My Wife is Registered Blind

My wife is registered blind, and I am her registered carer. Up until two years ago we had three beautiful daughters. We asked our Health Visitor to put us into contact with a Behavioural Therapist to help solve a problem we were having with our middle child, and because I mentioned to this woman that we were weary of asking for help from Social Services due to the ‘fear of their reputation’, we lost out family! We asked to see a Behaviour Therapist; instead we got a Social Worker pretending to be a Behaviour Therapist (The lies have started)!
Social Services are now putting our children up for adoption against are wishes. They claim we neglected our children, but this was never the case. Our Health Visitor and local GP Practice is 100% behind us in saying that there was never any neglect of the children in our house, and that if Social Services are saying that, they are doing so in order to justify themselves. It was our GP suggestion that we write to the papers!
We have spoken to our local MP, and he has been on to the Ombudsman and the Director of Social Services. The Ombudsman replied that it was in the hands of the court, and therefore there was nothing he could do, The MP said he was lied too by the Director of Social Services. In the hands of the courts is something you hear regularly stated when up against the local authority!
They have had both the wife and myself arrested for Cruelty, Neglect, Abandonment, ill treatment and physical abuse, the police dropped the charges after about three months. This was three months though that Social Service felt justified in not working with us to return the children. Again, later into the case, I was arrested again, along with some friends, this time on paedophile related charges. They had already taken my computer away, and checked it over (and damaged it), and found nothing inappropriate. Again, all charges were dropped about two months later! Why is it that after serious investigation the police can find no evidence to support these charges, the Social Services can carry on regardless? I understand the need to investigate these things, but Social Services are using the Police; and dragging the reputation of the police down to their level!
Foster carer’s work closely with the Social Worker in the case to set up little scenarios for contact situations, or for when the children are about to be interviewed by someone like the Guardian ad Litum or the Police! So the Guardian and other professionals can then say, “Oh, but the children told me so.” We know this to be true, because the children have told us so, and we have seen it for ourselves, and yet Social Services adamantly deny this! As any family that has been or is going through the same as us, and they will say the same as we are, these things do go on, no-matter how much The Local Authority denies it!
Social Services and The Guardian ad Litem claim they listen to the children, but in reality they only hear what they want to hear, and not what the children are trying to get over. If the child is trying to express her wishes to come home it’s ignored, and then palmed off with excuses like, they don’t really understand, there not old enough to know what is going on! They excel themselves on putting the children and parents into these situations, with little understanding or care for the fact of the stress and pressure the children and parents are going to be under, and the fact that this alone is going to make it hard for either the children or the parents to express themselves in a way that can’t be misinterpreted!
We were told that the Guardian ad Litem was an independent, as were other professionals involved in the case. However, anyone that has been on the receiving end of Social Services will tell you, they are not independent! Within a normal family you would have two fully functioning parents, in our family one of the parents was disabled and the other had to be registered as a Carer, and therefore not only had to look after his wife, but the children as well. This would have been the ideal set-up for Social Services to become involved with the family and work with the family as they are supposed to do. This would have given the Social Services the opportunity to prove that they are a caring organisation and that the stories about them are unjustified, but rather than take that opportunity, they chose to live up to it!
The Guardian that was called on to do a report on us has been dismissed from being a Guardian for some reason. Her dismissal came about from her working on another case. Also the main CID Woman involved at the beginning of our case has apparently been seriously reprimanded! Given these two incidences, there must be grounds somewhere to get the case re-heard, or in other words, give the parents the chance of a re-trial!
We were told we would have our day in court, in-fact nine and a half days; we spent the whole time defending ourselves against the false allegations that they were throwing at us. Social Services were claiming that they had worked with us, by this they meant they had offered home help, we queried what it was, and this was taken as a refusal on our part!
It was said in court by The Local Authorities Barrister that it was never the intention of Social Services to not return these children to their rightful place with their family! I replied to this by saying where in all the paperwork that has been generated by Social Services does it say that or show any evidence to the fact that the local authority has tried to work with us, because it doesn’t. Any person outside of this case that was to read for themselves the paperwork would clearly see that Social Services have not worked with us as a family, and have gone out of their way to look after their own interests, and not that of the family involved! It has been the intention of the Social Services to adopt these children from the moment they were stolen from us!
There are no positive comments in any of their paperwork about the father of the family, and yet we are talking about a man that has given up his weekly job and swapped it for a job that is 24/7. A man that doesn’t drink or partake in the use of recreational drugs or have any history of violence, or have anything to do with anyone that does! A man that has found himself in the position of having very little time for himself, what with having to switch between being a Carer and being a Father. A man that when he does get five minutes to himself chooses to play a computer game for relaxation, is then accused of living in a ‘Fantasy World!’
This very same man has an exceptional reputation within the community, what with doing ‘Voluntary Driving’ for charities such as Age Concern, Arthritis Care and Greyfriers Community Centre. He is loved and respected by the elderly community in the town where he lives, the very same elderly people that have met this man’s children, and have found them to be ‘very well spoken, polite and courteous’ and a breath of fresh air in comparison to the way some parents bring their children up nowadays!
Our children are now living with potential adoptive parents, the next time we hear from Social Services will be when they take us to court for a Freeing Order and try to prove that we have been unreasonable, we have not seen our children since February 02. This puts The Local Authority in the position of being able to say that the children are happy and settled where they are, and that the parents are not thinking of the children but only of their own wishes! This is something that is done all the time in these sort or hearings! The children should not have been removed from the family home in the first place, and being that they were, there were no grounds for these children not to be returned to their rightful place! With the right kind of help, this could be averted; we could get our children back and get on with our lives!
Back in February 02 we were expected to say goodbye to our children in a contact we refused too! Our children were then told by the Social Worker that going home to your parents is not an option! We are now being told that the children like it where they are and are settled, but then the children have not been asked if they would be interested in going home to their parents if it were possible. It's all very well claiming that the children are saying they are happy where they are, but for a year and a half, the children were saying they wanted to go home to their mummy and daddy, this was ignored by the very people that are supposed to listen to the children!
WE WANT OUR FAMILY BACK AS IT WAS (OR AT LEAST AS CLOSE AS TO WHAT IT WAS BEFORE THE ‘CARE DAMAGE’ THAT THE CHILDREN HAVE HAD TO ENDURE SET IN), AND WE NEED HELP FOR THAT TO HAPPEN!
The above was originally written in order to draw attention to what was happening to us and to other families that were going through the Family Court System. The hope was that someone would stand up and take notice, and possibly be in a position to make sure we would get a fair hearing in court. We never got that fair hearing! The Judge (Judge Shawcross) was openly hostile towards the wife and myself from the moment we sat down in his court!
It was July 2003 and we had not seen our children since February 2002 at which point we were expected to say goodbye to our children in a contact. I was attacked, and yes that is the right choice of word, and called a liar on the stand by the local authorities’ barrister when he aggressively accused me of being hostile to Social Services by referring to them as liars. The idea behind this attack was to try and un-nerve me in the hope that i might retaliate verbally therefore cementing their beliefs about me. However, i remained calm and simply asked if he had any evidence to support his claim, and then challenged him in front of the court to name one lie that i may or may not have told!
It turned out that he had no evidence to support his accusation! I then put it to the court that i had documented evidence on me that proved categorically and without doubt that the local authority had told lies, and in actual fact, had lied on the stand in that very court that morning! The result of my counter accusation was Judge Shawcross leaning across his bench in my direction and saying, “Mr Maynard, it is obvious to me that you are hostile to Social Services!” As a result of this, i was not entitled to produce the evidence I had supporting my claim, which just goes to prove how unfair the family courts are, and that the judges in these courts are prepared to except ‘Hear Say Evidence and turn a ‘Blind Eye’ to any Perjury committed by Social Workers and Professionals that are called to the stand!
We had gone into this court in-order to attempt to get a dismissal of the Adoption Order and to hopefully given that the original Guardian Ad Litum had been dismissed for dishonesty, get a re-trial, it was obvious from the outset that this was not going to be the case! The hearing was spread over three days. The evidence being put to the judge by various professionals and social workers were petty things, the sort of augments that you would expect to hear in an infant school playground, there was no sound evidence supporting the removal of the children from the family home, or for not returning the children to the family home! The judge was told how social services had tried to help and support us, and yet there is no evidence of this help and support in any of their reports or paperwork! If the judge had read their reports he would have seen that fact for himself, it’s was obvious that he had not. So any chance of him reading anything that we had submitted to the court was next to zero!
This judge had made up his mind about the outcome of this hearing before the hearing had even taken place, so much for everyone saying ‘You will have your day in Court!’ On the third day he dismissed are appeal to have the adoption order stop and immediately gave his consent to the local authority to go ahead with the adoption. His judgment was a rehash of the original judgement done by Judge McKinney (The Sleeping Judge as she known as) and we were not given a copy of his judgement, apparently in the final case this is the norm.
At one point during the proceedings Judge McKinney asked the local authority if anyone had taken the parents ‘Human Rights’ into consideration, there barrister Margaret Pine-Coffin immediately replied yes. But the truth is, they had not only breached their own protocols they had breached our human rights on several counts, and yet nothing is seen to be done about it!
Article 2: The right to life. You have the absolute right to have your life protected by law! Where was our protection from the false allegations? Who was protecting the children’s right to life? So why does the law not protect parents? Instead it hides behind what is in the best interest of the children.
Article 3: Freedom from torture or inhuman or degrading treatment. No one can treat or punish you in a cruel way! I personally have had to suffer mental torment as a direct result of the social services treatment of me! They have treated me verbally and in written form in their reports as if i was a sub-human, and at no point have they said anything to me or about me that wasn’t degrading to me as a father and a human being!
Article 5: Personal freedom. Everyone has the right to freedom and to be safe! But the moment your children are taken into care you loose your freedom as everything you say and do from that moment on is monitored by the Social Services, then used against you! You know longer feel safe in your own home due to having had it raided by Social Services & Police.
Article 9: Freedom of belief. Everyone has the right to have a religion and their own ideas. So why did the Social Service make a big deal about the fact that our three girls hadn’t been Christened? The Foster Mother had our three girls Christened while in her care behind our back and without our consent!
Article 10: Free expression. Everyone has a right to say what they think. Not to Social Workers they don’t, everything said is taken out of context and misinterpreted, then used against you!
Article 12: Marriage. Everyone has a right to marry and have children. If we were to have another child it would be taken at birth by Social Services, why? They have adopted our three girls on their beliefs no factual evidence to support their claims and i am not on any paedophile record, I don’t drink and I don’t partake in the use of recreational drugs, so why am I such a bad father in their view?