A particularly irritating example of opaque reporting came up under #familylaw on twitter yesterday.
According to this story in the Telegraph,
Child whose parents played too many video games ‘removed from family home’
Social Services said to have believed their obsession with gaming amounted to neglect
One might have hoped for a link to the court judgment, but no. Nor was there any indication as to whether a court application had been made, what the other conditions in the home were like, where the child is now etc.
The story goes to state that the child ‘was taken by social services at Walsall Council’ within the last month, adding that gaming was not the main factor. (So that headline is completely wrong?)
Not much of story then, but the Telegraph goes on to say:
‘The Sun said that its investigation had found that two children – one in Walsall and one in Devon – had been taken into care over the past month for having bad teeth.
Meanwhile, ten were removed due to their parents’ smoking. One of these was in Worcestershire, while four were in Southampton. Three were in Bradford and two were in Lancashire
John Hemming, of Justice for Families, said: “Silly reasons are often given for taking children.”
If the Sun has, in fact, undertaken an investigation into children being taken into care, they appear to be claiming that in the past month, two children were removed from their parents solely on the grounds that they had bad teeth and ten solely on the grounds of their parents smoking. There’s no explanation given of the methods or overall results of the investigation.
Does any reader of either the Telegraph or the Sun really believe that a child and his/her parents can be legally separated on the basis of one of these facts alone? The risk of anyone falling for these random scare stories seems low, but confounding the obscurity by trivialising such decisions as ‘silly’ is sure highly irresponsible.
I read the Sun story, which claimed they had conducted a month-long “probe”. In the absence of any links or citations (yes, I know, it’s the Sun, but still), my mischievous thought is that all this “probe” amounts to is one or more bored hacks or summer interns trawling through old judgments on Bailii during the silly season in search of simplistic tales of intervention gone mad. Then they rang around for some quotes. Bingo, there’s your story, morning glory.
And have the Telegraph got nothing better to do than recycling stuff from the Sun?
Just wondering.
On a more serious note, the lack of chapter and verse in modern journalism is worrying. If we are to have an open and honest debate about these things, it would help to have the facts, the whole facts and not a pick-n-mix selection.
Just saying.
If the ‘probe’ was into published judgments, I’m doubtful they would find the 13 cases they describe. Has anyone ever read a judgment where a care order was made on those grounds? And what about the context of all those cases they read where child protection agencies were doing their job properly? The more one thinks about where this data came from, the more questions arise. Such specific reasons (e.g. smoking) would not be in published child protection stats. Maybe it was a FoI, but wonder what the questions would have been.
Just noticed that the Telegraph links “gaming” to another story in its pages about how gaming is actually good for children. No agenda there, then.
I have been banging my lonely drum for years now about the utterly woeful state of debate about our child protection system. Such an important issue, such important consequences for us all and this is what we get.
It is said we get the politicians we deserve. do we also get the journalists we deserve? If so, just what have we done that is so awful we are punished in this way?
And why, o why is John Hemming still popping up as rentaquote with his usual airy and completely inappropriate dismissal of care proceedings as bought for ‘silly’ reasons?
I won’t be packing my drum away anytime soon. Maybe I need to upgrade to one of those one man band ensembles and bring some kind of tuba into the mix.
Sarah, be careful what you wish for. John Hemming now wants to be known as a musician, not a politician and may want to play his rusty saxophone to the beat of your drum…
Lets await the judgment.
O and btw the risk of anyone ‘falling’ for this nonsense is not ‘low’.
I am prepared to bet my new tuba that within a few hours these stories will be all over the Facebook groups, attracting a huge number of ‘likes’ and ‘shares’ and references to Nazis.
well let’s hope not. Maybe the Sun will publish its methodology and findings in full and the Telegraph can republish them.
I’m sorry but this is completely untrue. What has happened is reported did a Data Protection sweep of LA’s and the results can up with these bizarre reasons as part of the cases for taking children into Care.
You appear to be trying to cover up malfeasance by LA’s and stop its reporting in the press.
I might add John Hemming is an epert and knows what he is talking about.
These are not bizarre reasons if they are “part of” (as you say) the reason for taking a child into care. They can be signs of broader neglect. The problem with the reporting of the story without the detail of the question posed or answered is that it created an impression that children may be removed simply because their parents play computer games, which the FOI response does not evidence. What we also haven’t said in the post is that the cases which are referred to in the FOI request does not provide evidence of whether the removals were interim, final or s20 (voluntary) – so we don’t know what the long term outcome is.
I’m not sure how we can be covering up when we have made a point of obtaining the primary evidence and publishing it. People can make their own minds up about the news stories now with better information – you are entitled to your opinion. There are others.