You can count them on the fingers of one thumb

You can count them on the fingers of one thumb - approximately - the civil servants, the Ministers and Secretaries of State, the MPs, the Select Committees, the Department of Health officials, the agents and agencies of the State, the GMC, the GDC, the powerful, the influential, the appointed ones, they who will rush, fly, speed, drift, dawdle, limp, turn to stone, in their resentful trudge to your aid when you have been harmed by that colossal injustice misnamed the NHS. - Just thought I'd clarify that.

A moving story of injustice and the dangers of flawed judgments by expert witnesses

ProPublica investigates a moving story of injustice and the dangers of flawed judgments by expert witnesses. And the Seattle Times reports on the Twisted Ethics of an Expert Witness.

Britain's forced adoptions are a national scandal

Outcry over rise in forced adoptions - Guardian

Extract:

"Record numbers of young children are being removed from their parents and adopted unjustly because of government targets and the "secrecy" of the family courts, it was claimed today.

Campaigners say there are now more than 100 cases of possible miscarriages of justice where children have been forcibly adopted.

The figures, revealed in BBC Radio 4's Face the Facts programme, claims the number of parents in England who have had to give up their children, despite insufficient evidence they were causing them harm, has now hit record levels. - See http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/facethefacts/

It says 1,300 babies under a month old are being adopted every year, up from 500 when the government came into power in 1997.

Social workers told the programme, to be broadcast later today, that they were being put under pressure to meet the government adoption targets set in 2000.

And lawyers claimed parents were not being given a proper chance to challenge adoptions because of the time limit on appeals and the secrecy within the family courts.

Family law solicitor Sarah Harman said: "Secrecy breeds bad practice, it breeds suspicion. It feeds parents' sense of injustice when they have their children removed that they're not able to talk about it.

"They're not able to air their grievances. Children have been removed from their families unjustly. There's no two ways about that."

A social work manager with 25 years' experience in child protection said parents had little chance of getting a hearing and overturning a decision made by the authorities. The manager told the BBC: "People will find that their children have been removed and freed for adoption without them having had a proper chance to defend themselves and their families and their children."

MPs have also spoken out against the system and are campaigning for a public inquiry."

This is a national scandal. Reform is urgently needed, as is an end to the secrecy of the legal proceedings.

Doctors with iffy diagnostic skills and poor knowledge of nutrition + anonymity of family courts = appalling injustice in Britain.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=465421&in_page_id=1770

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/england/norfolk/6129724.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/6265782.stm

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/07/15/nadopt115.xml

Poor diagnoses. Mismanaged legal procedures. Insensitivity. Terrible injustice. Catastrophic damage to innocent families. What's to be done?

I think the children should be returned to their parents ASAP.

What do you think?