"The welfare of the * is paramount"

If you listen, watch or read the sort of radio programmes, TV documentaries and news items I tend to come across, I'll bet that you, like me, tend to associate that sentence template "the welfare of the * is paramount" very strongly with bureaucracy or hypocrisy or lying through their teeth. The radio programme I heard today was one such example. In this case, the social services were claiming that the welfare of some vulnerable children was of paramount importance to them, when, as is so often the case, covering their own uncaring backs was their paramount concern. Have a listen on the iPlayer to Radio 4's File on 4 programme http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b019rqcl about Carers in Conflict.

"Jenny Cuffe talks to foster parents who find themselves battling with local authorities over the children in their care. They describe a Kafkaesque nightmare where doors are shut, telephone calls and emails unanswered, even court orders are ignored. Meanwhile, vulnerable children are treated as pawns as social workers move them from one place to another.

In one case investigated by File on 4, foster parents who offered to care for four siblings were denied the financial and practical support they needed from the council. Their official complaints were upheld yet key recommendations continued to be ignored and, as a consequence, the children have now been split up. After giving up their jobs to care for the children, the couple are now in debt and have to sell their home. The local MP describes the council's treatment of the family as outrageous. He says the case is extreme but not unusual and he's called for an enquiry.

In another case, a teenager with complex mental and physical needs was unlawfully removed from the foster home where he'd grown up. His sister told File on 4: "When he was in his foster mum's care he was always clean, always happy and he looked well but when I saw him he was dishevelled. It was as if someone took him away from himself. I felt his personality had gone." When his foster mother went to court to get him back, she was vilified by the council who used public funds to defend their actions to the bitter end but lost in court."

Useless Social Services Allowed Bullying Father to Rape His Two Daughters Repeatedly and to Father Children by them during Decades of Terrible Abuse

BBC News reports yet another horrifying failure of battalions of agencies that should have protected/rescued these vulnerable, suffering daughters from cruelty and incest, but failed them over and over and over again. Today they apologise for their failings. Their insincerity rings in our ears. They should be weeping tears of searing regret. They should be sobbing with remorse. They should have resigned from their lucrative posts long ago. They should be hanging their heads in shame...

No one has been sacked - or even disciplined.

Guess what? - "Lessons have been learned." - The only lesson that is EVER learned is that no-one will be punished for allowing suffering, vulnerable people to carry on suffering.

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?

The NHS is failing millions of patients with long-term medical conditions...

Confusing 'information jungle' fails long-term sick - Guardian

Extract:

"The NHS is failing millions of patients with long-term medical conditions by making it virtually impossible for them to discover where to get essential services, research for the Department of Health acknowledged today.

The researchers sent a team of "mystery shoppers" to investigate services across England for people with conditions such as MS and diabetes. They found themselves referred from one organisation to another, with nobody taking personal responsibility for finding the specialist nurse, therapist or voluntary organisation that could help.

The Picker Institute, an independent charity commissioned by the department to run the survey, said the NHS and social services were to blame for creating "an information jungle" that vulnerable people could not penetrate.

Angela Coulter, the institute's chief executive, said: "The potential service users were frequently pushed from person to person, or from organisation to organisation. They were often left dangling by calls that went unanswered. They encountered sheer brick walls.

"Too often the services supposed to help people in real need throw them back on their own resources. Patients, service users and carers are left standing at a crossroads in their lives with no signposts to information about the kinds of support they say are vital.""


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