We are suggesting that you print out a few hundred copies of the leaflet and hand them to visitors at local Maternity hospitals at visiting hours. We recommend that you go with someone else for company.

The attempt of the family referred to in Camilia Cavendish's Times article (See Report 6) to get a stay of execution (to prevent the adoption of his daughter) based upon the fact that the case is going to the ECHR sadly failed. He was told that he needs to apply to the judge who issued the original order. This does seem somewhat unjust. He is, however, investigating this.

Starting with a case in the North West we have created a small emergency support team which we hope to grow. Using a case in the North West as a test case we have issued judicial review proceedings which ended up in the Family Division. We have also taken the same case to the Court of Appeal. We hope to grow the number of cases handled in this way. This will need further volunteers who should contact Tom Paul or me. Email or write to me at the House of Commons. Ideally people with court experience, but we can train people as Mackenzie Friends.

We are investigating reporting England and Wales and possibly the UK for contravening the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child for the way in which children are taken off their families so that local authorities can hit adoption targets and other legalised child abuse that arises from the operation of Social Services. It may be also possible to look at this at the Council of Europe level.

http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=32301&SESSION=885
EDM 626 LOCAL AUTHORITY ADOPTION TARGETS
That this House notes that local authorities and their staff are incentivised to ensure that children are adopted; is concerned about increasing numbers of babies being taken into care, not for the safety of the infant, but because they are easy to get adopted; and calls urgently for effective scrutiny of care proceedings to stop this from happening.

EDM 673 BREASTFEEDING AND BABIES IN CARE

That this House believes that mothers should be encouraged to breastfeed as this is in the interests of the long-term health of babies; recognises that for newborn babies this means breastfeeding on demand; further believes that newborn babies in care should also be breastfed on demand where this does not result in any risk to the baby; and calls for the Government to introduce guidelines to ensure that facilities are provided to ensure that newborn babies can be breastfed on demand.

There is a mild row going on about EDM 626 between MPs. It goes to the nub of the debate about public family law and the motivations of social work managers. In essence babies are being taken off birth families where there is no "risk of significant harm" because the social work managers want to hit targets. Some of the figures appear in the following blog entry.

I am collating figures to try to work out exactly how many children a year are taken off their birth families and adopted that were previously left with their birth families. This takes some work with the DFES. I wish to distinguish between additional babies taken into care and those which would have been taken into care, but would have returned to their birth families.

Please contact Tom Paul on paultj@parliament.uk if you intend coming to this. Please give the numbers of people coming with you as well.