Suing social services

Barcode

I've thought on and off about this, as there is a long catalog of incidents, which in my opinion, indicate negligence. I'm seeking an opinion about the viability of this before I consider taking it further. The two main reasons:

(1) Failure to inform myself, my mother, my Grandfather and my sister that one of our brothers, who was adopted at the age of 2, developed cancer at the age of 8, which as it turns out, is hereditary. Last year, my 19 year old brother developed the same condition, and was told it had likely been growing since he was about 10 (the tumour was quite large when discovered).

My thinking is that had we all been informed, we could have been diagnosed earlier (for those of us carrying the mutation), and in my brothers case, the tumour would have been located at an earlier stage before it became life-threatening. One sister almost died during pregnany and ended up in intensive care for a week unconscious, had she known about the risks, it could have been managed, we later found out that with this condition, there is a 50% mortality rate in pregnancy if undiagnosed/untreated.

(2) Failure to inform me about the whereabouts of my two adopted brothers. This is not as straightforward as it sounds. We grew up together, I was there for the first ten years of their lives, and it was very upsetting for all of us to be seperated. By the time their adopted mother tracked me down, recognising the relationship was important, some damage had already been done, we're getting back on track, but no thanks to social services who did a brilliant job of seperating us.

(3) As far as I'm concerned, they kidnapped my last three siblings, but this is a hugely complex issue which is going to be hard to convey in a few posts, so I'll stick with (1) and (2) for now.

I am fed up with accepting their actions, as if they are right. I am not content to merely complain, which I have done numerous times. It's time these sorts of things were brought to attention.

Any ideas where to start? It may be wishful thinking, but I'm quite angry about their negligence at the moment.

Bossyboots

While I sympathise, I think this is all wishful thinking.

1) Once the child was adopted, social services would have no more input. There is no reason for them to have even known about the cancer. Even if the adoptive parents informed social services, they do not owe a duty of care to the rest of you and therefore it was not their responsibility to tell you (you have to leave out what common decency says and look at the legallities). You would only have a case against them in this respect if you can prove they did have a duty of care towards you and knew about the illness.

2) Did the care plan/adoption order provide for sibling contact? You had no legal right to know where the siblings were after adoption and any contact should have been arranged away from their home. The adoptive parent may have overstepped the mark legally by contacting you.

3) You will need to prove that removing the children from home was unjustified and the chances of you being able to do this are almost nil as they always have the stock answer that they put child protection issues first.

Providing social services have done everything legally, you have no grounds to sue them.

Unfortunately, it is all too common to hear people claiming social services have acted negligently because they do not agree with the decisions made. Ultimately the courts will have made decisions about the children based on the evidence. The children will have had a guardian appointed who would have been independent and the court will set a lot of store by what they say.

If you really think they have been negligent then I would suggest you seek specialist legal advice so that you can set out your whole case in detail. There is undoubtedly more to this than you can say on a forum and you could well be right that you have a case.


I have based my answers on cold hard facts. Please don't think I am supporting social services. I am just trying to answer your questions as they have been posed.

Barcode

I appreciate that. However, I'll elaborate as best as I can.

(1) Social services were informed of the cancer. They did, eventually, pass on the information to my two other brothers who were adopted together, but did not convey the information to those of us who were not in the system as it were.

(2) I don't know. I do know that for the first few months, I had weekly visits with my brothers, and all went well. I imagine if I go ahead with this, I'm going to have to ask for a copy of my file to try and find out (I've asked several times and had no answer). It is hard to understand that it's legally acceptable to seperate close siblings, one of my brothers in particular, was very upset by the seperation and became isolated and withdrawn. It is hardly in the interests of anybody to keep siblings apart.

(3) Just as well the adopted parent contacted me, other adoptive parents have contacted me too, with the result I have direct contact in the form of letters/photos with one, and the possibility of meeting when he's old enough to understand the situation, and occasional visits with three others. Goodness knows what social services are in their power to do, this is our own personal business, and we are all happy with the arrangement.

(4) As I said, I won't even go there with my view they were effectively kidnapped, this is a contentious claim, and I wouldn't know where to begin with getting evidence as it's all on my mothers file, I'm not considered, it does make my blood boil, but I realise that in this particular case, there is little I can do against the supposedly wise, benevolent social services.

Bossyboots

Okay, I can go a bit further on this now.

1). I am not sure that you could win on this point but there is a little bit of me that says you may just get somewhere. One problem is that the adopted child had a right of privacy and I am pretty sure that in fact their greater duty was to protect that. This is definitely something you should run by your legal adviser for a proper assessment of the situation.

2). Can I ask what you mean when your to "my file". I may be able to give you another option on this but I need to know what you mean. Unfortunately it is legally acceptable to separate siblings. The ideal situation is not to and the child care protocol dictates that social services should strive to place siblings together. Unfortunately, there are very few adoptive families able or willing to take more than two or three children. Also, sometimes one sibling can be disrupting a placement or might need more individual care. It might be decided in proceedings that a particular child should only be placed in a family of a certain composition. The permutations are almost endless. Usually there are psychological assessments where these issues arise. Unfortunately, the children themselves are often far to young to understand what is going on and don't understand why growns up take the decisions they do. As an honest answer to your last sentence under number 2, it very often IS in the best interests of siblings to keep them apart, but this is in no way meant to be a comment in relation to your situation.

3). The problem here is that there may have been very valid reasons for the siblings being split up. If it was only that they could not find one adoptive family then it is great that you are being put in contact. The adoptive parents would have been privy to the reasons behind the final care order in respect of the children with them so I really hope that they are not putting anyone at risk. Again, this is something only someone with knowledge of the situation can advise on. Each adoptive parent would have been closely matched to the needs of the child/ren. If there were other reasons for separating the children and there are any risks, then the children are at risk of being taken back into care. Where we are talking about young children, this is not your own personal business and there may well be things you do not know about. I truly hope these adoptive parents have considered the issues they would have been told about on adoption. Again, I am being factual and not criticising what has happened. If all the siblings are safe and benefit from the contact then this can only be a good thing and I do believe that adopted siblings should be able to maintain contact with each other where there is no specific reason why they should not.

4). Are you in touch with your mum?

Barcode

1) Might it be that a right of privacy could be maintained whilst still providing details about the condition? Undiagnosed and untreated, it is invariably fatal. I hope nobody is insane enough to suggest that a right to privacy supersedes the right to life, as this is what it amounts to with this condition. Similarly, if it had manifested itself in my mother, or siblings that I grew up with first, then presumably, if social services knew, they would one would think, be obliged to pass on the information to the adopted siblings.

2) I am supposing that details of any contact arrangements would be on file? As I said, all I know is that for a while, I had weekly visits with my siblings. It was never fully explained to me why they were stopped. One brother was moved to several different families whilst being fostered, without my knowledge. Again, it's hard to believe it was in the best interests of the three of us to keep us apart when prior to this, we enjoyed a very close relationship. The long-term effects on my brother are becoming more obvious.

3) I'm sorry if I haven't made myself clear. I meant that I feel my siblings were unfairly taken from my mother, not the first four, but the last three (this can sound very confusing I know). I understand that they likely had to go to different families (three with one, two with one, two with another), what I disagree strongly with is the alleged reasons for the adoption of the latter three. But this isn't something I'm going to take up, I would not know where to begin, and it is between my mother and social services, and my mother wants to forget about the whole situation.

4) Yes, but it's a strained r/ship.

Bossyboots

2) Sorry I missed a bit out before. I suspect that the court had ordered inter sibling contact to take place until the children were placed with their adoptive parents. Usually the contact would be decreased rather than simply stopped. It could also be that the powers that be considered that the contact was disruptive to their foster placements.

Were you taken into care as well? Were proceedings taken in relation to you? The reason I am asking this is that you would have had your own solicitor. I don't know how old you are, but if you are over 18 you are entitled to request your file from your solicitor. They may not still have it, but it is worth a try. You would have had legal aid for this so it should not be too difficult to trace where your file is. This may have information on it that sets your mind at rest or helps your cause. The other thing I was going to suggest is that your mother asks her solicitors for her files. These will also have all the reports and paperwork filed in the proceedings which may be a far easier set to obtain than going through social services.

Barcode

I'm 25.

It really is strange to think it best for sibling contact to cease. I could understand it if the influence was likely to be disruptive, but in our case, there is only regret that we missed out on a few years of one anothers lives. The powers that be seemed to have a limited understanding of this, or if they did, had rules to follow. My siblings, their adoptive mother and I, all agree that it's now much better with social services out of the picture. I'm sure our social worker had good intentions, and people thought they were doing the best thing, but to eradicate ten years of history is just very, very wrong in my view. However, I accept that legally things are different (which doesn't make the law right).

I was not taken into care, nothing happened in relation to me as I lived with my Grandfather. I suspect this is one of the reasons why I was never updated, since I was not 'in the system'.

I could ask my mother to request details, but I suspect this will be a no-go.

Whilst I think in principle, what I want to do is just and right, I accept that in reality, it's likely to be very difficult. I'm just getting some ideas that's all and appreciate your advice.

Bossyboots

Are any of your siblings over 18? They will all have had solicitors of their own (some may have had the same if they were part of the same proceedings) so you have those avenues to go down as well, if not now then in the future.

It is laudable that you credit social services with good intentions. I will be totally frank and say that that credit could very well be misplaced. I'm afraid I am not a fan of social workers and I base that on personal experience, not a knee jerk reaction. However, they are answerable to the courts so if they have acted outside their ambit, they will be taken to task and can be ordered to change the position. It is certainly true though that the courts are far less accepting of the failings of social services and local authorities than they used to be.

Unfortunately social services can also put their own interpretation on the issue of contact because, just as in private law cases, the overriding principle is the welfare of the child and they can stop contact almost willy nilly on that basis. Unfortunately, you don't appear to have been told that you could challenge the stopping of contact if it breached the care plan agreed in the care proceedings or at the very least you should have been told why it was stopped. I am afraid I have found many social workers to be rather bullying and even cruel in their dealings with the birth families of children in their care. Because of the tight financial controls, local authorities are pressed to get fostered children off their books and into adoptive placements to save money.

When I read your first post I was concerned that this was another total misunderstanding of what social services do and why children can be taken into care. As you have explained more, you have come across as so caring of your siblings and genuinely wanting answers. I don't know whether you really have grounds to sue them, but you certainly have some answered questions even if everything was followed to the letter of the law.

If you want to take matters further, you do need to do as much research as you can into the proceedings taken in respect of the children. Technically you have no right to see the papers as they are confidential. However, if your mum was to obtain her solicitors file or any of the other children did so, they can ask you for advice and confide in you in relation to these. Ultimately it may turn out to be the case that only one of, or all, the siblings are in a position to take action rather than you.

I don't think I would say the law is wrong in respect of the separation of siblings. Not every family has the relationships your appears to have had. I feel that very often the law is wrongly applied or financial considerations become the primary driving force. There are a few reasons why it is better for children to be adopted and not long term fostered and the general feeling is that if that means separating siblings then that is the way it has to be. However, it is not the case that every split sibling adoption means no contact and many adoptive parents are only too happy to ensure that the children placed with them maintain a relationship with their siblings.

However, I am certain that there are siblings who benefit from not seeing their siblings ever again. Some siblings are abused by their brothers or sisters, either physically, emotionally and/or sexually. A child with severe psychological difficulties can progress far better when placed as the only child in a household. I do feel though that except in the cases where abuse is present, one of the overriding objectives should be to allow siblings to maintain contact on a regular basis. Very often though the need to place them in a permanent family means that sibling contact has to take a back seat.

The other consideration is that although it might be right to separate siblings at a young age, as they grow up then contact might be more appropriate. As I said, young children do not really understand the nuances around them. These days adopted children are given life story books about their birth families. I think you might be talking about an era when this was a relatively new thing or not even existent.

thesaint

Can I also add that it may be possible for your mum to get the files held by Social Services about her and any children in her care.
My local authority do this, they have about 6 weeks to provide the information. They will omit any information deemed too 'sensitive'.
My local authority require a written request.

Barcode

Three of my younger siblings are over 18, I think only one of them might want to take any action, and that's my brother, the one diagnosed with cancer last year. Understandably, he feels very angry. At first, he was led to believe it was not a serious condition, well, we had never heard the word 'pheochromocytoma' before, so didn't think much of it, until we discovered it's associated with a gene mutation that causes the malignant variety, and it's incurable, so you see my worry.

Now, it may be that, owing to the rarity of the condition, nobody thought it was serious, or that it was a minor thing (after all, my brother who had a tumour removed at 8 recovered fine). I am trying to think of the best possible explanation here, as it galls me to think information about a life-threatening condition may have been deliberately witheld.

I agree with you, that when abuse is present, it is better for siblings to be seperated. In our case, I became more or less their primary carer at the age of 13/14, taking them to school, cooking them meals, taking them places and so on as our mother was, at that time, in a very bad way (hence the adoption). Obviously, we developed a very close relationship. I do understand the need to integrate with a new family, but I don't understand why a relationship that is obviously beneficial to all parties was thwarted by a social worker.

My sister did ask to see her file not so long ago, I think I might ask her to do again, photocopy the information and send it to me, same with my brother. I might ask my mother, but she has shut-down on the subject, and that's going to make things very difficult in regards to obtaining factual information.

As I said, this is speculation at this point. A few years ago I did not understand things so well, but the latest incident with not being told about the genetic predisposition to cancer is alarming to say the least. I do think the responsible parties need to be held to account.

As the incidents are so serious, I think the complaint has to be more than just a letter, but I don't know where to begin, this thread has at least given me some ideas which are much appreciated.

Morglin

I used to work for a Child Protection Unit (not as a social worker), and much as I sympathise with you, I think your chances of ever being able to sue anyone are negligible.

Unless you can prove total negligence/malice or total incompetence, a court will probably throw it out.

Social Services will always say "they had the best interests of the children" at heart, and acted in good faith.

Courts tend to support this view, even if mistakes were made.

Any social workers/managers involved in your family have probably long gone from their jobs, and files may be incomplete.

Most successful legal cases are where a child has been abused in a care home - and that's more a compensation issue than just suing them.

Still, it may be worth going to talk to a solicitor more experienced in these things.

Good luck.

Lin