‘Perhaps we just need to say it for what it is - parental alienation is an insidious form of child abuse.’

CAFCASS: Failing children it purports to protect? - Part VIII. Celebrating fourteen years of operating without proper guidelines in the main area of its work!

PARENTAL ALIENATION cannot be other than a common factor following separation where parents are in dispute over quantum of a child's time. It is considered by experts to be an insidious form of child abuse. 

So, you would naturally expect that staff handling high conflict family disputes over a child's time would be properly trained with clear time-based guidelines? 

It cannot be other than a matter of grave public concern that this is not so.

The systemic failings manifesting themselves in the Service upon which the Family Courts relied in the 90s - the Family Court Welfare Service - when making life changing decisions about children, are well documented and in the public domain.

Yet, despite the foregoing, such deficiencies remain unaddressed, and are to all intents replicated in CAFCASS today.

SYSTEMIC FAILURE

To fully understand what is wrong, we need to cast our minds back to CAFCASS predecessor, the FCWS.

In February 1998, according to 'THE LAWYER' Journal, the Chairman of the Solicitors Family Law Association (and head of family law at Addleshaw Booth & Co), is quoted as stating:

• "There had been disquiet for some time among SFLA members about having family court welfare work under Probation Service control".
• attacked the Probation Service's policy of regularly moving staff in and out of the Family Court Welfare Service.
• and added: "This type of specialist, sensitive work needs officers with proper training and experience."

Yes, you read that correctly..... Staff reporting on the delicate matters of children and separating families to the Family Courts were Criminal Probation Officers!!!

Beggars belief doesn't it?

Moreover, it must follow that, in the absence of any proper guidelines and training in family work - they were, to all intents, migrating into a role for which they were untrained and unsuited to be working with children and reporting on their futures.

In fact, it is difficult to comprehend how the roles of probation work and family work could be any further apart?

But the great British public remained blissfully unaware of this debacle as the FCWS operated entirely in secret - and parents caught up in the process were threatened with criminal proceedings should they reveal the failings of secret welfare reports determining their child's fate!

Thus, where matters of contact were contested at Court - without any proper guidelines or training in PA, a child's claim that they didn't want to see their 'non resident' parent again was accepted at face value. In such circumstances the most likely outcome was needless child-parent severance. According to parent charities and support groups, this was considered 'the norm'.

Recent casework that I have undertaken indicates that little, if anything, has changed.

Secrecy had preserved an enigma....  but is the tide slowly turning?

There was more than a glimmer of hope offered by a small but enlightened body within the Service.

The FCWS only professional body, the Association of FCWO's (with a 5% membership) crafted a set of rudimentary guidelines and was keen to establish proper training in court welfare work, endeavouring to raise the profile of the beleaguered Service; install quality control; and establish consistency in matters impacting children's lives. Unfortunately, the remaining 95% of FCWO's were aligned to NAPO - the Probation Service Union - that appeared to be opposed to such changes and regulation, preferring to operate without guidelines.

Consequently, staff migrating from Probation into family work had no awareness of parental alienation - and the child-centred guidelines they needed to do their job effectively had been rebuffed, seemingly on the basis that they would be held accountable for the quality and content of their reports and recommendations therein in Children Act proceedings. 

This very SECRET scandal began to leak out into the public domain from 1998 onward. Over a hundred MPs were up in arms - and the disgraced FCWS was hurriedly severed from the Probation Service, and disbanded in mid 2000 with no replacement in sight.

FAILURE TO PUT RIGHT A WRONG - A MISSED OPPORTUNITY?

A year later, when CAFCASS first opened its doors in April 2001, it quickly came to light that it consisted almost entirely of the same FCWS staff, sat behind the same desks, writing the same sort of potentially misleading reports determining children's futures. 

As the procedural deficiencies had not been rectified, Cafcass staff were effectively unaccountable, and complaints continued to be fobbed off.

To this day, CAFCASS remains uncertain about ‘parental alienation’ – in some cases, even refusing to recognise its existence, despite children rejecting a caring loving parent with whom they have previously shared a strong loving parent-child bond. Also, the practice of meeting BOTH parents, or both parents with the children, continues to be disregarded or ignored.    

So, what of CAFCASS quality control and complaints procedure?

In the absence of proper training and guidelines there is no proper quality control or complaints procedure. Staff remain unaccountable - and opposite conclusions can, and do, flow from the same facts.

Given the secret nature of their reports it is very easy to appreciate how mistakes can happen, and mostly go unchallenged, with potential dire ramifications for children’s futures.

Instead of working with the alienating parent so that children can continue to be parented and cherished in two homes, CAFCASS takes the child's expressed view at face value and limits or opposes contact, thereby condoning the actions of an obdurate parent.

The resulting manufacture of needless one-parent families via the Court process - due to reliance on such potentially misleading court welfare reports - appears to have not only undermined the worthy spirit of the Law, but also resulted in the institutional child abuse on a massive scale.

So, what's the remedy?

Children's futures are at stake.

In short, the remedy is via root and branch reform of CAFCASS, potentially at every administrative level. Immediate installation of child centred time-based guidelines, apportioning time in the median case, and specialist training in parental alienation.

Such child-centred changes were attempted to be installed by CAFCASS first Chairman, yet he met with fierce opposition to such, and eventually resigned.

To a greater or lesser extent it is considered that Parental Alienation cannot be other than a significant factor in every contested child contact case that reaches the Court's door. To make a start, perhaps we just begin by declaring it for what it is - that parental alienation is an insidious form of child abuse. What Government or organisation working with children can tolerate or support a continuance of such failings, or allow this to occur?

Ironically, with the right sort of early professional intervention and timely conflict resolution - PA is almost entirely avoidable, and even reversible. The end beneficiary would be the child at the centre of the dispute.

 

Alienated children ‘a social timebomb’, says lobbyist 

Points raised in the following article are as relevant today as they were when it was first published. Since it was crafted, over a decade has past, and the futures of over a million children have been determined – many of whom have been needlessly excluded or removed from their parents without good or proper reason.

A recent CENTRE FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE REPORT highlighted that Britain has the highest child-parent severance rate in Europe.

How long can our Society continue in this vein?

Government failure to properly address this important issue when CAFCASS was formed, and the absence of subsequent appropriate change to rectify these failings have doubtless contributed to, either wholly or in part, to many of the social problems that we see around us today, to the detriment of far too many children and our Society.   

UK children's futures are at stake. Perhaps it’s not too soon to adopt a different course?

  

Alienated children ‘a social timebomb’, says lobbyist (The WESTERN MAIL)

By JENNY REES

A TREND where children are turned against an absent parent is creating a social timebomb, according to a family law reformer.

In some cases, where relations sour between parents and visiting rights are restricted or prevented, society is developing a generation of children with a complete lack of respect for adults. Kenneth Lane, from Cardiff, is a qualified counsellor and campaigns to have family laws reformed because he says family courts do not deal fairly with cases.

• ``I don't think the court system works well at all. The problem is that it can't work, it doesn't have the framework.
• ``Norway has a system in place, but there's nothing in Britain. As a consequence, contact centres are used to incarcerate the parent and child and this is an absolute scandal.
• ``The UK system is failing children on a massive scale. We're sitting on a social timebomb and children are having a life without the advantage of having both parents around.
• ``Acrimony has taught them a lesson that they don't have to respect their mother or father, so they don't respect teachers and police officers either.
• ``We're polluting society with children with potentially serious problems and a lack of values.
• ``If parents are put at war with each other, that helps no one - and meanwhile the child is taught that relationships are not good and they may never see that parent again, or will have very structured visits.
• ``Something very simple yet radical needs to be done to reverse this.''

Mr Lane now represents many parents, mostly fathers, battling to get visiting rights. But he says a growing number of women are also affected. ``It looks like a father issue, but this is not gender specific, it's a procedural failing,'' he said. The process was far simpler when he represented himself and he has a good relationship with his ex-wife in the absence of lawyers.

• ``Some cases will go on for two or three years but they can invariably be solved in a few weeks,'' he said.

JENNY REES (The WESTERN MAIL: 16 DECEMBER 2002)

 

NOTES:  

NB Time-based guidelines* crafted by the professional Association of FCWO’s (yet rebuffed by the Service generally) can be utilised by both parents and practitioners as a basis to achieve timely child-centred resolution. Once parents know what is expected of them, or what a Court might enforce, there seems little if any point in attempting to protract matters, or to alienate the child against the parent who no longer lives with them.

An alienating parent whose thinking is perhaps temporarily impaired by divorce trauma needs to understand the ramifications for both their child, and damage they are inflicting on the relationship with their child, especially in the longer term.

Sadly, if left unchecked, it is the relationship between the child and the alienating parent also suffers, yet it is almost entirely avoidable.

Introducing the right sort of professional ‘early intervention’ would go a long way to nipping PA in the bud early on, if not eliminating it altogether. 

For our children to flourish and not have their childhoods needlessly burdened or ruined, Services working with children and our Society as a whole needs to become far more PA aware. For Parental Alienation to STOP we all need to START taking it seriously in order to nip it in the bud.

Services purporting to protect children need to stop tip-toeing around the obdurate parent and get up to speed - taking on board that PA is about child abuse.

The way forward is not via condoning the actions of an obdurate or hostile parent; but via establishing meaningful and regular parenting time for children with the parent who no longer lives with them.

In a child's life, both parents matter.

  

Previous Related Articles:

 Part VII - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/cafcass-social-services-took-my-children-telegraph-kenneth-lane?trk=mp-reader-card

Part VI - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/cafcass-complaints-blog-from-family-bar-kenneth-lane

Part V - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/family-court-service-cafcass-criticised-mps-bbc-news-kenneth-lane?trk=mp-author-card

Part IV - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/mp-should-check-guidelines-south-wales-echo-kenneth-lane?trk=mp-reader-card

Part III - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/secret-world-suffering-children-independent-kenneth-lane?trk=prof-post

Part II - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/government-shake-up-family-court-welfare-service-lawyer-kenneth-lane?trk=prof-post

Part I - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/cafcass-organisation-failing-children-kenneth-lane?trk=prof-post

 

Kenneth Lane, founder of Contact Matters, is pioneering an innovative service for separating parents caught up in an unhelpful legal system. Contact Matters is about rescuing children's futures. www.contactmatters.co.uk

Contact Matters utilises professional time-based guidelines that Cafcass, and its predecessor, failed to install - enabling parents to establish timely child-centred solutions at mediation or at the first Hearing. Contact Matters has a proven track record of success of achieving resolution, including in cases involving seemingly intransigent hostility. Contact Matters is about the child.

Follow him here by clicking the FOLLOW button; via https://www.linkedin.com/company/contact-matters ; via https://www.facebook.com/contactmatters ; or via https://twitter.com/@contactmatters