The Link For The Forced Adoption Survey 2002–24 And Ongoing Record
See also : QUICK LAUNCH VID
The Record So Far :
May 7th 2024 : The survey explains itself on the first page started by “Mothers and Others” . Thus (in italic) :
“This is a : “Mothers and Others” Citizen Survey on:”UK Forced Adoptions 2002–2024" It will also generate information on UK Care Order experiences of parents too, which are often interwoven into such matters.
We are gathering experiences which socially “unseen” parents have of Child Care systems that have resulted in them having children taken away, and put on UK Care Orders, or Adopted Orders, often non-consensually and sometimes coercively.
This survey is GDPR (Data Protection) compliant. All information gathered, will be treated under those terms and any information given in it accidentally identifying anyone will be anonymized and erased. We have NO intention of collecting emails or names, or processing personal data that may trace any individuals.
This is NOT a funded or sponsored initiative. It is driven by a community of Parents and Children affected by “Forced Adoption” and/or Child Care Order practices in the UK.
Those aiding the design of this survey have been affiliated to bodies dealing with court crisis matters. You will find many such groups of lay people on Twitter/Facebook , if you look up “court crisis”.
Help and advice has been given by : https://www.takenuk.com
“Adoptee Watch” a small org. has also been the driving force to aid the survey into existence : see : https://twitter.com/Paul_B_Tovey
After results are collected, this survey will be for community use by any members of the public. It will be designated for use too as: “Creative Commons” after it is checked out and made public.
We aim to take this surveyed body of experiences to MP’s, Media and others, as reports and requests for a new Inclusive UK Forced Adoption Public Inquiry for 2002–2024. We want reform of policies to prevent the State violating family lives, and to re-empower protective parents forced to give up children.
It is quite clear to us all, there also needs to be a wider “Care Order Public Inquiry” for abuses to be exposed of systems and bodies involved.
SPECIAL NOTE : If you have Learning Disabilities and find this survey difficult, please DO ask for someone to help you to do this survey.
For any hurts triggered by this survey we are asking that you consider support like contact with a confidential body like Samaritans :
https://www.samaritans.org/how-we-can-help/contact-samaritan/
You may wish to try others for help using your best judgement Please DO remain cautious about your confidentiality:
https://www.umhan.com/resources/104-new-old-peer-support-groups
For other resources: please look up: BACP, MIND, RSVP (Rape and Sexual Violence Project (Birmingham UK )) and DO ASK for signposting to other SAFE services in your localities.
Be cautious about your confidentiality since the State has recruited even some Charities to report-back to it.
Please also see : https://rapecrisis.org.uk/find-a-centre/ which may signpost you to an appropriate help organisation regarding trauma, re-activated by Domestic Violence etc.
This survey is LONG because of the nature of the issues. Do take a rest when you can and continue after that if you need to.”
The survey so far was posted across Facebook groups and on Twitter “X” .. It is intended to gather experiences for democratic use in showing up Forced Adoption Order and/or Forced Care Order experiences of the UK system. It’s a lay-pilot for further work but importantly it’s also DIY democracy because no-one else seems to be highlighting the misery and pain enough of those affected. That human pain needs responding to, because the Court and Social Work system with their policies and practices appear to create anti stability and anti family trends. Those State bodies need either abolition or very serious reforms. The survey may well help that when results are pointed at politicians.
May 8th 2024 Update :
Very brief report 28 on the survey . 17 Care Order Folk and 11 Adoption without consent . Last night it hit the 25 mark .
May 8th 9 pm. Update :
We are at 35 responses . One person with special interest on a region of the UK has asked for a selective filter to be done if possible .. We are looking into that with TakenUK who we have been working with . Natasha Phillips Journalist who has a Journo Blog at Researching Reform has also supported the story so far ..
May 9th 8.25 pm. Update:
We are at 41 responses . Two spikes on the survey by region are South Wales and North West .. It’s still a small survey though and early days ..
May 11th 3.30 pm Update :
We now have 48 respondents .. We’ve had interest from someone learning journalism and with a Twitter following of over 10k “@Phoebejoy1611” . She has an interest in South Wales figures.
We’ve also got someone who purchased some advertising for us “@Martin-Newbold” . Martin sorted out an Ad on Wordpress promoting the survey using his Citizen Journo-blog there called: “The Stealing Of Emily”
A conversation was had too on the May 10th with @NeilJMcevoy also on Twitter who is keen to aid people with Care Order and Court problems in South Wales and is running for the Senned. He is the leader of “Propel-Wales” .
May 12th 9.30 pm (UK time):
Today the survey speeded up. There was a lot of promotion across FB Groups and individual contact with some people to create messages about the survey .. Some were done by voice/taped messages and that was helpful ..
By 9.30 pm the survey stood at 58 people over about 5 days.
May 14th 8.00 pm (UK Time) :
By the 14th May we had offers of more help on Twitter and other places. Legal Action For Women (Support Not Separation) contacted me and wanted the survey link on their site ..Yes was the answer to that .. A citizen Journo on Twitter took a prelim statement off me about the “purpose of the survey” . We also achieved 70 respondents on the survey and TakenUK used Tik Tok to push the vids and survey link..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOrhSnR-QWc
That’s an example (above) of one of the follow up vids ..
May 15th 10.20 p.m.
The survey went to 79 but I did a promo image at 78 . A poetry film was produced HERE and shown on Facebook and Twitter for promo and in fact empathic connection which is important in the community of so many hurt people.
Researching Reform , a journalists blog run by Natasha Phillips published a short poem and image pertaining to the struggles of showing up the pain that is often inherent in Adoption and Care Orders the survey is examining.
May 17th 8.30 pm. UK Time:
The video says most of what needs to be recorded today .. We have 84 on the survey .
May 19th 4.00 pm UK Time
Today we have 94 on the survey .. It took a quick rush suddenly .. Lots of people are trying to support it across platform and, good on all of them indeed .. It may be actually slower than it should be even though it has 94 people on it after only 12 days, because some parents have really been intimidated by the Family Courts and threatened with contempt proceedings if they speak out the names of their own children.. The UK law often prevents them from doing that. However they are safe to create anonymous voices of their own lives without “identifiers” ..Hence the survey.
Martin Newbold ( on X) writer of “The Stealing Of Emily” paid for some more Ad-time on Wordpress.
“The Fox Blog” ( on X and substack) published a very good article today helping everyone I think, with a time-line on it of how Forced Adoptions have evolved more from 2002 onwards, showing the way too how Family Courts have evolved as a deliberate construction. It’s a good article .. The timeline could easily be built on too with new date and year inserts, for rapid understanding of all issues and political mind sets behind policies.
May 25th 10.43 p.m. UK time
Moved on a bit — started 19 days ago .. Still promoting it on FB and Twitter.
May 31st : 19.53 pm UK Time :
This is where we are … Slower going now .. We’ll see about it picking up the pace later with some extra exposure here and there ..
June 10th 2024 8.15 UK Time :
The survey has moved up again to 134 (in fact I just checked and it’s 135) and I only have a picture for 134 with “SurveyDragon” aiding .. We could do with a lots more on it but it needs careful pushing and marketing to the right people .. Twitter, FB and Tik Tok are good but there are some more groups I think that need to be targeted .. It’s a constant push to create attention so that the survey creates links enough to pick up attention. There’s a lot of competition for attention.
June 14th 2024 1.pm UK Time
Yesterday I watched 5 hours of conferencing arranged by Shera Family on Twitter . It echoed so many pained experiences we are picking up of the dynamic triangle of influences of damaging Family Courts , Social Workers and lack of Early Help which means cash and other resources to stabilize mothers and family lives before it gets to Family Court for damaging Care Orders or worse — Forced Adoptions. Professor Jane Spinak gave a talk about the US history of Family Courts and the way they’ve converted themselves into a punishment machine away from a therapeutic one. UK has serious parallels to all that. Our survey though not finalized shows that too.
Importantly the survey is showing up a lack of process being followed at “Public Law Outline” stages .. Sometimes called “Pre-legal-Order” which is a kind of final way the Social Workers and Local Authority engage the family to negotiate a way forwards so parents can keep the child/ren. Today it’s noted that the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory are cautious saying some of the same things .. My god you would think they would have been on this years ago .. “Catching up” if you an observatory is just so sad ..
Where are we now on our survey ? .. For a few days at 137.. We have more work to do to get to 150 it seems ..
18th June 2024 2.30 pm. UK Time
LINK to the Story Of How The Labour Party Obfuscated The “Forced Adoption” Truths Of 2002–2024
23rd June 2024 12.46 pm UK Time :
A few developments … The survey got to 139 (only got a pic for 138 though) so it’s moved a little .. I have been exploring the cornered groups where I can only say the State has terrorised some people into silence and hurts. Really I have met them. The UK has a very very ugly side to it when it comes to taking children into Care ..
I see also a petition too on “Change.org regarding the need for Family Court reforms… I will put the link here ..
(QUOTED) “Why this petition matters
Started by Sarah Clare
Family courts are known to be producing worrying decisions affecting (and often destroying) family life, inflicting trauma which can often be life-long.
The government’s own “Harm Report” — produced by the Ministry of Justice less than a decade ago — showed shocking findings in domestic abuse cases and very poor outcomes for many adult and child victims in private law cases.
Other research similarly found worrying trends in family court for many families affected by public law / child protection proceedings with life-changing outcomes — “Adoption and child protection trends for children aged under five in England: Increasing investigations and hidden separation of children from their parents” — Andy Bilson, Elizabeth Hunter Munro -
findings :
•”an increase of over 35% in the rate of children adopted or investigated for child protection concerns before the age of five in 2016–17 compared to 2011–12
•There was a 60% increase in rate of children subject of unfounded child protection investigation in 2016–17 compared to 2011–12
•1 in every 16 children was investigated before the age of 5 and 1 in every 38 children had an unfounded investigation
•The rate of five-year-old children separated from parents almost doubled since 2000 when the numbers in care, adoption and special guardianship are combined
•Where adoption increased the most there was a larger than average increase in involvement in child protection at all levels”.
There needs to be urgent change to prevent unnecessary proceedings and unnecessary separations, and to improve outcomes for victims of abuse in family courts.
We believe the key factor which could bring change would be an end to the current rules of confidentiality in family courts, as these prevent scrutiny in individual cases (and more generally) and allow very poor decisions by social workers and courts to go generally unnoticed and not commented upon by either families or media (due to the unlawfulness of them offering any criticism publicly).
This not only perpetuates the situation of these professionals being able to act with impunity / without scrutiny — often acting uncaringly and mendaciously — but the secrecy also compounds and exacerbates the suffering of the families affected, who rightly feel gagged.
More importantly, poor decisions would undoubtedly be massively reduced if national media — such as the BBC — were able to examine cases publicly (obviously with limits in place so that no parties can be named and so that case details which could identify the parties are not disclosed).
Secret justice is no justice at all. The appeal system is inadequate to address the problems of family court justice as it is not accessible to the majority of affected families for social, emotional and financial reasons. (The appeal system is stacked against traumatised families — for example, offering only three weeks for families to realise that an appeal system is open to them, to get advice from others when lawyers very often discourage appeals, and to recover sufficiently from shocking court decisions before finding enough financial and emotional resources to start the complex legal process of appealing).
As Jeremy Bentham said “Where there is no publicity there is no justice” and “Publicity is the very soul of justice. It is the keenest spur to exertion, and the surest of all guards against improbity”
(END OF QUOTED SECTION)
24th June 2024 18.40 pm UK Time:
Today the survey went up to 145 — I only had an illustration for 143 .. We promoted it further on hard to reach groups and people who have placed themselves beyond the reach of the State-others who have it seems spied on them . I do not doubt it since I have heard from someone directly who had several Social Workers (SW’s) names involved in tracking parents of kids the State had “taken” .. The issue being the SW’s were party to the parents having legal gags on them denying their right to identify their children (1989 Children Act Privacy Rights for the child)
28th June 2024 20.20 pm UK time :
It’s moved on to coming up to 160 respondents and we still need it to climb. It’s likely to move on more since a lot of people are sharing it but one barrier is fear caused by the system itself hurting people and convincing them they have to remain legally “Gagged”… We have been making inroads into that though by anon-contact with groups in corners on the web ..It’s a great shame so many parents are that fearful of what has become a secretive and cruel Family Court UK system .
5th July 2024 14.05 p.m. UK Time
There are sudden little surges after no activity and it’s still the same pattern of those of us active on these matters reaching into the “corners” of other’s who have been really wounded by the system keeping them quiet and often legally gagged. Anonymous GDPR compliant surveys though are outside of the UK law’s claws which are very draconian in “emotional” effect and have created a culture of fears ..By the 5th July many people have been in-reached to and many are still there frozen by part fear and helpless inability to do the survey… Some people are truly that vulnerable and dis-enabled by the State ..We continue to pick up numbers ..
