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We’re left in the dark over secret world where children are victims of statistics
THE more this newspaper pokes around in the undergrowth of the tragic case of Salma ElSharkawy, the more it becomes evident that the suffocating secrecy built around family courts and social workers is largely at the root of the problem.
Hope was raised by the former Secretary of State for Justice, Lord Falconer, who proposed to make courts more open to the press while protecting the privacy of those involved in the proceedings.
Then Lord Falcolner got cold feet.
Now, the cord of secrecy around family courts may be pulled even tighter.
Extaordinarily enough, if these new proposals were in force today this newspaper would not be able to report on the tragedy of Salma.
How can justice flourish in the darkness of secrecy?
In many cases, justice is undoubtedly done.
But, equally, as depressing stories come to this newspaper from distraught parents day after day, it seems evident that perhaps justice is anot always being done.
Voices of dissent have been heard among the judiciary, police and prison authorities all unhappy with the unintended consequences of many of Blair’s new laws on criminal offences.
In prisons today thousands of men and women serving indeterminate sentences for relatively minor offences could be freed if Home Office blue-sky thinkers had bothered to pencil in the need to recruit more therapists to staff courses in jails.
This wasn’t done – hence today’s prison explosion.
Similarly, in the more complex cases of child care, we wonder whether Blair’s relish for targets bedevilled matters.
Targets, for instance, have been placed on local authorities to get more children adopted – what sort of effect is this having on often overworked social workers?
It’s proper that children at serious risk should be put into safe care, but with targets bearing down on social workers is there not equally a danger that in what can become panic stations, mistakes are made?
In Camden the rate of children placed in adoption, apparently, went up by 50 per cent from 2000 to 2005, a significant increase.
If child care could be publicly put under the microscope it may be found that the pressure to speed up adoptions is of little consequence.
But child care is wrapped around with secrecy.
This, inevitably, breeds suspicion which, in turn, feeds despair among the parties involved – and anger.
There are many corners of this society that the authorities prefer to be kept in the dark. Child care is one of them. It is time the lights were turned on.
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