The State doesn't kidnap children does it?

Well, yes it does.

We learnt in a news report today that a record number of children are being seized from their parents so that they can be adopted. It's not a surprise to me. Camilla Cavendish has devoted a number of columns to the scandalous behaviour and misdeeds of Britain's family courts. She wrote this recently:

Government figures show a significant jump in the number of babies being taken into care, from 1,600 in 1995 to 2,800 in 2005: a 75 per cent increase in ten years. While there has been an increase across all age groups, it is much, much greater for babies. More 10 to 15-year-olds are removed, but the rate of increase was only 21 per cent. One possible explanation is that the authorities are now monitoring pregnant women, especially teenagers and substance abusers. But there are also numerous examples of relatives being turned down by local authorities when they offer to take the children of a family member. Some of them may indeed be unsuitable. But the turning-down sometimes seems very peremptory. John Hemming, MP, who follows these issues closely, believes that "the (hard-to-place) children the targets were established to get adopted are not getting adopted; instead a completely new group of children are being taken into care, then adopted".

Looks like baby farming to me.

Robbie Millen

Comments

[The Wilted Rose]

This is appalling indeed. It is a national scandal, as there are often insufficient grounds for taking the children (i.e. babies) apart from Government adoption targets, and I wrote about this in my blog recently.

[Hip Gnosis]

The UK is Brave New World and 1984 all rolled into one. Horrible place. Civil liberties? Most Britons, the poor things, have forgotton what civil liberties are -- if they are old enough to remember at all. I'm so glad I'm living on the Continent, where human rights -- and human beings themselves for that matter -- are still at least somewhat respected by governments. Here, one isn't living in constant fear of the State. Not yet, anyway.

[wannabeteacher]

Surely the real tragedy is that not enough children are taken into care? Children such as Victoria Climbie and Caleb Ness would likely still be alive today had they been removed from their families and placed with suitable adoptive parents.

[The Laughing Cavalier]

Stalin's Soviet Union, Mao's China and Hitler's Germany all followed the same practises. Is it any wonder that NuLabour should follow?