http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/families/article4295839....
July 9, 2008
Family justice: your word against theirs
In the third of our special articles, we look at the pernicious types
of allegation that are almost impossible for parents to disprove
Camilla Cavendish
I wrote on Monday about the many desperate parents who have app-
roached me after losing their children to social services. One thing
that they all have in common is shock at how quickly the system seems
to decide against them, and at how doggedly it sticks to that view
despite all evidence to the contrary. Some parents find that minor
issues are magnified until the conclusions reached are out of all
proportion. The opposite also seems to hold true: some children come
to terrible harm because the system systematically underestimates the
risk to them.
Why does this happen? Eileen Munro, a reader in social policy at the
London School of Economics and the author of Effective Child
Protection, says that “child protection work inevitably involves
uncertainty...
