Long before Mary Portas was parachuted in by David Cameron to save our High Streets, and to save his own popularity with female voters, I have been talking Shops and disappearing High Streets. In fact town planning was where it all began for me and where my campaigning roots come from – big Developers and Shopping Cartels v the heart of Market Towns.
And before you cry NIMBY lets just remember – market towns are not just pretty nostalgic places to visit on a sunny Sunday afternoon, these places are the heart and sole of this countries internal economy and at a time of economic crisis we should be helping them maintain and develop their individuality and uniqueness, not turning them into eutopia’s where names become irrelevant – you could be shopping anywhere.
In 2007/2008 when it was clear we were heading for a recession I wrote a marketing plan for Romsey. Romsey, in Hampshire, is typical of a market town. Steeped in history with a scattering of historical buildings which add to the tourist factor, the market place has an almost text-book history when it comes to development and growth in traditional market towns. If the Town Hall, which sits alongside a statue of former Prime Minister Lord Palmerston, could speak it would probably tell you that it has never seen such a perilous time for the businesses that stand around it.
So with the recession looming and my marketing plan in hand I started to talk to people who assumed responsibility for the town. Sadly nothing came of it, as I was to discover there were too many people who thought they didn’t need help. The recession started to bite…
In September 2010 eyebrows were raised in Romsey about the number of charity shops that had popped up over the previous 2 years. As businesses were failing the gaps were being filled by charity shops who took advantage of a loop hole in the law. Suddenly Romsey was awash with charity shops (13 in fact, 1 for every 1000 people), hairdressers and estate agents. The local newspaper started covering the problem so I wrote in and explained the plan I had put forward 2/3 years earlier. If you go to September 2010 on this blog you can read for yourself my original postings on this issue.
This is a brief summary of the document that I circulated in 2007/2008:
- The failure to market Romsey properly has led to decline in diverse retail outlets and charity shops have filled this vacuum taking advantage of the loop-hole in the law.
- In the absence of a marketing strategy to promote Romsey as a ‘boutique’ market town with destination restaurants and up market retail outlets, the decline will only continue.
- There is no bespoke tourist promotion of Romsey and no PR strategy – if there is no one has seen it.
- The first impression that you get of Romsey on Internet search engines is profoundly damaging to the town and needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency.
- Romsey is no different than any other market town it comes down to the quality of the marketing.
- Romsey needs an annual festival with a unique local angle to it – suggestions included: slow food/trout etc.
- Romsey needs to study examples of successful regenerative market towns: Padstow, Kenmare, Ludlow, Burnham Market, Arundel etc.
- TVBC needs to introduce free parking on selected days, or some sort of measure to make visiting the town easier.
- Shops must be encouraged to open on Sundays. On Sundays Romsey is a ghost town in comparison to Stockbridge, which is a bustling high street with new businesses opening.
- Romsey must have a targeted plan to court specific businesses to compliment the town, this must include: a renowned chef and top restaurant, destination hotel alongside some known high street names, such as Fat Face (who recently invested in the market town of Stamford and several small market towns in Ireland).
- Romsey must position itself as a destination town with heavy marketing aimed at big cities such as London.
- Romsey should be engaging free PR in the forms of Sunday Magazines and supplements, women’s monthly magazines and specialist feature journalists.
I started to get a lot of positive feed back from residents about my proposals, but once again the powers that be thought they knew better.
Fast-forward to 2012 and things are so bad in Romsey now even the hairdressers are closing down!
Then on Friday 13th January 2012 (the timing of which is not lost on those of us who understand irony) the Daily Mail and the Romsey Advertiser announced the news that Tesco’s had reared its ugly head again in Romsey with a plan to build a superstore.
The sound of the last small business in Romsey shutting its door and turning the key will echo around the south of England.
Had Romsey grasped the situation back in 2007/2008 and put in place a ballsy recession busting marketing plan headed up by someone who knew what they were doing, then it would have been able to take the arrival of Tesco’s on the chin, confident in its uniqueness, identity and variety of independent shops that were enough on their own to bring visitors and other small businesses to the town.
The reality could not be more different. The arrival of Tesco’s and its promise of 200 jobs is not something to celebrate. Romsey Job Club, while asking “what cost to the town” suggests “maybe Romsey Tesco will encourage shoppers to stay local. 200 jobs would be handy just now”. I guess it gives some hope to the small business owners who will inevitably go bust that they could get a job in Tesco’s, but lets be honest jobs in Tesco’s are not meaningful careers they are plantation labour. A job in Tesco’s will hold no weight with the people who have lost not just a job but their livelihood and reason for getting up in the morning.
If you want to see what a Tesco Superstore does to a town then you need look no further than the other end of the Test Valley. Andover with its Tesco Superstore and 7 Tesco’s Extras/Express stores is dying on its high street feet.
The excitement of going to Tesco’s in Romsey will not encourage shoppers to then go into the town. Having parked your car for free in the Tesco’s carpark and brought everything you need under one roof (and probably had a coffee in the in-store Costa) why would you walk the 10 minutes into the centre of Romsey to look at hairdressers, estate agents, charity shops and a plethora of the usual high street coffee shops? Nor will these shoppers give up their free parking space in Tesco’s, to drive into the centre of Romsey and re-park only to get stung by the sky-rocketing parking charges?
Broadlands is, like all stately homes a money pit and no one in Romsey would ever want to see it descend into rack and ruin. But Tesco’s is not the answer to Broadlands problems, there are so many other creative ways the house could make money in order to keep it going. Broadlands may pocket a few quid from selling the land, the Council who will probably do a deal like the one they did in Andover with Tesco’s and get new offices out of the equation, and Tesco’s who will increase their cartel, but whichever way you carve it up Tesco’s is bad news for the town centre of Romsey.
Tesco’s is the proverbial final nail in the coffin for the market town of Romsey. I for one am not scared of Tesco’s so I will be happy lead the procession of coffins and chain myself to the first digger that sets foot on the site, the question is, is there anyone else who is prepared to stand up to Tesco’s, not just for Romsey’s sake but for all the other market towns in the country who Tesco’s are planning to strangle, or will people just roll over as “Every Little Hurts”?
How David Cameron Became Tony Blair’s “Smooth Assassin” and signed the Final Death Warrant For Fathers
It has long been agreed amongst parents rights campaign groups that the 10 years of the last Labour Government were the most difficult years for fathers in a generation.
Labour promoted single motherhood as a lifestyle choice with huge financial rewards. They started to remove fathers by design through the embryology bill and appointed an Equalities Minister whose only interested was equality for women at the expense of men.
It was a far cry from the Suffragettes, they must be turning in their graves at the way feminism was hijacked and how it became mainstream Party Policy to promote the belief that all men were violent, abusive and a risk to women and children.
Added to this the Family Courts were allowed to run riot, unchecked and unaccountable, to the detriment of everyone who entered them.
Blinded by the financial rewards available from family conflict, solicitors pitted parent against parent.
The Legal Aid Board, bloated by a bottomless pit of money, became the “get rid of dads” card. One little tick in the “Domestic Violence” box on an application form ensured mothers had unlimited financial resources to do what they wanted in Court and no on ever checked to see if the allegations of DV were true before handing over the money.
Social Services, crippled by substandard staff, set about removing children from loving families by default rather than providing them with the services and education to stay together. And who can blame them, why spend thousands on help and support when you could earn the local authority a quick buck by removing the children and putting them up for adoption.
Organisations like Cafcass and NYAS claimed to put the interests of children first but lost all sight of the children in question by never keeping any records of the outcomes of the children. NYAS, a charity, never knew the meaning of the word charity as staff bullied children into doing what they told them to do, and Cafcass staff were at worst contemptuous, at best lazy by copying and pasting paragraphs from one family report into another. In the end the focus for Cafcass became clearing a backlog of reports at any cost in order to get better Ofsted ratings rather than focusing on the needs of the child, and NYAS’s aim was just getting money.
Judges, who by default have a healthy disrespect for anyone who enters their Court, just sat back mulled over what to have for lunch, accepted whatever Cafcass said and took the route of least resistance, rubber stamping “no contact” orders like confetti to get rid of the annoying parasites.
Over the last 10 years, parents, mostly fathers, but certainly too many mothers too, have been stripped from families based on no more than the malicious “word” of the other parent and so called professionals.
For years our successive Governments have poured scorn on the way “certain” countries treat their subjects. If I was to describe to a foreigner a country that operates secret courts in which fathers are removed from a child’s life based on “evidence” that has no criminal basis, where parents are tried and imprisoned for contempt in secret, where parents are threatened with jail if they tell anyone what is happening to them and where children are adopted out of families without fathers knowing” they would be forgiven for thinking I was describing one of these “extremist” countries our Government likes to condemn. But all this happens in the UK, the poster girl for western democracy and Human Rights.
The ease at which you can remove a parent from the family and a child’s life is frightening. Any vengeful parent, mother or father, can remove the other parent from a child’s life for good. No evidence is required and it would all be “legal” because it would have the support of Cafcass and NYAS and a Court seal on every order along the way.
For many the misery did not end there. Many fathers ended up with criminal records just for trying to phone their kids to talk to them. Others ploughed on for years relentlessly trying to get the Courts and Cafcass to see what was really happening but to no avail. Others lost all their savings and the savings of other family members too. Houses were taken, cars reprocessed, passports seized in actions that would be more at home in Iran. The only outcome for many fathers came in the form of debts, depression and death.
And the children, well we saw them on the streets rioting during the summer. Welcome to Great Britain!
Surely a change of Government in 2010 would bring this to an end? How could David Cameron, a family man, a father who had lost a child, let this carry on?
Tony Blair might have overseen the financial destruction of the UK and blown apart the Middle East but David Cameron is far more dangerous.
Concerned about disruption during the General Election in 2010 David Cameron sent in Henry Bellingham to meet myself, and F4J Founder Matt O’Connor, with an “offer” that was designed to keep us quiet and which they hoped would gain them a few more votes along the way.
So calculating was David Cameron that he even used one of his prospective MPs, Caroline Nokes to support the offer, setting her up with a promise she was never going to be able to keep to her constituents.
Then once in, all-be-it in Coalition, Cameron set about executing the final blow to fathers, helped along the way by a few lucky breaks.
Despite saying that the Family Justice Review, planned by Labour, was “inadequate and not far reaching enough”, Cameron did the first of what were to become his trademark U-Turns by going ahead with the Review.
Not one single person on the Review’s panel of “experts” had ever been a user of the Family Court system. They were all from organizations who had a vested financial interest in keeping the abusive process in place.
Yes they went through the token gestures of talking to us and we went through the token gesture of submitting a 1000 page report on the failings of the current system and setting out our own Blueprint for the future.
During the early part of 2011, as we awaited the Final Report, the Government had a few “lucky breaks” as they prepared the final nail in the coffin for fathers.
The dreadful case of Vicky Haigh gave Judges the chance to publicly condemn a mother and put the father on a pedestal thus saying “what problem, no problem, look we are supporting fathers”. The jailing of Elizabeth Watson for Contempt and publicly discussing the Haigh case, also ensured that the Judiciary could fire an additional warning shot across the bows of parents, flexing its muscles and saying loud and clear that parents would be treated as criminals.
Those people who publicly defended Vicky Haigh were also hung out to dry by the Government and Judiciary. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the case, the way it was handled sadly gave the Government the ammunition it needed. Just for good measure they managed to discredit the loan voice in Parliament, John Hemming MP, who openly critisises the family courts along with the loan voice in journalism, Christopher Booker.
And just to make sure the final few critical campaigning voices were silenced a few “new faces” appeared from nowhere claiming to head up groups that were “bringing everyone together” ensuring the critical voices were neutralised.
Through the Family Justice Review Report, published tomorrow the 3rd November 2011, Cameron puts fathers rights in a worse place than it was 10 years ago. But for Cameron that does not matter, what matters for him is he can now tick “family courts” off the list and from now on whenever anyone raises the issue, he can close down the discussion by saying “we have had a comprehensive review, they reached a conclusion, now go away, subject closed”.
David Cameron has finally achieved what Labour set out to do – seal the fate of Fathers. David Cameron, Tony Blair’s Smooth Assassin, has beautifully executed fatherhood.
Six months ago I started holding free help and advice surgeries for parents going through the family courts. The intention was to try and help desperate mums and dads see past all the legal jargon, navigate the Court process and play the lottery that is the family courts. Well that was the plan.
The reality was quite different and no one could have prepared me for what happened next.
The very first case that came through the door lead to me uncovering a predatory lesbian “recruitment ring” operating out of a child contact centre.
Over the 6 months that followed I have not only had to deal with a tidal wave of broken parents but I have uncovered child abuse; child grooming; financial fraud; racial prejudice; child neglect; social services departments that have put children at risk; Cafcass Officers using out-dated research to back up their out-dated recommendations; Contact Centre Managers sleeping with children in their care; Cafcass Officers covering up evidence in order to prevent contact; serious mis-conduct within Courts; agency workers working on cases rather than properly trained in-house staff; a father who was prevented from seeing his cancer-stricken daughter; Judges who abused the Court process; failings in the basic admin procedures in Courts; solicitors who broke court orders; solicitors who encouraged false domestic violence allegations and women’s refuges that “coach” women in what allegations to make and what to say in order to prevent contact.
In addition to this I have had to help 3 fathers through the painful process of “walking away” knowing they may never see their children again. All 3 had been put through hell for absolutely no reason. I can say that hand on heart because I have read all their case paperwork. All 3 had faced false allegations of abuse and domestic violence from women who exploited the court and legal aid system. All 3 were under the “care” of Cafcass South West Region, the recipients of an appalling Ofsted Report in 2009.
Now 3 children under the age of 8 are going to grow up without their fathers because mum hated dad more than they loved their child and the Court process had worn these fathers down to the point they simply could not carry on.
What the last 6 months have shown me is that rather then getting better the family court process in this Country, the Judges, most Solicitors and Cafcass are getting worse.
Can I tell you who the contact centre worker was who encouraged children to sleep in her bed? No.
Can I tell you which social worker prevented a father seeing his child ill with cancer because mum told them to? No.
Why?
Because these so-called professionals are extended the kind of protection the children in their care are not and I have been threatened with prison if I reveal who these people are.
In the case of the Contact Centre Manager, she was able to walk away from her job without answering a single question and is free to carry on working with children. Ask yourself does she work with your child?
In the case of the Social Worker who stopped the father seeing his sick child in hospital, well no doubt he sleeps better at night than the father does.
Last April the Conservative Party made pre-election promises to overhaul the Family Courts.
These public promises were:
- A clear definition of contact so couples know what the likely outcome of the case may be, making them less likely to litigate.
- A legal presumption in favour of automatic shared-contact in the context of joint parental responsibility.
- An emphasis on early interventions and mediation.
- Enforceable contact orders including the withdrawal of benefits from parents withholding access.
- Grandparents to have automatic rights of access to court.
- A plan to work with the Department of Children, Schools and Families to ensure Cafcass becomes more efficient and is able to devote more time to public law cases and child protection issues.
- A pro-active Judiciary with a more efficient handling of cases.
- A wide consultation with all interested groups with an interim report published by the Autumn of 2010.
- A commitment to reducing the cost to UK PLC caused by family breakdown and the litigation of family disputes which we believe is intolerable.
- The most significant consequence of which will be to allow children to reach their true aspirations and potential.
Just for good measure I went to Nick Clegg and asked him what his party’s position would be on family law reform. Never thinking they would be coalition partners, I was delighted when Nick Clegg came back supporting the Conservative proposals and gave me more flesh on the bones of his own party’s position.
Why then within a matter of weeks of the election was there such a massive u-turn on the part of this coalition government. After all this was clearly one area they did not have to thrash out in the throws of their own pre-nuptial agreement.
The Conservative Party ditched their election promise and replaced it with a Labour commitment. I know many people thought they voted for Conservative policies too! Instead of wholesale reform, they slunk backwards into the Labour hole.
Nick Clegg has come in for a lot of criticism over the last 6 months from students who have finally woken up, put down their pot noodles and switched off Countdown.
We have seen thousands on the streets protesting about tuition fees and the Lib Dem U-Turn. So why are we not seeing thousands on the streets protesting about the U-Turn on Family Law Reform? After all Family Breakdown affects everyone.
You might not be married or divorced but you pay the cost, through your council’s spending, schools, health service, children’s services, the police, your taxes. Even the environment suffers because as every family breaks down they then need 2 fridges, 2 TV’s, 2 cars, 2 of everything.
The failure of people to get out on the streets and demand a change to family law is as scandalous as the family court system itself. Then people get washed up at my door expecting me to wave a magic wand and make it all right again.
Is it too much to ask these days that a political party keeps it’s promises and for people to stand up for what they believe in?
Or does your child need to be the next Baby P before you start demanding change?
When I heard the proposal this week that the DWP were looking at charging a £100 fee to use their services, i.e. the CSA, I felt that I had stepped into a time warp.
The idea of charging for the service was recommended as part of the Henshaw report on CSA reform back in 2006.
Iain Duncan-Smith said this week he wanted to make parents consider the effect of their disputes on their children…but this idea is similar a programme already run by Cafcass.
It seems that the government is simply doing what Labour used to do routinely, re-announcing old policies as if they were new.
The approach to family law policy is totally lacking in any coherence or integration.
Would a fee to use the CSA have made any difference to me and my husband 10 years ago. No.
Would the impact of divorce been any less on my daughter as a result of this magical fee? No.
As a family we have spent nearly 10 years in the family court system, that’s nearly my daughter’s entire life, and the fact that she has turned out so remarkably well adjusted has nothing to do with the adversarial system her parents were dragged through.
It has everything to do with the fact that she enjoys an excellent relationship with her father and me and that she has been brought up and protected by us both from the system with the help of a close network of friends and family.
No amount of headline grabbing initiatives and “fees” would have made it any better for any of us.
A “fee” of £100 will not deter people and make them sort things out themselves. After all there is no guarantee that even after paying the fee things will be resolved.
The CSA is one area where mum’s and dad’s are united – it does not work for anyone.
Child support is not just about money, it is about emotional and financial support and that, despite our differences, is what my daughter’s father and I provide.
But the Court system wants you to separate the 2 and proposals like a fee for the CSA makes the gap between parents even wider.
With every proposal there is always a loophole and with the CSA Fee the loophole is that if there are special circumstances in a case (and by this they mean domestic violence) then you are exempt from the fee.
Cue more false allegations of domestic violence.
Add to this the fact that in order to get legal aid you also need to claim DV then this country will be awash with claims of violent relationships.
It is alarming that the Government is making these endless announcements and re-announcements ahead of the Family Justice Review report in the spring.
There is, however, a common theme, which is that it is irresponsible and bad parents who make use of the justice system and the CSA and place unreasonable demands on the taxpayer.
I see very few irresponsible or bad parents I just see parents who want help.
The Government intends to win public support for a policy that will force parents to make their own arrangements or give up.
The opportunity for real, wholesale reform, which would be in the best interests of everyone has been abandoned, in favour of eye-catching initiatives based on ignorance and prejudice.
The parents and their problems will then become invisible. The failings of the system will become invisible. Job done.
The beginning of a new year is always synonymous with resolutions and new beginnings.
For many years now though, I have resisted making “resolutions and making life changing plans”.
The last time I made a resolution (which was to end my marriage) I unleashed 9 years of hell, fire and brimstone on myself, lost my house, savings, job, health, spent £120,000 on legal fees fighting to keep my daughter and ended up taking on the government and family justice system.
Should I have stuck to “stop biting my nails” and “go to the gym twice a week”? Well as I sit here today the answer has to be a resounding “Absolutely not!”
In my darkest of places over the last 10 years I found out who my real friends were and took a path that resulted in me meeting some really fantastic people I would never have met otherwise. I discovered skills and a “career” I would never have found and visited places I would never have visted had I just vowed to “go to the gym” instead that year. I even met my new husband and my daughter got something she really longed for, a brother…well that is when he is not messing up her bedroom and hiding her teddy!
If there is one thing I have learnt over the last 10 years it is that out of the darkest of places can come the brightest of lights and life should never be spent wondering “what if”.
So where does 2011 leave us? Well as an entrepreneur I see opportunities out there, despite all the cuts thanks to Labour bankrupting the country over the last 10 years. Some of the best business ideas have come out of tough times. The one big trick we are still missing is that unless we as a country start to make things again we are sunk. £7 billion savings or not, unless we make things that we can sell to other country’s we will remain a benefits haven and floating car-park off the coast of Europe with no future.
Alongside this we need to get our house in order and by that I mean quite literally families and houses.
Over the last 10 years Labour destroyed “the family” making single motherhood and a life on benefits a lifestyle choice at 16 rather than getting 8 GCSE’s and a job. This one act alone has put the benefits system at breaking point and has put a monumental strain on the country’s finances. Those couples who did try and make a go of it together soon realised that they were financially better off apart. It was easier for Labour to promote family breakdown than help people stay together. The result is a generation of children growing up without a father and the social and economical backlash that that created.
Sadly the new Coalition, despite promises before the election, has failed to grasp this thorny issue – as Iain Duncan-Smith once said “family law is the subject you take on if you want to spend the rest of your political career in the wilderness”.
2011 is a big year in family law, but sadly not for any of the right reasons. 2010 started off with promises from both parties in the Coalition to address family law followed by the fanfare of the launch of the Family Justice Review Panel. But it soon became apparent that this was nothing but a fudge.
Despite the “Interim Family Justice Review Report” not being due until March 2011, we have been drip fed “hints” over the last few months. These have indicated that rather than actually deal with the problem of family law and make it better, the Family Justice Review Panel plan to role out mandatory mediation as yet another smokescreen. Lawyers will retrain to provide ‘mediation’ services. The biggest child abuse cover up in the history of British Justice will carry on lining the pockets of everyone except the families suffering at the heart of it all.
With the axing of legal aid the family courts will become more of a bloodbath. The only way to get legal aid will be to claim you are a victim of domestic violence so yes you’ve guessed it, we will see a massive increase in women making false allegations of domestic violence simply to secure the upper hand in court, after all you don’t have to prove your allegations to tick the box on the form that gets you legal aid.
As a woman, when I needed practical help and advice about how to cope with the family courts it was not Women’s Aid who helped me, in fact they were completely useless, it was Fathers 4 Justice.
Now as their Campaign Manager I ensure that F4J continues to work as it has always done, for families. We will continue to campaign for “real” change to family law not the white-wash that is unfolding. We will continue to provide free help and advice to parents, educating MP’s and uncovering scandals in family law.
The monthly surgeries that I have been running since September have been very demanding and time consuming but on a practical level I know that there is no other service like it in the country and if I help one family I know it will be worth it.
So after 10 testing years, do I dare make another resolution? Well you don’t need January the 1st to start going to the gym, I did that back in June.
Instead I shall resolve to just carry on as I have done for the last 10 years, campaigning for social and political change and proper family law reform – I’m not put off by the wilderness.
Todays announcement that the Conservative Government is falling into the DV trap by resurrecting one of the last laws set out by Labour spells the end for many fathers trying desperately to maintain contact with their children.
Under this new piece of legislation, men accused of “domestic violence” face being banned from their homes for up to 4 weeks – immediately – even if they have not been convicted of any crime. And that is the problem they only have to be accused there does not have to be any truth in the accusation whatsoever.
Home Secretary Theresa May has decided to reinstate this legislation as part of a series of measures aimed at tackling violence against women (notably not domestic violence against men).
This law is heaven sent for women who want to rid themselves of their child’s father and to ensure that the only contact they have with him is via the cheque she will ensure the CSA get from him each month. This law is a relic from the Labour and Harriet Harman’s propoganda that children do not need fathers and this will empower women’s rights groups in a way that will distort society for future generations.
This law is a dangerous precedent. Apart from the grotesque (but not unexpected) language of the newspaper articles today which demonise all men and paint all women as victims, this is another example of legislation which will help remove fathers on a permanent basis from their children’s homes and lives.
Already too many decisions in the family courts are made based on the “word” of one party. Unlike a criminal court where you are innocent until proven guilty, in family law you are guilty until proven innocent, and in most cases you are not even allowed to prove your innocence.
If you do try to prove your innocence the Judge will rule from his ivory tower that while there is no evidence to prove the allegations there is sufficient cause for concern and to air on the side of caution and probability then he will order no contact and to re-assure mum who is clealry very emotional and vulnerable, he will put in place a non-molestation order just for good measure.
There is already a precedent set where mum can get free legal advice by simply ticking a box saying “domestic violence” without having to provide any evidence. With the introduction of this law one simple phone call to the police claiming dad is violent will be enough ensure that mum gets dad marched out the front door of the house for 4 weeks, no questions asked, while she marches the next Ian Huntly in through the back door.
The 4 week period is perfect timing as this will allow the mum and her solicitor enough time to build a case against dad and the final nail in the coffin will be that if he was perfectly safe then he would not have been removed from the house for 4 weeks in the first place. Cafcass will report that the children are very upset (probably because dad was carted off by the police in front of them but for the purposes of mum’s story they are upset because dad frightened them by shouting as he was taken away by the police). Cafcass will then rule that it has been 5 months since the children have seen dad (4 weeks while he was removed by the police, a further 2 weeks while everyone tried to get a date for court to discuss future contact, non-molestation orders etc, followed by the time it took Cafcass to get round to writing their report) and as such the children would be too troubled if we re-introduced them to dad.
One dad stitched up and dispatched, perfect. Yes what a wonderfully useful piece of legislation this is going to be.
Police forces are already failing genuine victims of domestic violence, simply because of the complexity of domestic violence. This is also because many DV cases involve family courts and at the first mention of family courts the police wash their hands of things and tell you it is a civil matter and that they can’t get involved.
The most worrying thing about this law, apart from the fact that innocent people will be treated like criminals for 4 weeks, is that those of us who have been real victims of domestic violence will not be protected any better and resources that should be spent helping real victims will be tied up protecting women who have exploited this new designer law.
Today there was another full on body blow to the sinking ship that is CAFCASS.
The report by the Commons’ Public Accounts Committee (PAC) found that “Children suffered as the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass) “failed to get to grips with fundamental weaknesses in its culture, management and performance” following a 34% increase in its caseload, leading to “chaos across the family justice system. These problems have been to the detriment of children”,
More importantly the Committee echoed what many of us, who have suffered at the hands of Cafcass, have been saying for years, that “Cafcass, as an organisation, is not fit for purpose”
Yesterday I sat through a meeting with Cafcass and listened to the Case Worker cobble together 9 pieces of “evidence” for why she had recommended that contact should be suspended.
Listed separately were points 6 & 7 which turned out to be separate postings on dad’s Facebook page which the Cafcass Officer considered was “evidence”. These “postings” included a heart felt message from the father simply stating that he hoped he would be reunited with his daughter again soon.
This “evidence” apparently showed that the father did not understand boundaries and therefore contact should be suspended.
In the last 10 years I have heard and read some things in my time from Cafcass Officers but this to me struck an all time low. I have a serious issue with this new level of so called “evidence” that Cafcass are relying on and I shall be taking this up with their Head Office because quite frankly I am not sure that it is even legal to take personal postings from personal pages on social media sites and use it in this way.
There are cases up and down the country where children are at serious risk from harm. There are families who really do need help and support with contact. But Cafcass have reached an all-time low regarding the reasons they are now finding to suspend contact or at the very best stick families in contact centres.
It would appear that their default position now for recommending contact is “contact in a contact centre” and for that to happen they will find / invent / use anything they can “tease out” (to use the phrase of the Cafcass Officer yesterday) in order to off-load a case as soon as they can so they can claim to Ofsted that they are processing cases much quicker these days.
I have mentioned many times to parents in this situation that I have evidence that Cafcass and NYAS are trawling through Facebook in order to gather “evidence”.
Yesterday’s meeting was a clear message to parents who have the mis-fortune to find themselves in the hands of such organisations such as Cafcass and NYAS, that when there is no “hard evidence” to support the “opinion” of the reporting officer, then they will clearly resort to searching on-line to see what they can find on you to make the evidence fit.
It is about time that this failing organisation was shut down. Recent Ofsted Reports for Cafcass Regions have also shown that they are not fit for purpose. When a school gets a 4 on an Ofsted Report (unsatisfactory) then the Head Teacher pays with their job. In the case of Cafcass the Head has been awarded a CBE for his “failing services to children” and all the other Cafcass Officers continue to put children at risk.
This organisation is sinking fast, lets at least give children the chance to be rescued, and pull the plug on Cafcass once and for all NOW.
‘Contact’ the sort of relationship most people might expect with an Alien from Outer Space.
But no, this is the cold, cruel unforgiving language of the family courts who routinely dump dads, and some mum’s, in ‘Contact Centres’ where they are given ‘access’ to their children by a court.
So what untold crime have these patents committed in order to deserve restricted access to their children? In most cases, astonishingly, nothing.
The recent case of a Hornchurch dad who was told he had to have supervised contact in a Contact Centre with his daughter illustrates the new gender apartheid. He had rightly refused contact in the contact centre, saying it would be unthinkable for the mother to be treated like this, however tens of thousands of fathers or ‘McDads’ are routinely dumped in these centres for no other reason than their relationship with the mother has broken down.
And what sort of place is that for the children – an inhospitable landscape of formica chairs and broken toys.
Fathers 4 Justice believe that Contact Centres should only ever be used where children are at a “proven” risk from a parent seeing them.
Sadly though the Family Court and Cafcass are now using contact centres as the default position for contact for every case. This a is a dangerous precedent to set, although I suspect it has been done out of laziness on the part of many Cafcass and NYAS Officers. More importantly though, given the cut backs, this means that contact centres will have their finances stretched and those people who really need them will find there are not enough resources for them because they are clogged up with dads who pose no threat to anyone but their own sanity.
Apart from those occasions when there are genuine, proven, welfare risks, then children deserve a meaningful relationship with both parents in the parks, in the gardens and in the homes.
To incarcerate them in an unwelcoming hall for a few hours on a Saturday is both demeaning and abusive. It would be a national scandal if these cases were publicised more, however the cloak of secrecy that shrouds family justice means that cases like this are all too rarely publicised and the abuse goes on unseen and unheard.
I have today written to Test Valley Borough Council expressing my about the advert in Issue 29 of Test Valley News, which called for youngsters to come up with a name for a proposed Newspaper for young people.
In Issue 29 of Test Valley News there were over 12 adverts of services/groups for young people, most of these clubs and societies had website addresses and in addition to that there was a “useful websites” list.
These days we hardly ever use paper based media to advertise and inform people, in fact the campaign group that I run is completely internet driven. Many of the products that I market and PR for our clients are aimed at young people aged 16-25yrs and everything is focused on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube alongside simple websites and PR.
It is complete folly for Test Valley Borough Council to be spending money on a paper-based Newspaper for young people when every statistic and marketing consultant will tell you that in order to reach young people, with news and information, you need to be using multi-media. Young people do not read newspapers. Many adults these days don’t read newspapers. It a romantic idea but one which will fail and loose the Council money.
In addition to this there is the question of exactly what would this newspaper bring and add to the clearly numerous media resources available for young people.
Every national newspaper editor will tell you the same thing. Over the last 18 months newspaper readerships have fallen through the floor with many now turning their resources to on-line newspapers. The evidence is there for us all to see.
The idea of a paper based newspaper for young people smacks of someone trying to justify their job in the lights of potential cut backs and using up money that has been allocated to a department in order to ensure next years budgets remain the same.
At a time when council services are coming under fire for sustained squandering of tax payers money over the last 10 years I am staggered that TVBC is proposing such a wasteful exercise which I can guarantee will fall by the wayside within 12 months. We only have to look at the ill-fated “Contact” Newspaper which failed to stand on it’s own 2 feet and has now become a paid part of the Romsey Advertiser.
If there is a need for a “newspaper” for young people than I can not stress to the Council strongly enough that this needs to be in the form of a website with a Twitter feed, associated Facebook page and a YouTube page so that you can up-load filmed news reports and interviews.
It is free to set up a Twitter, Facebook and YouTube account and none of this needs specialist knowledge. The cost of a simple information driven website is also very minimal these days.
It would be far more appropriate for the Council to run a competition for a young person to design the website and associated Twitter page, Facebook Group and YouTube porthole as this would be a far more interesting competition for young people, will save the council thousands of pounds and would be a far better way to launch the newspaper as it has far more mileage from a PR angle.
Launching Phillippa’s Friends – Supporting Children and Families During and After Family Breakdown.
For over 9 years now I have seen on a daily basis the effects of family breakdown.
After campaigning for nearly 6 years to change family law in this country, I realised that for every year I was campaigning and the Government was not listening, more children were suffering. I knew that the election promises of change from the Conservative Party and Liberal Democrats would not be a guarantee that things would change, and my children’s generation were going to be picking up the pieces.
The Conservative Government promised change in their election campaign. They promised that we would “hit the ground running” after the election and that changes would be made and a family law reform report outlining those changes would be ready by the autumn of 2010. Once in Government though they backtracked on this promise and opted instead to stick to the previous Labour Governments plans – a Family Law Review which by the time its interim report comes out will have seen 54,000 children loose contact with one or more parents.
We do not have time in this country for another review. That is why I am just going to get started on what is needed right now for children and families.
Thankfully I don’t have to wait for civil servants and review panels and reports and some of the answers come from the parents and children themselves. If you can’t re-educate the politicians and the courts then you have to re-educate the parent’s and their children before they become parents and cut off the supply of children being thrown into the river.
We will be offering a range of services but we will start by holding monthly surgeries.
This surgery is open to all parents, grandparents and other family members, who are experiencing problems surrounding contact, residence or family breakdown.
Places are available on a first come first served basis. We do not operate an appointment system. This first surgery will be held on:
Saturday 2nd October 2010
9.00am-2.00pm
26 The Abbey, Romsey, Hampshire SO51 8EJ
To register your attendance, click here, including your name, address and contact number.