The 'experts' who break up families: The terrifying
story of the prospective MP branded an unfit mother by experts who'd never met
her - a nightmare shared by many other families
A little
over a year ago, Lucy Allan led what most people would regard as an eminently
respectable life.
The
middle-class mother, a Tory councillor, was happily married to her stockbroker
husband, Robin, and doted on their ten-year-old son, who loved going to school
and was a passionate cricketer.
Indeed,
such was Mrs Allan’s standing in the community that this accountant and former
investment banker was on David Cameron’s A-list of potential MPs and a
prospective Conservative candidate at the last election.
She
devoted her spare time to her council duties. Twice a month, she sat on the
local fostering panel, which oversaw the removal of children from their parents
and placed them with new families.
It was
heart-rending work, as she recalls. ‘At each fostering meeting we were
presented with horrifying cases of abusive parents, almost always depicted as
“substance abusers”, mentally unstable or “unable to put the needs of their
children over their own needs”.
‘Often,
this portrayal was supported by an expert report from a psychiatrist,
psychologist or medical doctor,’ says Lucy.
‘It never
occured to me, or any member of the panel, that the information we were
presented with might be a distorted, twisted fiction — or that the reports were
anything other than independent.’
Now, her
view has changed. She suspects that many of the damning reports were written by
experts who had never met the families in question, to suit the wishes of
social workers under pressure from the Government to increase the number of
children adopted.
As a
result of this process, more and more children are being taken into state
foster care.
So why
has her faith in the system she once facilitated been shattered? Because,
thanks to a bewildering chain of events, this eloquent, educated woman found
herself under attack from social workers and fighting to stop her own son being
taken into care.
Hers is a
Kafkaesque story involving family experts who passed judgment on her fitness as
a mother without, in some cases, even meeting her.
Lucy’s story is particularly disturbing in the light of a report released this month which found that decisions about the futures of thousands of children are being based on flawed evidence from well-paid ‘experts’, some of whom are unqualified and, time and again, never meet the families concerned.
The
damning study by Professor Jane Ireland, a forensic psychologist, examined more
than 127 expert witness reports used in family court cases in three areas of
England. She found that 90 per cent were produced by clinicians who no longer
practise, but instead earn their living entirely as ‘professional expert
witnesses’ paid for by council social work departments. Sixty-five per cent of
the reports were poorly or very poorly carried out.
This has
led to accusations from MPs, lawyers and families that many of the experts are
on a gravy train — ‘hired guns’ paid to write precisely what social workers
want to read.
This
month the Mail reported how just such an accusation has been levelled against
one leading psychiatrist, Dr George Hibbert — who faces allegations that he
deliberately misdiagnosed parents as having mental disorders, which led to them
having their children taken by social services.
John
Hemming, a Lib Dem MP who is calling for a national inquiry into the use of
expert testimonies in family court hearings, says this dubious system has
resulted in families being torn apart and hundreds of children being wrongly
taken for adoption from innocent parents.
It is a
scenario Lucy Allan feared could happen with her own son. Her nightmare began
last March when, aged 46, and having begun to feel depressed for no apparent
reason, she decided to go to see a doctor.
‘I am
close to my son, so I was worried that he knew I was feeling sad. I went to my
local GP surgery expecting to be given a course of anti-depressants and then
feel better,’ she recalls.
She was
seen by a young female locum, who listened to what Lucy had to say, and then
told her she wanted to refer her to social services to ‘see if the family
needed support’.
The locum
turned to Dr Peter Green, a consultant forensic physician and head of child
safeguarding in Wandsworth, South London, where Lucy lives. A flamboyant figure
with flowing grey hair and a penchant for bow ties, he has written thousands of
reports for the family courts.
According
to documents seen by the Allan family, Dr Green told the locum his view was
that Lucy was ‘very self-centred’ — this despite the fact he had never set eyes
on Lucy or spoken to her. (When she later complained about the conclusions he
had drawn without even having seen her, the doctor is alleged to have told her
he had relied on a ‘gut feel’).
To Lucy’s horror, following Dr Green’s assessment, the locum informed social services that Lucy’s son was at significant risk of harm from his mother.
Thus it was that a woman whose job it had been
to make decisions on the fostering panel about which children should be removed
from their families suddenly found herself under the most intense scrutiny.
‘Instead of reading reports on another
mother’s “emotionally abused” child or her “chaotic” home life, I was reading
the same accusations in reports about me and my family,’ she says.
Social services insisted they interview her
son, but as the inquiry unfolded, the evidence from his teachers suggested he
was happy and thriving. An independent report from an NHS psychiatrist also
said Lucy was ‘no risk to anyone, including her son’.
But social services hired their own
psychiatrist from the Priory Hospital in Roehampton, south-west London — at
taxpayers’ expense naturally.
‘Instead of reading reports on another mother’s “emotionally abused” child or her “chaotic” home life, I was reading the same accusations in reports about me and my family’
Lucy
Allan
Without meeting Lucy or her son, and based
only on information provided by social services, the private psychiatrist
stated in an ‘expert’ report that there was an ‘urgent need’ for the assessment
and treatment of Lucy.
The psychiatrist added that there was ‘no
way’ her depression would not have a ‘significant impact on her parenting’.
As the investigation dragged on, Lucy
underwent a series of interviews by social services and by experts paid by them
to examine her and her family. Many of their subsequent reports, says Lucy,
were inaccurate, biased and took her family’s words out of context.
For example, her son had mentioned that when
he got off the school bus, he always asked Lucy how she was, but this was
described in one report as: ‘Her son demonstrates inappropriate anxiety for the
wellbeing of his mother on a daily basis.’
When Lucy admitted taking sleeping pills for
insomnia and diazepam for anxiety, another report on her said such ‘drug abuse
would make her barely conscious on a daily basis’.
Her confession of sharing a bottle of wine
with husband Robin most nights was written up as ‘alcohol abuse’, and the risk
of Lucy harming her son was deemed to be ‘substantiated’.
All this begs the question of how often such
judgments are passed down by ‘experts’ and social workers on those less well
equipped than Lucy to defend themselves.
She has spent the past year trying to clear
her name, paid out £10,000 on legal fees and has had to pull herself off the
A-list of David Cameron’s potential Tory candidates, quit as a school governor,
and, of course, resign from the fostering panel. ‘I am now ineligible for the
Criminal Record Bureau check required for working with children or young
people,’ she says sadly. Her son’s social services records state that she was
once considered a ‘risk’ to him, and it will remain on his file till he is 18.
Finally, at Christmas, the council’s social
services said officially no action was required concerning Lucy. She is trying
to rebuild her life with the help of husband Robin — who, incredibly, was never
interviewed by social services — but still fears she could come under scrutiny
again.
'Alcohol abuse': Social
Services' verdict on Lucy's confession that she and her husband shared a bottle
most evenings
‘The system is designed to silence people,’
she says. ‘I have been prescribed anti-depressants and I am better. But at the
back of my mind is the fear that if I complain too loudly about the child
protection system they will be back at my door.’
No doubt she would agree with Nigel
Priestley, a lawyer involved in family law, who said recently: ‘Just about the
most draconian act the state can carry out is to remove a family’s child. What
is at stake is the loss of their children, and on the basis of a report which
might, or might not be, questionable.’
Those who write these reports — often
psychologists or psychiatrists, but also medical doctors and consultants — do
not face the glare of public scrutiny precisely because of the secrecy of the
family court system. Lucy can describe her ordeal only because her case never
got as far as those closed courts — no parent who appears at one of these
hearings, which operate in every town and city in the land, is allowed to speak
to anyone later about what has happened there, even to their own MP.
Every year, 200 mothers or fathers are jailed
for ‘contempt of court’ for breaking this silence — while the same family
courts request the removal of 225 children each week, 97 per cent of whom are
never returned to their families.
Now, there are demands for an American-style
‘class’ legal action against the Government by parents who have had dubious or
even bogus reports written about them. Paul Grant, a legal adviser at Bernard
Chill & Axtell Solicitors in Southampton, says devastated parents have
contacted him after his firm took on the case of a mother, known only as Miss
A, who claims she was misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder by psychiatrist Dr
George Hibbert because social workers wanted her baby adopted.
Now, Hibbert could be struck off by the
General Medical Council, which is investigating extraordinary suggestions that
he deliberately misdiagnosed ‘caring’ mothers as having ‘personality disorders’
in order to help social workers take away children.
When he was confronted with the allegation
about Miss A, Hibbert offered to surrender his licence to practise as a doctor.
This week, his spokesman said he is ‘unable
to comment due to his professional duty of confidentiality’. But I have learned
that Porsche-driving Dr Hibbert amassed up to half-a-million pounds a year from
his work as an expert witness, and from his reports on parents and children for
social services departments.
Accounts for his company, Assessment in Care
Ltd, show that profits soared from £23,000 in 2001 to a peak of £468,000 in
2007. It is now worth £2.7million, according to Companies’ House records.
Paul Grant says that Miss A’s distressing
case ‘may be the tip of a very large iceberg’. He adds: ‘We contend that when a
practising clinician becomes a professional expert witness with a private
company, there is no registration process, and no machinery to vet what they
do.
‘By failing to put in a regulatory framework,
we would argue that the state is failing to protect families under Article 8 of
the Human Rights Act, which says everyone has the right to a private and family
life.’
As Dr Hibbert’s professional conduct comes
under scrutiny, it is emerging that he is not the only one whose actions are
being questioned.
The Mail has been contacted by scores of
parents who believe they have been mistreated on the word of these ‘experts’.
We have been told by lawyers about clinicians charging £1,800 a day to appear
at family courts, on top of the thousands of pounds a time they receive for
writing the reports, which often contain lies, ambiguities and insinuations.
One mother said she had her children taken
away because an ‘expert’ said she ‘liked shopping’; another was criticised as
mentally unfit for ‘burning the toast’, and lost her child, too.
In another case, an expert was paid
handsomely to write a report based on the observations of a social worker who
said a five-year-old girl was ‘monosyllabic’.
‘By failing to put in a regulatory framework, we would argue that the state is failing to protect families under Article 8 of the Human Rights Act, which says everyone has the right to a private and family life’
Paul
Grant, legal adviser at Bernard Chill & Axtell Solicitors
Yet we are told a secret tape recording of
the social worker’s interview showed the child chatting away about school, her
family and her home. The little girl has since been removed from her mother.
We have also been told about a gregarious
47-year-old business adviser in the north of England who had to fight to keep
her five-year-old daughter after being labelled a ‘totally isolated schizoid’
by a psychologist, who we understand is trained only to treat children, and
should never have been involved in the analysis of adult behaviour.
The psychologist in question (who writes up
to 100 expert reports a year) charged £6,000 for his written opinion on the
mother, her husband and child. Yet the mother says she was given no chance to
deny the ‘schizoid’ report — and kept her girl by the skin of her teeth only
after the child’s nanny vouched for her parenting skills.
In another extraordinary case, after a woman
was found by a psychologist to be a ‘competent mother’, the social workers are
said to have insisted on commissioning a second expert’s report. It agreed with
the first.
They then commissioned a third, which finally
found that the mother had a ‘borderline personality disorder’. All three of her
children were taken away for adoption.
So how have such apparent travesties been
allowed to go on virtually unchecked in child protection?
No other country in Western Europe removes so many children from their parents. The numbers taken into care — the first step towards adoption — have doubled in a decade to more than 10,000 a year.
The last Labour government set adoption
targets and rewarded local councils with hundreds of thousands of pounds if
they reached them.
The targets have been scrapped after protests
from MPs and lawyers, but the dangerous legacy persists. Social workers now get
praise and promotion if they raise adoption numbers. David Cameron is also
demanding more adoptions — and that they are fast-tracked.
Since the case of 17-month-old Baby P, more
youngsters than ever before in British history are being removed from families
every week. Many say this is a knee-jerk reaction, which is probably true. But
it’s not the whole story.
‘It’s time the criminal rules of justice applied in the family courts. We need parents to be considered innocent until proven guilty’
Ian
Joseph, author and expert on forced adoption
It is the 1989 Children Act — which introduced
a blanket secrecy in the family courts — that is the real culprit. It
encouraged a lack of public scrutiny in the child protection system and what MP
John Hemming calls the ‘twaddle and psychobabble’ peddled there, which has
caused dreadful miscarriages of justice.
Ian Joseph, who has written a book on forced
adoption, told me this week: ‘It’s time the criminal rules of justice applied
in the family courts. We need parents to be considered innocent until proven
guilty and also be free to talk about what is happening in those courts without
being thrown into jail.’
Until that happens, hundreds more children
may be seized from their families on the word of experts — many of whom are
either not qualified or are receiving huge sums of money to play God.
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