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Looked-after Children

My understanding is that the case is not before any court at the moment. Sebastian and his mother have been on the run for around 14 months. The father of the baby girl was jailed for 14 months, but has since been released. The family is on the run in Europe, yet Medway social services will not drop the complaint to the police and still wants the mother to be arrested under an international arrest warrant. I look at that case and I think, "What are the best interests of the child? What are we doing that could be of benefit to the child?" There are two children living with their mother on the run in France. One is not subject to the UK's jurisdiction because the child was born abroad and so cannot be taken away from the mother, but the other child could be taken away through proceedings under the Hague convention. What are the best interests of the child? Why does Medway want to continue the prosecution? There are cases where mothers have 14 babies on the trot, each one of which is taken into care and adopted. The cost of doing that is about £200,000 a child, which totals £2.8 million. That is not unique: there are a number of cases of people with 18 children, and I have seen smaller numbers, such as 12 or 10. However, is that really a good way of handling the care process? Would it not be feasible to try to support the mother in some way? I have looked at the detail of those cases, so I know what the reasoning behind them is, but is that really the best way forward? Does it work well? I was looking at a case on Monday, and it was clear from the papers that the child, who was about 12, wanted to return to her mother. There was no reason why she should not do so, but, according to the papers, she recognised that she could not return until she was 18. I accept that my proposition would not be the best way forward for all children, and that we need to intervene and take some children into care, and to put others with foster carers from time to time, but I tend to see the cases in which the system has gone wrong. The case of Sam and Adam Johnson is a good example of that. They are 15 and 17, and subject to a care order because they have fallen out with their mum and are prevented from living with their father. Sam has been able to go back now that he is 17. Essex county council has wasted a massive sum of money on that case. I talk to practitioners in Birmingham who say that they would never do that. Fair enough, but why did Essex county council do it? Initially, the local authority did not want to do it, but it was persuaded by the judge. Some very strange things go on, and unless we deal with them, the system will continue to steamroller people. At the moment it is steamrollering adults and children. Everyone here agrees that the outcomes of the system are disastrous. Obviously, there is good practice going on, but there is also bad practice. It is a good idea to have advocates for children, for example, but they must be independent. They cannot be appointed by children's services. The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children does some very good advocacy work, and the reason why it is good is that the advocates are not appointed by the local authority. The people providing the services cannot also be the ones who appoint the advocates. To go back to the comparison with Denmark, it has been said that the best advocates are the child's natural parents, but we have a tendency to squeeze them out of the process. The figure of 7,000 to 8,000, based on SSDA903 returns, has been mentioned. Over half of the children under the age of 10 who go into care come out into adoption, according to the old figures. In 2004-05 the figure was about 3,800 a year. The system causes wrong decisions to be made in a material number of cases. It does not operate proper checks and balances. Now is not the time to go into the flaws in the family court system at great length, but the report is good in that it recognises the difficulties with the integrated children's system. I have written a report jointly with two social workers on why the integrated children's system causes social workers to remain in the office and make the wrong decisions because they cannot get out to see their clients. They are forced to feed their computers instead, and I am not convinced that the Government are doing enough to deal with that. People make the wrong decisions, the whole thing is driven through the system, ignoring realities at certain stages, and come hell or high water, they stick to the original decisions. There are social workers who agree with me that there are serious problems in the systems. In the family court system, for example, we find that the children and the parents are often trying to fight the professionals, which is not the way to achieve good child care and good outcomes for children. There are even cases involving 14 or 15-year-old children in which a guardian from the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service is trying to interfere. There is no role for a guardian in such cases. CAFCASS is supposed to represent the interests of a child, and it is unclear why it should be anywhere near a case in which the child is clearly Gillick competent. One of my biggest concerns is the way in which mental capacity is abused. Rachel Pullen's case is quite well known. I also know of another case in which a woman failed an IQ test that she was given through an interpreter, resulting in a psychologist deciding that she did not have the mental capacity to instruct a solicitor. She was then prevented from opposing care proceedings. As in the Rachel Pullen case, a later psychologist's report found that she did have the necessary mental capacity. The second psychologist spoke the woman's language, which made a difference. Obviously, it is a bit of a waste of time asking Lord Laming whether he was right last time. We really need a proper investigation, and I am pleased that we are making some progress in the Council of Europe, whose legal affairs and human rights committee is to examine family justice in this country. The Government need to carry out proper research into how the care system operates and where it is systematically going wrong. We are lucky that, in a sense, there is a social science research experiment in the country as a whole, because we have the Scottish system and the English system. In Scotland babies go home to their parents; in England they are adopted. It is thus possible to make a comparison of how the systems are operating where people speak the same language and have quite similar legislation. I could speak at massive length about the issue, but there would be no great merit in doing so, and I want to allow my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) to contribute to the debate. We are not looking sufficiently at where the problems are. Unless we really focus on where the wrong decisions are taken, and unless we have a system of checks and balances that operates in the best interests of the child rather than what is best for the people who make money out of dealing with children, we will not make progress.