I recently met Clare Scanlan who is part of a campaign to protect children from legalised abuse, and she asked me to highlight her cause. The issue concerns parents who leave a domestic abusive relationship to protect their children only to be forced by the Children and Family Court Advisory Support Service (CAFCASS) & family law courts to hand over their children for contact with the very people they are trying to protect them from, therefore placing them at risk.Having looked into this there is invariably two sides to each story or case, but there does appear to be a loophole in the system that needs addressing, and an e-campaign has been set up on the Number10.gov website (see link below)
CAFCASS is independent of the courts, social services, education and health authorities and all similar agencies. It is a non-departmental public body accountable to Ed Balls, MP, the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families in the Department for Children, Schools and Families.
The campaign is to highlight concerns that both CAFCASS and the courts are putting the rights of the abusive parents before the needs and rights of the child that needs protecting, often without even doing the relevant checks on the abusive parent. It also asks why is this being allowed to happen and that it must be stopped now, before yet another child becomes another sad statistic
The campaign message is:
Please help us parents who had the courage to leave an abusive relationship, protect our vulnerable children. An abusive parent is NOT better than no parent!
Please find the links below to the facebook group, an e-petition on the No.10.gov website, and the netmums forum that started all this.
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