Now we all know that if someone does harm against us and we stand up in court it has to be tested by a judge for its ability to be seen as beyond a reasonable doubt, many a frustrated lawyer has seen a 50-50 case lose because its reasonable doubt cannot be proven.

There are very stringent rules in evidence giving and gathering and failure to adhere to these usually deems it inadmissible or becomes wholly unreliable to its source, also anyone trying to force tampered evidence into the courtroom can face many legal charges ranging from perjurous conduct to perversion of the course of justice and falsifying evidence.

And rightly so, the judge being the lands arbitrator for HM Queen Elizabeth must have plain, simple and above all accurate evidence in front of him to carry out his judgments. The British and EU laws promise us justice, fair law and no discrimination and to a certain extent this does happen, however there are certain areas that are not being treated fairly or justly and child protection is the worst offender in this study.

Evidence over Opinion...?

Now this is a pretty national practice but no social worker is required by any law or statute to back up his or hers opinions, this means that a social worker can and will say "I believe abuse is happening" and not have to evidence it. I have personally suffered such instances and for two years I have still not been shown one scrap of evidence over any of their claims against me.

However, they have been hoisted by their own petard because they carried this over and continued to makes these claims in the court scenario, now they are in the position that they MUST back their accusations and I know that they cannot.

In the child protection conference the chairman will point out that this is not a courtroom, how right he is and social services bank on this exclusion from the normal laws, if you are having difficulties and many accusations levied at you, it will not matter one bit if you have evidence to the contrary as the social worker's "opinion" will carry over your "evidence". If you argue the toss then the chair will intervene on their behalf and cut you short claiming time constraints but this is a tactic to stop beleaguered social workers being put under pressure over their lack of evidence.

A social workers opinion is supposed to be a respected and balanced view of the current circumstances, it should refer to actual facts and not feelings or hunches as it does, there is a big campaign for evidence based social work and on their site they have indicated much resistance to this practice.

The special rules for social services within the data protection act protects them from prosecution, it states that a social workers opinion cannot be held to be incorrect as it is an "opinion" and therefore not fact, the DPA does not make allowances for the power such opinions carry as society relies on social services for their help in deciding child protection issues.

Therefore it is impossible to use the DPA to remove such "opinions" which are used by other agencies to rely on as fact, if a police officer of CAFCASS worker read a report that "Mr X is..." even though it is an opinion, the other agencies are unaware of its status as being an "opinion" and will act as if it is fact.

Social services use a scheme to exclude parents and make their play through something called the "professionals" meeting prior to the conference, they will not let the other agency members see anything from you, you are not represented in any form, this is a very biased way to swing agency support against you and again these agents will not question once anything social services says. These agencies are used to relying wholly on the paperwork from social services and will very rarely even question anything said in these reports but rubber stamp the decision

Now under the rules of a child protection conference, the decision should be made on the day once all reports and statements are in and that includes your own statement or report too, no-one seems to notice that absentees will vote before your evidence is heard, isn't that a bit odd? after all you could have the key to solving all of this once and for all and this proves beyond a doubt the real decision is made at the professionals meeting and therefore it also conclusively proves that you as a parent have not one say or opinion in the welfare, decision or care of your child.

This is stark evidence of unjust law and practice delivery, it is not acceptable in court or the usual formats for law so why does the government allow these secret courts to exist. Social services has become an elitist agency which ironically the govt relies upon for its feedback in all matter in child protection, it has unleashed some very strange thinking individuals into the policy making system and who benefits from this? The families it serves, the children, no it is only serving at this time social services.

Many cases of child removal, Paedophiles listing and more have been carried out purely on "opinion" and very little or no fact, if a social worker has used closed and leading questioning which is another practice that exists without reprisal, what chance does a child have when all it tries to do is please the adult which has been proven in many studies of false allegations. My wife was pilloried as a child abuser yet there was no evidence whatsoever to back this up except one extremely suspicious ad hoc interview which my child revealed to me that she was pestered into agreeing, the whole accusation was based on this:

SW: We know XXXX is hitting you and being nasty to you, will you tell me about it

Child: No response

SW: We know this person has told you to not to say anything, has she ever hit or smacked you

Child: Yes

SW: So how do you feel when XXXX beats you up....I know she hates you!

Child: Angry.. and so on

Notice the subtle switch in the questioning, now the child is agreeing that she was beaten up when she had failed to respond to the earlier question, was the child responding to being beaten up or was she emotionally responding to being told her stepmother hated her?, this was told to me, sentence by sentence in context by my eight year old daughter, now when I said to the social worker, is that all you have go? and I asked for a list of the questions, the head of the department intervened by claiming that this was in fact witnessed by another worker even though the social worker claimed she done it alone, this bears out with what my daughter said too, she was alone with an adult whom she tried to please by telling her what she wanted. Even absurder is the fact that no-one told the social worker that this witness had been invented and she carried on not knowing that her managers had cocked up in trying to back her up.

Interestingly the social worker in question had a serious complaint upheld against her for similar practices, however previous complaints are not viewed by their departments as valid and all are considered untrue and malicious even when independent bodies bring this sort of behaviour to the forefront.

Now this was presented to the conference as pure fact, any judge in the land would have a hard job finding a conviction on such an interview but the conference bought it hook, line and sinker. I prepared a statement to the conference on this matter and was totally disregarded as it contained proof and evidence that would have dispelled this absurd accusation, this statement was purposefully withheld from the other agencies to make sure the social workers opinion was upheld against my evidence.

The law must be changed, it is not good enough that a social workers opinion be relied upon in cases of child protection as the whole contributor of fact, the law must enforce that backing or corroborating evidence be supplied alongside such opinions and if there is no evidence then no further action can be taken. It is a serious thing to do, to take a child, therefore all avenues of possibility should be dispelled before proceeding, it is not good enough to have a hunch and remove on that, there must be clear and obvious indicators, proof of abuse and evidence to back this up.

Now lets look at this within the context of the Joint Police/Social services Interviews, it is divided into two parts, the police part and the social worker part, the policeman's duty is to record evidence using the strict guidelines and he is not allowed to use anything that resembles closed or leading questioning, if a child is unforthcoming or that child does not provide any evidence to abuse, the police part ends, now it is the social services turn. The rules have changed, your child is not protected any more and the social worker with the policeman as witness is allowed to use closed and leading questions and examples. He is allowed to pressurise your child and if the child breaks he has a policeman next to him as witness, now unlike the first part which is sound and video taped, the second part isn't so no-one knows what context the social worker uses to gain admissions from the child, however the policeman has been shown evidence that the child has said abuse is happening and of course the policemen will never question the extraction process. All he sees is the social worker cracking the case and he wants justice done, never mind that the social worker has possibly planted the notion in the first place, or that the social worker has used tactics normally used by military interrogators against a child. I think that the Joint Interview Process should be video and sound taped 100% of the time, there should not be any time that questioning is not recorded.

Did you know that any accusations whether proven or not are kept on file by social services, the slightest hint of wrongdoing and it is engraved forever on their files as it is put there as an opinion and therefore the DPA cannot be used to remove it, now when a person goes to seek work in a protected job with children, previous social work departments are asked for information and references to these files are used to portray a person rightfully or wrongfully as a child abuser. This is also used as a secret code to transmit negative data between departments and other agencies and it is very unlikely even under the DPA if you would ever see this file.

I have it from a protected source that if the DPA does force the issue then your file is tampered with, cleaned up and the secret dossier hidden away from prying eyes. The DPA warns the department before they are forced to comply and that gives them time to carry out their "doctoring of the books"

These people will risk criminal punishment to protect themselves - NEVER YOU THE PARENT!

IF YOU HAVE A SIMILAR STORY TO THIS - LET ME KNOW - THIS ABSURD AND DANGEROUS PRACTICE MUST BE HALTED - IT IS UNJUST - IT IS NOT LAWFUL - IT IS NOT IN THE CHILDS BEST INTEREST

RPSSUK