21 APRIL 2005

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united kingdom

Councillor risks jail to aid adoption-fight parents

A local councillor says he is prepared to go to jail to help a couple whose children are about to be adopted against their will.
Barry Aspinell, an Essex borough and county councillor for 24 years, believes that the couple, who cannot be named, are “vulnerable people who society should be defending, but instead they have become victims of the system”.
Last October, after the parents were accused of neglect, their daughter aged three and their four-month-old son were taken from them. The couple have not seen the children since November.
A final court hearing is expected to rubber-stamp the children's adoption tomorrow, but the couple maintain that the evidence against them is inaccurate and misleading.
Mr Aspinell, a Liberal Democrat councillor, who has heard all the evidence - despite being forbidden to do so by the Children Act - is convinced that the couple have been wrongly accused.
“It is a most alarming case in which social services seem to have made up their minds and then built a case to justify their actions,” he said.
Concerns about the couple centre on the mother's mild learning disability. When her first child was born she was monitored by social and health workers.
However, no problem was found until one day neighbours contacted the police because they heard screaming. Although officers found nothing to be concerned about, social services were called and the child was put on the at risk register.
Her brother was put on the at risk register before he was born and proceedings began to take them both into care.
Mr Aspinell has been shocked by the conduct of social services. He said: “Pieces of evidence introduced in court appeared from nowhere. The children's father was described as disabled. He is not. The police investigation was brought up in court even though they concluded that there was no evidence of wrong-doing.”
He said that the court would inevitably have formed a picture of a violent man and a woman who could not cope, something he described as “absolute rubbish”.

Last year The Telegraph reported on a similar case of parents whose son was taken from them and adopted after they took him to hospital concerned about a bump on his head. At the time, several others sets of parents in similar circumstances were protesting their innocence.
Mr Aspinell believes that in such cases mistakes by social services remain hidden behind the secrecy imposed on family court proceedings under the Children Act, a ban that means, in theory, that he could be prosecuted for talking about the case.
“My other concern is what is happening to children in care. Last month, this couple were told that their son needed a brain scan. It now turns out that he has needed two scans for hydrocephalus that has only been identified since he has been in care. Although they have not seen him since November, the parents have been held responsible.”
The couple have asked police to investigate. It is being examined with several similar cases.
Parents have asked for documents that might bear on their defence but they have not been handed over within the time limit set by the Data Protection Act.

Cassandra Jardine
21 April 2005

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/04/21/nadop21.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/04/21/ixhome.html

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