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Social workers can never win. They are accused of incompetence and complacency if they fail to protect children from abusive or murderous parents and they are described as acting like the Stasi if they remove children from their families.
On Tuesday last week they came under fire again when the Southend Echo reported the case of a couple who had been refused permission to adopt their granddaughter.
The splash treatment was stark, but the text by Christine Sexton was written straight, making clear from the outset that the story was being written based on information from the couple rather than an independent source:
On Tuesday last week they came under fire again when the Southend Echo reported the case of a couple who had been refused permission to adopt their granddaughter.
The splash treatment was stark, but the text by Christine Sexton was written straight, making clear from the outset that the story was being written based on information from the couple rather than an independent source:
A couple claim their granddaughter has been taken away by social services because they are too old to look after her.
The couple, from Shoebury, started looking after the three-year-old girl when her mother was hospitalised with depression.
The doting grandparents were first told to give the girl up for fostering, but now, just six months after her mother was taken ill, Southend Council's social services department has put the girl up for adoption.
The devastated grandparents claim they were told it was because they are too old to look after her.
The couple, from Shoebury, started looking after the three-year-old girl when her mother was hospitalised with depression.
The doting grandparents were first told to give the girl up for fostering, but now, just six months after her mother was taken ill, Southend Council's social services department has put the girl up for adoption.
The devastated grandparents claim they were told it was because they are too old to look after her.
Towards the end of the story there was a quote from the council saying that while it could not comment on individual cases, "we should highlight that age is not the deciding factor in our assessments of prospective carers" .
The Mail picked up on the story and splashed with it the next day. In its eyes there was no doubt why the grandparents' application had been refused:
The Mail picked up on the story and splashed with it the next day. In its eyes there was no doubt why the grandparents' application had been refused:
The grandparents of a three-year-old girl have been blocked from adopting her because they are "too old", it emerged last night.
The report went on to say that the couple's daughter had been "persuaded" to sign a form giving up the child while she was in a mental health hospital and without legal advice. It continued that the grandparents had attended a court hearing on June 17, but that they had been "unable to argue their case as they could not afford legal representation". Their case had now been taken up by a solicitor who had waived her fees.
The Mail also quoted the council spokeswoman saying that age was not the deciding factor.
The Mail also quoted the council spokeswoman saying that age was not the deciding factor.
The turn of the Mail splash from last Wednesday and Thursday's follow-up
Both papers followed up the story on Thursday. In the Mail, Steve Baker, a Tory MP who sat on a Commons working group on fostering and adoption in the last Parliament, and John Hemming, a former Liberal Demcrat MP who runs the Justice for Families campaign group, both questioned the mother's capacity to consent to her daughter being put into care. A second Tory MP offered an anodyne comment about the child's welfare being paramount and preconceptions about age.
The Echo produced a spread in which the grandmother said that she had been told that another reason she had not been allowed to adopt the child was that she had suffered post-natal depression 31 years earlier. That story then went over the ground of the original piece, and was bolstered with a case study of another couple aged 62 and 70 who had fostered hundreds of children.
The council clearly felt aggrieved by the media interest because that afternoon it tweeted a link to an edited version of the judgment issued on June 17, which had just been published by the family court in Chelmsford.
The council clearly felt aggrieved by the media interest because that afternoon it tweeted a link to an edited version of the judgment issued on June 17, which had just been published by the family court in Chelmsford.
In his adjudication, district judge Stephen Hodges, left, describes how the mother had, since adolescence, suffered from depression, self-harming, a personality disorder and a neurological problem that tended to lead to epilepsy. In January this year she had cut herself with a kitchen knife in front of the child and was subsequently sectioned.
The child then spent three days with the grandparents before being moved into foster care because the mother objected to her being with her parents. The little girl had been in foster care ever since. Her mother had been discharged from hospital, but was readmitted in May and had accepted that she could not care for her daughter. They had a "goodbye" meeting on June 5 and the mother had expected a final care order to be made at the June 17 hearing - which she did not attend.
According to the judgment, the grandparents had chosen that hearing to make their application to care for the child - even though they had been in possession of the social services' assessment of their unsuitability since March - and they refused the judge's offer of an adjournment to allow them to prepare formal statements. They had no legal representation, but told him that they wanted the matter dealt with that day and the grandfather gave evidence under oath.
In that evidence, he said that they had previously been asked to care for the child, but they had not done so because his wife was ill and his daughter did not want the little girl to go to them. He spoke of conflicts between his wife and daughter, the difficulty in keeping the peace at home, and how his wife's problems with their daughter brought on her depression. He had been to many meetings in relation to his daughter as she grew up, but that his wife had not attended because of her depression.
The social worker's assessment said that the mother had had an unhappy and dysfunctional childhood and the judge noted that she had on various occasions said that she was abused physically by her parents. He concluded:
The child then spent three days with the grandparents before being moved into foster care because the mother objected to her being with her parents. The little girl had been in foster care ever since. Her mother had been discharged from hospital, but was readmitted in May and had accepted that she could not care for her daughter. They had a "goodbye" meeting on June 5 and the mother had expected a final care order to be made at the June 17 hearing - which she did not attend.
According to the judgment, the grandparents had chosen that hearing to make their application to care for the child - even though they had been in possession of the social services' assessment of their unsuitability since March - and they refused the judge's offer of an adjournment to allow them to prepare formal statements. They had no legal representation, but told him that they wanted the matter dealt with that day and the grandfather gave evidence under oath.
In that evidence, he said that they had previously been asked to care for the child, but they had not done so because his wife was ill and his daughter did not want the little girl to go to them. He spoke of conflicts between his wife and daughter, the difficulty in keeping the peace at home, and how his wife's problems with their daughter brought on her depression. He had been to many meetings in relation to his daughter as she grew up, but that his wife had not attended because of her depression.
The social worker's assessment said that the mother had had an unhappy and dysfunctional childhood and the judge noted that she had on various occasions said that she was abused physically by her parents. He concluded:
The main concern...is the fact that this family would be in my judgment completely unable to cope with the triangular relationship of C, M and the grandparents....I just cannot envisage how the triangular relationship can possibly work.
The judgment includes two quotes from the viability assessment, neither of which refers to the grandparents' age, but the judge says "this is not a short document", so it is perfectly possible - likely even - that it does include concerns that at 82, the grandfather might have difficulty dealing with a teenager.
The impression conveyed by the edited judgment released to the public is of a woman in her early 30s who has had a troubled childhood - the viability assessment refers to "extensive professional involvement" - and who is not now able to look after the daughter she loves. She has said goodbye to the child - a scene the judge said she described in "heartrending" terms - and wants her to live with a stable "forever" family rather than her own parents.
The impression conveyed by the edited judgment released to the public is of a woman in her early 30s who has had a troubled childhood - the viability assessment refers to "extensive professional involvement" - and who is not now able to look after the daughter she loves. She has said goodbye to the child - a scene the judge said she described in "heartrending" terms - and wants her to live with a stable "forever" family rather than her own parents.
The Echo responded to the release of the ruling by publishing it in full. The Mail responded like a cat that misjudges a manoeuvre: hope no one notices and walk on, nose in the air, as though nothing has happened. There has been nothing in the paper on this case since Thursday.
The Telegraph, on the other hand, pitched in on Saturday with a page lead headlined Full story of grandparents 'too old to adopt'.
Except it isn't.
The judgment in this case was delivered in private and its release to the public two days after the case hit the newspapers cannot be coincidence.
The grandparents' case seems hopeless when you read the ruling, yet there was enough in it for a solicitor to come forward and offer to represent them without payment. And the point the MPs picked up on - that the mother signed away her rights to her daughter while being treated in a mental health unit and without an legal representation - remains unanswered.
The Mail's first story notes that the social workers' assessment of the grandparents is not available to the public - quite rightly so - but the judge says the couple had been in possession of a copy since March 24. Why didn't Christine Sexton of the Echo or Andrew Levy and Rosie Taylor of the Mail ask to see it? And if they did, and were denied access to the document that supposedly corroborated the grandparents' claim about ageism, then shouldn't they have smelt a rat? They should certainly not have taken the couple's story at face value.
There is little doubt from all the material available that both mother and grandparents love the little girl at the centre of this case. What we don't know is whether the decisions made along the way will make it more or less likely that she will live happily ever after.
It is seven years now since Camilla Cavendish started writing in The Times about the need for greater openness from family courts - a campaign that earned her the Paul Foot award and led to some changes in the privacy rules. Yet we still cannot be sure that families are seeing justice.
The only reason this case from Shoeburyness reached the public consciousness was because someone mentioned age. That turns out to have been a side issue, and we shall probably never know the full story. That may be right and proper, a family's private traumas should not be aired for public entertainment.
But if women are being coerced into signing away the right to look after their children when they are not mentally fit, in order that councils can meet adoption targets - as the grandparents' lawyer and MPs suggest,- then we need to know.
The journalists covering this story have fallen for the clickbait angle and missed the real issue.
The Telegraph, on the other hand, pitched in on Saturday with a page lead headlined Full story of grandparents 'too old to adopt'.
Except it isn't.
The judgment in this case was delivered in private and its release to the public two days after the case hit the newspapers cannot be coincidence.
The grandparents' case seems hopeless when you read the ruling, yet there was enough in it for a solicitor to come forward and offer to represent them without payment. And the point the MPs picked up on - that the mother signed away her rights to her daughter while being treated in a mental health unit and without an legal representation - remains unanswered.
The Mail's first story notes that the social workers' assessment of the grandparents is not available to the public - quite rightly so - but the judge says the couple had been in possession of a copy since March 24. Why didn't Christine Sexton of the Echo or Andrew Levy and Rosie Taylor of the Mail ask to see it? And if they did, and were denied access to the document that supposedly corroborated the grandparents' claim about ageism, then shouldn't they have smelt a rat? They should certainly not have taken the couple's story at face value.
There is little doubt from all the material available that both mother and grandparents love the little girl at the centre of this case. What we don't know is whether the decisions made along the way will make it more or less likely that she will live happily ever after.
It is seven years now since Camilla Cavendish started writing in The Times about the need for greater openness from family courts - a campaign that earned her the Paul Foot award and led to some changes in the privacy rules. Yet we still cannot be sure that families are seeing justice.
The only reason this case from Shoeburyness reached the public consciousness was because someone mentioned age. That turns out to have been a side issue, and we shall probably never know the full story. That may be right and proper, a family's private traumas should not be aired for public entertainment.
But if women are being coerced into signing away the right to look after their children when they are not mentally fit, in order that councils can meet adoption targets - as the grandparents' lawyer and MPs suggest,- then we need to know.
The journalists covering this story have fallen for the clickbait angle and missed the real issue.
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