On 28th August 2017 The Times published a story about a white Christian child ‘forced’ into a (presumably) brown skinned Muslim family
Monday's TIMES: "Christian child forced into Muslim foster care" #bbcpapers #tomorrowspaperstoday pic.twitter.com/Z781Z8dpDE
— Allie Hodgkins-Brown (@AllieHBNews) August 27, 2017
The prominent placement of this report on the front page with its eerie image of the little white girl being led away by a shadowy figure in full veil caused immediate unease to many, encapsulated in this comment by Jack Monroe on Twitter
Foster carers are unsung heroes & this headline, front page & intrusive photo are abhorrent. Esp with no context other than 'Muslim is bad'
— jack monroe ❄ (@BootstrapCook) August 27, 2017
So – whats the story?
Andrew Norfolk the Chief Investigator Reporter set out his concerns which I summarise here:
- A white Christian child taken from family and ‘forced’ to live with ‘niqab wearing foster carer
- where she was ‘allegedly’ ‘encouraged’ to learn Arabic
- the foster placements were made against the wishes of the girl’s family
- by the ‘scandal ridden borough of Tower Hamlets’
- in a ‘confidential local authority report’ nonetheless seen by the Times the child is described by a social work supervisor as ‘sobbing and begging not to be returned’ as her carers did not speak English
- the child was distressed as she had to remove her necklace, which had a Christian cross, was not allowed to eat bacon and was told that Christmas and Easter were ‘stupid’ and European women were stupid alcoholics.
- the child has had two placements with Muslim families; her first foster carer wore the niqab, the second the burka – which indicates that she is likely to be ‘contemptuous of Western values’
The article goes on to say:
To protect the child, The Times has chosen not to identify her or the unusual circumstances that led to her being taken into care earlier this year.
This is a very odd thing to say. The Times does not have a ‘choice’ about whether or not it names vulnerable children who are subject to care proceedings (which I assume this child was/is given the reference to word ‘forced’ regarding her placement for the last six months). The Times is prohibited by law from identifying children who are still in care proceedings, which this child may well be – see section 97 of the Children Act 1989. I would expect The Times to be aware of this simple fact; that it appears unaware is a matter of serous concern.
For further information on what newspapers may or may not publish about care proceedings see our guidance note here.
However, this isn’t my main cause of concern about this article. What so seriously shocked me (and many others) was the tone of the article, the language used and its clear narrative agenda that here we had a little girl deliberately subsumed into a Muslim family who denied her an identity and are attempting to force upon her their general contempt for Western society and its values.
I will start by saying that OF COURSE – if what has happened here is that a little girl is distressed and crying because she is placed with a family who don’t speak English and who make derogatory comments about her own racial and cultural background then this is NOT A GOOD PLACEMENT. It should not have been made, it should come to a swift end and these foster carers should not be permitted to foster children without some further rigorous re-training.
But lets look at the language used here. ‘Forced’, ‘allegedly’ ‘scandal ridden borough’ ‘contemptuous of western values’. Its not hard to discern the narrative of this piece and what the Times wants you to think about foster placements in general and this foster placement in particular.
The article comments
One aspect of the Tower Hamlets placement revealed today by The Times has, however, amazed experienced carers and the heads of fostering agencies who were contacted.
For an English local authority to choose to place a five-year-old child whose first language is English with a family who at home regularly converse in a different language would, they say, be staggering. It would also be unforgivably irresponsible.
However, the Times can apparently find no named individual prepared to articulate their ‘amazement’ at this state of affairs. And I note the interesting shift from the earlier comment that the child is distressed because her carers ‘don’t speak English’ to the recognition of the more likely situation that her carers speak another language in addition to English and may well use that language in their own home.
I might also add it seems a bit odd that despite not speaking English to the little girl the family were able to attempt to indoctrinate her into thinking Christmas and Easter were ‘stupid’. Possibly they did this with visual aids? Or the little girl was able in very short space of time to master sufficient Arabic to allow the brain washing to be effective.
It is indeed a concern, as the Times notes, that 84% of approved foster carers are white which reflects the racial identity of only 77% of children in foster care. Various ‘recruitment drives’ to increase the number of ‘non white’ foster carers do not appear to have improved the statistics.
This is likely to cause serious problems in areas like Tower Hamlets where only 31% of the population are white, compared to a national average of 80% across the country. Therefore, non whilte children in areas such as Tower Hamlets may be more likely to end up in foster placements which don’t reflect their racial identities or the religious persuasions of their parents.
Legitimate concerns used as fear mongering click bait?
I agree it is curious that Tower Hamlets were not apparently able to find a foster placement which was a better ‘match’ for this particular child’s culture and identity. I agree it would be appalling if she was placed with a family that did not speak any English.
However, I simply don’t have enough information in the Times article to be able to conclude that this is what did in fact happen or what informed this child’s placement.
What I do have however is a front page article which appears to be a depressing example of an attempt to ferment suspicion about Muslims who are ‘contemptuous’ of the West and who are looking to brain wash little white Christian children.
This article is not merely a now depressingly familiar example of the typical ‘social work bashing’ pieces I have now come to expect from our tabloids (but I remain surprised and shocked that the Times is now joining in). We have seen the danger of this kind of journalism time and time again – its impact on recruitment and retention of social workers, its impact on politicians and policy makers – see Professor Ray Jones ‘The Story of Baby P’ if you want to delve further into that murky world.
But this article goes further than that. Its not merely ‘bashing’ social workers on ‘allegations’ and quotes from reports not cited, ‘amazement’ from anonymous sources – it has some horrible echoes of the propaganda of for example, Nazi Germany in the 1930s, which set out to demonise an entire religion. A common method promoted by Goebbels to encourage fear and hatred of the Jews was to portray them in crude cartoon caricatures as ‘snatchers’ of blue eyed Aryan children.
What better way to encourage people to hate but to tell them their children are at risk from a shadowy group of people whose religion and culture are very different ?
I have often complained that the ‘debate’ around the child protection system is inadequate. I did not dare to contemplate that it might actually turn into part of a propaganda campaign to encourage hatred of a religion. No doubt the coming months and years will continue to show me just how much worse it’s going to get.
EDIT – update on events since 28th August 2017
There has been an enormous amount of comment about this issue and the publication of the court order following a hearing on 29th August 2017 before HHJ Sapnara in the Family Court at East London.
The Times have further commented that they were ‘praised’ by HHJ Sapnara for highlighting the issues in their original report. This interpretation of the Judge’s comments does not appear to be supported by her actual order which sets out a recitation of the facts before the court. I note the Judge’s comments in particular here:
For the avoidance of doubt, the Court makes it clear that the decision to approve the new care arrangements for the child to live with the grandmother under an interim care order is as a result of the application of the relevant law to the evidence now available to the court and not as a result of any influence arising out of media reports.
The recitation of facts in the judgment sets out a clear timeline:
- The child was first taken into care as an emergency following police intervention; her first foster placement was thus an emergency one and she had a further foster placement over the summer to allow the first carer to go on holiday
- The child has been subject to an interim care order since 10th March 2017
- There is no clarity about who is her father
- Her mother is not safe to have unsupervised contact with her, owing to concerns about the mother’ use of drugs and alcohol
- the mother raised concern about the foster placement and wanted the child placed with the maternal grandmother but at no time has the mother made any application to the court to seek change of foster placement
- The Local authority proposed a change of care plan on 15th August 2017 to move the child to her grandmother’s
- the maternal grandmother has now been assessed as a safe and suitable carer and the child will move to her care. (Section 23 of the Children Act 1989 states that a child who is subject to a Care Order (or Interim Care Order) can only be placed out of local authority care – for example, with a parent – in accordance with specific regulations. The relevant regulations are The Care Planning, Placement and Case Review (England) Regulations 2010 – note para 24 concerning temporary approval of relative, friend or other person connected with the child).
Most importantly is this:
The child’s Guardian has undertaken enquiries and visited the child in the current foster carer’s home and spoken to the child alone. The Guardian has no concerns as to the child’s welfare and she reports that the child is settled and well cared for by the foster carer
And – most intriguingly of all, given the clear anti Muslim slant of the Times original piece:
Documents including the assessment of the maternal grandparents state that they are of a Muslim background but are non practising. The child’s mother says they are of Christian heritage.
The Times might like to consider that its possible to be a blue eyed Muslim – as for example the religious make up of the Albanian population shows.
Of course, matters of concern remain about these proceedings. Given the clear statutory requirements for care proceedings to conclude within 26 weeks, this case has already been in train for approximately 23 weeks and doesn’t seem close to a final determination. This may of course be explained by the fact that two men are identified as possible fathers to this child and there is clearly an international element to the case as the grandmother expresses a wish to return to her country of origin. Further, it is not explained why it has taken from March to August to approve the grandmother as as suitable carer; again there could be many explanations for this, including the mother not being forthcoming with her mother’s details, or the grandmother not being physically present in the country. I don’t know – it would be good to have clarity about this.
A very serious matter of concern is that The Times journalist was initially refused entry to the hearing on 29th August 2017 and was only allowed in after intervention from the Judge. This should not have happened and suggests that we still have a way to go in promoting and understanding the need for transparency in family court proceedings, so long as we can keep the child’s’ identity protected from wider and unhelpful publication.
But these concerns must also be weighed against the legitimate serious concerns about the whole tone and motivation of the initial Times report which sparked – as they must have known it must – an enormous amount of similarly dubious manufactured outrage, based on not merely little understanding of the actual facts, but lack of interest in either establishing or commenting upon them.
Most concerning of all is to see this ‘story’ picked up by Breitbart News, an openly fascist ‘news’ outlet, together with the predictable whipping up of some MP’s ill- informed ‘outrage’ and demands for ‘inquiries’.
Of course, there has been an enormous amount of thoughtful and well informed comment on social media and elsewhere which I commend to you:
@Familoo You will be interested in this document, and may be interested in my thread summarising it – both here https://t.co/ipflODBZR2
— Conor James McKinney (@mckinneytweets) August 30, 2017
And note the response of Mayor John Biggs
My response to the @thetimes fostering story. pic.twitter.com/MxA3iBn06M
— Mayor John Biggs (@MayorJohnBiggs) August 30, 2017
The questions The Times didn’t ask
Many commentators have noted with understandable frustration that the common plight of Muslim brown skinned children who are placed in foster homes that do not reflect either their religious or racial identities goes unremarked and unchampioned by any national newspaper.
Further, the outrage that this child was removed from her family and placed with ‘extremist Muslims’ is not balanced by any discussion of why it wasn’t safe for this child to be with her mother and equally the intriguing fact that this child’s religious identity is clearly not as straightforwardly ‘Christian’ as the Times would like us to believe.
I note with sadness that the near universal response of those replying to me and unhappy that I did not simply believe everything the Times said, was to accuse me of either wishing to hide child abuse or actively promote it.
The quality of our debate about these issues really, really matters. Because the quality of the debate informs how policy makers understand a perceived ‘reality’ and what funds in turn are directed to recruiting, training and retaining foster carers.
Without trained professional foster carers able to offer a safe home to this little girl – where would she have gone? What would have happened to her? Does it really matter if her foster carers had a different skin colour or a different religion, provided they kept her safe for a short time while her grandmother was assessed?
That The Times ignores these questions and instead seems determined to wilfully mispreport the facts of the case in front of them to support a ‘story’ of racial and religious intolerance, is a matter of profound sadness to me. But the ramifications of this go considerably wider than my own personal reactions and have grave implications for us all.
What I found most depressing about this article was that the reverse situation – children from non-white and/or non-Christian religious backgrounds, sometimes with poor English, being placed in culturally, religiously or linguistically unsuitable placements – are a daily occurrence. Social workers and the courts, knowing the statistics, are sometimes a little too resigned to that situation: it is often only pushing from parents or guardians that unearths more suitable placements. Even then, a perfect match is all too often impossible.
I have never known the press to express the slightest interest in this most unsatisfactory situation. The scenario being reported is identical except—
(a) how rare it is: because white British-born foster placements are the most numerous, it is extremely rare not to be able to find a white, British-born foster placement for a white child. I should say that there is a particular shortage of Muslim foster carers and those that are available are always in high demand for Muslim children, so this situation is especially unusual. This article will no doubt contribute to them remaining in scarce supply.
(b) because the foster family are Muslim they play into the sinister Muslim stereotype which (as Sarah Phillimore says) is the predominant “them and us” narrative of our age. Would anyone have objected if a Muslim child had been given the opportunity to attend English or French lessons? Indeed, if a white child in the foster placement had been going to French lessons, would the press not have been equally outraged by another child not being offered those lessons just because he was Muslim?
I would wholehearted support a truly colourblind campaign from the media to improve the cultural matches between children placed in care and foster placements. Of course, children can learn a lot from living with people who are culturally very different to them but who can nonetheless offer nurturing, loving parenting. Children who are newly removed from their parents, however, are hardly in the best state of mind to learn from the experience and it can add greatly to the trauma: the situation needs, where it cannot be avoided, to be very, very carefully managed.
Such a press campaign would involve championing the vital importance of foster carers (especially those from our minority communities) to aid recruitment, and scrutinising local authority systems to ensure that the odds of culturally appropriate placements are the best they can be. For those inevitable cases where there is a mismatch, it involves scrutinising the selection procedures, and the training foster carers receive, to ensure they can cope with that added level of difficulty.
Sadly, it is all too clear that the Times was not, on this occasion at least, remotely interested in the wider problem. Instead, it decided to focus on turning the rather thin facts available to it into a tale of Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf.
I agree with much of the above. My point would be that the information given to The Times came from the child’s family, and not via a family court. It vilifies the foster family and social services, who are unable to defend themselves. [edited]
thanks for your thoughtful comment.
I agree with every word.
Foster carers are trained and supported to care for children whose identity differs from their own.
Matching is a hierarchy of needs, and children who have been abused for example present with a wide range of trauma informed responses, so it may be that language/religion/ethnicity came second to those needs. Obviously I don’t want a child placed in an alien landscape, not sure that would ameliorate trauma or transitions anyway, but given the scarcity of muslim carers (and that they are therefore usually looking after muslim children) I find it very difficult to tally this story with reality.
Most children in care don’t come from the same socioeconomic groups as their carers and there is a lack of diversity in fostering, most carers are white British. It isn’t for lack of trying, so if anyone does have the solution to that, you can let all the agencies know who are desperately seeking it, so they can match all children with a carer who reflects their identity and who can meet their needs.
It is remarkable that, given the racial and cultural spread of foster carers, that Tower Hamlets chose to place this girl not once, but twice, with ‘Salafi-influenced’ Muslim families.
This leads one to suspect that either the Local Authority had a deliberate sinister agenda and was playing into the hands of the ‘click bait’ sensationalist press,(which seems a bridge too far for even the most devious social worker), or, that given the racial spread of Tower Hamlets, it is the one place where there is an unusual propensity of Muslim foster carers, and too few white Christian ones, or that the family is racially mixed – [EDIT REDACTED INFORMATION LIABLE TO IDENTIFY CHIILD]- and that these placements are interim care placements while proceedings continue.
It is to be noted that the complaints to the Times are all driven by the mother… and although the word ‘family’ is used, the father’s views are never mentioned.
There is no doubt that Tower Hamlets is ‘scandal ridden’: you only have to read the recent Ofsted report on the borough’s child protection offering to see that they have been castigated as inadequate:
Page 79: “Inspectors identified serious and widespread failings across the service for children in need of help and protection. Services have deteriorated in all areas since the inspection of safeguarding and looked after children services in 2012. Attempts to drive improvement have had little impact. Senior leaders have not accurately addressed critical weaknesses in management oversight or social work practice.”
Page 83: “ An entrenched culture of non-compliance with basic social work standards continues to be a significant weakness.”
Not having managed to make any improvements in 5 years seems worthy of public censure. Unfortunately the blunt object approach used by Ofsted means that their criticisms may have formed part of the reason why these foster are placements were chosen, as Tower Hamlets had been reprimanded for delays in finding emergency placements.
In a different world, 5 years of blatantly failing the children and families supposedly in their care, might be the lead story. It has been in local community internet press: http://lovewapping.org/2017/04/ofsted-condemns-tower-hamlets-childrens-services-inadequate/
The Transparency Project expressing surprise that The Times is now indulging in ‘typical social work bashing pieces’, reveals a naive belief in the integrity of the Times newspaper that does not seem in the least deserved: The Times, ever since the moved its presses to a computerised facility in Wapping in the 80’s, and decimated the print unions, has had a distinct, and often fractious, relationship with Tower Hamlets. As one of the raggedy nags that Rupert Murdoch’s views use to ride into town like the desperadoes they are, The Times, like any paper in the Murdoch stable, is not renowned for defending multiculturalism, or social care. (The Suns ‘1200 killed by mental patients’ investigation springs to mind.)
The Times editors will be doing what journalists do the world over; congratulating themselves on having delivered a front page that has spawned reports in other newspapers, created controversy and what may loosely be called debate, (even riled Sarah Phillimore into penning an article on a sunny Bank Holiday Monday) and crucially, sold newspapers and increased advertising potential revenues. The front page will be remembered as a data spike…
It is not a story that the Guardian would run because they receive advertising sponsorship from Cafcass, as Sarah Phillimore having written Cafcass-sponsored articles, will be aware. but it is a story that has all the right ingredients for a right wing newspaper, and no one should be surprised that they ran it.
While on the subject of agendas, it is worth noting how Baby P ( another example of foreigners behaving atrociously) is held up at every turn, while equally awful tragedies like the case of Baby T (in which British foster carers killed a British baby – and which merited a Warwickshire Serious Case Review) are not. The Transparency Project has itself fallen prey to wheeling out the ghost of Daniel Pelka and assisting Ray Ferguson in selling his perspective, while effectively burying Baby T or the appalling assessment processes of Minster Social work Ltd. ( which SG approval led to the death of Keegan Downer)… In these times everything is spin as soon as it is written down.
The surprise is the Tower Hamlets managers are so unconscious of both media-spin, as well as the obvious distress of the children they are supposed to be caring for, that they would allow this to happen. What I say is not social work bashing, it is child protection.
Sorry for delay in approving your comment – it has been edited to remove reference to information about the child’s family which is not the public domain and which could go to identify her.
Its Sarah P here – I have never written a CAFCASS sponsored article in my life, so I would be intrigued by some clarification about that assertion. Would that I was paid for what I write.
you also seem confused about Baby P – as I understand it that was an entirely a home grown problem and Peter was killed or allowed to be killed by some English Caucasians. One of those was of course his mother. I wonder if you are mixing him up with Daniel Pelka.
I hope that reading the order in this case and its clear description of what happened has given you some reassurance. There are clearly questions that need answering about certain elements of this case but I hope we can all now agree that the original Times article that started this off, is an unacceptably poor piece of journalism.
What an excellent and balanced article. I have seen so many placements the other way, Muslim children in white British foster homes – no scandal there then! How are we supposed to recruit and retain foster caters from minorities if they risk facing this sort of vitriol for doing a difficult job.
…But are you glad that thanks to the press coverage, for all its ghastliness, seem to have played a part in the girl being re-united with her family….and now she is with her grandma, not in foster care?
Read the order. The local authority care plan changed on 15th August to support moving the child to her grandmother. This had absolutely nothing to do with the press reporting, as the Judge herself makes clear.
The grandmother had to be formally assessed as no doubt if the child had been placed with her and something nasty had happened to the little girl in her care, you and many other commentators would now be baying for blood about the ‘irresponsible’ local authority who didn’t properly check the grandmother’s background.
Whilst it is a little annoying that we don’t have a judgment, the Case Management Order is quite informative about a few things that the Press have not reported on.
https://www.judiciary.gov.uk/judgments/the-child-ab-case-management-order-no-7-anonymised/
The preambles are where the meat is contained.
1. That the allegations about the conduct of the carers is disputed (and has not yet been resolved one way or the other by the Court, evidence is still being gathered)
2. The mother has not made any application to the Court for the foster carers to be changed
3. The mother denies having provided confidential documents about the case to the Press. Raising the question of how the Press got hold of something which sounds very much like either a social work statement or a contact recording which would have been part of the court bundle.
4. The Guardian has no concerns as to the child’s welfare and she reports that the child is settled and well cared for by the foster carer – of course, that’s not determinative of anything. The allegations are yet to be tested – but in terms of Press reporting, it ought to be a relevant thing to take into account.
5. Documents including the assessment of the maternal grandparents state that they are of a Muslim background but are non practising. The child’s mother says they are of Christian heritage. (For my part, this element is a big fat so what – who cares whether maternal grandparents are Muslim or Christian, but given the spin that the media are putting on the story, it is relevant)
6. English is not the first language of the grandmother either. (Again, for my part, it is a big fat so what, BUT given the spin that the media are putting on the story, it is relevant) The local authority shall, upon receipt thereof, translate the mother’s final statement and this order into the language spoken by the maternal grandmother and shall serve these on the maternal grandmother by no later than 15.09.17.
7. Some of the case management directions give one a pretty clear steer as to what the allegations about mother are, and the preamble shows that the child came into care as a result of removal into police protection. That doesn’t mean that her allegations about the carer are not true, but a Manichean presentation of the case isn’t helpful or accurate.
I agree with the sentiments of the post – if the carers have behaved like this towards a child then that’s dreadful and the carers should no longer be caring for foster children. But it is an allegation yet to be tested, and the tone of the coverage has unpleasant dog-whistle overtones. It is quite rare for the failure to culturally match children and foster carers to be in this direction, yet I can’t envisage the Press running the story if it had been the other way around.
(I think the Times were very lucky to escape with only censure for publishing the photograph – as for the Mail photoshopping a veil onto a stock photograph… words fail me)
The Court must absolutely publish the judgment when they come to conduct a forensic exercise about the mother’s allegations. I doubt very much if it will be news if findings are not made…
Any parent who finds themselves in the position of having their child in care needs to know that their child is being treated well and with respect. We of course know that a small proportion of foster carers fail to do this, and it is absolutely right that we root them out and expose them when this happens – but this is not investigative journalism – it is just running with one side of an argument before the Court considers the facts because that side of the argument appeals to clickbait numerics.
The Child AB: Case Management Order – No. 7 (anonymised)
30-08-2017 04:30 PM BST
In the Family Court at East London.
IN THE FAMILY COURT AT EAST LONDON Case No: ZE17C00153
The Children Act 1989
THE CHILD
AB
CASE MANAGEMENT ORDER – No. 7
Order made by HHJ Sapnara sitting in private on 29.08.17
https://www.judiciary.gov.uk/…/case-management-order…
Per para 16,, page 5:
Documents show Grandparents are non-practising Muslims but mother claims that they’re Christian!
Thanks Andrew – I have edited and updated the post to reflect some of this. I agree we need a judgment as soon as possible although I am no longer remotely confident it will do anything much to stem the flood of ill-informed comment.
You make some very valid, overlooked points.
Whoops -edited: …But are you glad that the press coverage, for all its ghastliness, seems to have played a part in prompting the court to re-unite the girl with her family….and now she is with her grandma, not in foster care?
It didn’t. The case ran its planned course.
Here is HHJ Sapnara’s case management, which may provide a clearer view of what has been happening – reading between the lines: https://www.judiciary.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/case-management-order-lbtw-cd-and-ors-20170830.pdf
That’s the thing about judges, they say what they need to, no reading between lines necessary.
I am becoming increasingly frustrated at the shortage of foster carers is becoming an “oh well…” fact that the press or politicians are failing to ask why this is so.
Foster carers are considered, treated and paid like toilet cleaners by the local authorities. All of us are false self employed, many of us are on zero hours, no sick pay, poor training, poor supervision, poor support and are not permitted to whistle blow. The circumstances surrounding this case may have been reported inaccurately but you can bet your life that it’s occurring somewhere.
Its a real problem. I note The Times utterly failed to ask the question – where was this little girl going to go if it wasn’t safe with her mother? If a Muslim family was the only family available – what are they suggesting should have happened instead? Nothing of course because this isn’t about actually investigating the parlous state of foster care in the UK and why its so difficult to recruit new foster carers.
I think there is a legitimate question here about why the grandmother couldn’t be assessed more quickly but the fact that she doesn’t appear to live in this country or speak English may explain that.