On 28 June 2018, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe debated a report and a resolution entitled 'Striking a balance between the best interest of the child and the need to keep families together.’ In recent years there has been an increasing tendency in some countries for social services to remove children from their parents. Sadly, this is necessary in some contexts but of late we have seen a growing readiness of social services to step in and use these powers beyond simply as a last resort. This new tendency suggests a lack of regard for the rights of children to be cared for by their parents and the increasing conviction by some state officials that they, rather than parents, have ultimate parental responsibility. This is disturbing and the source of growing public disquiet.

Although the main criticisms of the report are focused on Norway, England is also mentioned because of its poor record of accurately predicting abuse:

'In England, the risk-prediction model that councils have been using for assessments has been shown to be very inaccurate – 97% of 10 000 parents whom the system would have flagged as potential abusers did not go on to harm their children, while 17% of parents who later did would not have been.'

The report was prepared by Mr Valeriu Ghiletchi, a Member of the Moldavian Parliament. Mr Ghiletchi emphasised that children must be protected from all types of violence, abuse or neglect but removing children from their families should be used as a 'last resort.' The best interests of the child must be the primary consideration.

The adopted resolution incorporates recommendations for member states to the Council of Europe, one of which is the UK. These include securing 'child-friendly processes throughout removal, placement and reunification', providing families with the 'necessary support in a timely and positive manner with a view to avoiding the necessity for removal decisions in the first place, and to facilitating family reunification when possible and in the child's best interest.' Where the decision to remove children has been made, the resolution provides a guideline that should be followed to ensure that the measures taken are a 'proportionate response to a credible and verified assessment by competent authorities subject to judicial review that there is a real risk of actual and serious harm to the children involved.'

Again, despite the main country of focus behind the report being Norway, the report is also critical about the removal of children in England. For example, the report indicates that:

'There is considerable controversy about the use of “s.20 voluntary accommodation” powers in England to remove a new-born infant from a mother’s care. It is not uncommon for the local authorities to remove infants on this basis, given that care proceedings cannot be brought prior to a child’s birth. A number of high-profile appeals court cases have raised significant disquiet about action to secure a mother’s agreement to the “voluntary” removal of her infant, within hours of actual delivery.'

'In England, social workers (and courts) labour under even stricter time constraints than in Norway: care proceedings (even those which will lead to a “forced adoption” order) have to be concluded within 26 weeks.'

'In England, the risk-prediction model that councils have been using for assessments has been shown to be very inaccurate – 97% of 10 000 parents whom the system would have flagged as potential abusers did not go on to harm their children, while 17% of parents who later did would not have been.'

'England is currently running two innovative pilot schemes aiming to change that statistic: One is “Pause”, which runs in 18 of the 152 English local authorities and aims to prevent mothers who have already lost one child to social services having subsequent children taken away, by combining the use of long-term contraceptives with counselling and support to meet their housing and educational needs. A second initiative is family drug-and-alcohol courts, which 22 local authorities offer to addicted parents as an alternative to care cases and adversarial hearings.'

You can read further details of the report and resolution here