SHERA Research Group and University of Manchester Health and Justice Conference 11th June 2024, Dr Elizabeth Dalgarno – director & founder of SHERA

Tracey Norton of Support Not Separation and Disabled Mothers’ Rights Campaign and Cristel Amiss of Women Against Rape and Women of Colour/Global Women’s Strike spoke at this event about the injustices we face in family court and the damage caused by the forced separation of children from their mother or other primary carer as we fight for change.

Please watch the conference here to listen to our speeches:

Speech by Tracey Norton of Support Not Separation and Disabled Mothers’ Rights Campaign for The Global Conference: Health & Justice approaches to violence vs women & girls on 11 June 2024

Really glad to be at this important conference and thanks to Shera for inviting me

I’m a mum with a painful invisible disability and I have a severely disabled son who was falsely ripped away from me, not because I was guilty of harming him but to hide a hospital’s medical malpractice which nearly killed him and also so that the funding we’d won for his care at home could be stopped.  I was dragged through family court, and he was placed into an inaccessible and inappropriate hostel where he couldn’t shower for 2 years because there was no accessible bathroom. His Christmas “dinner” was a slice of dry bread, and he spent the day alone in his room with no sheets or blankets on his bed. I did not eat that Christmas, the thought of eating food whilst he was starving was too much for me to bear. He was denied an education and medical treatment. And when his grandmother died the social workers told him if he attended her funeral, they would have me, his mother, arrested so he was denied the right to grieve and say goodbye.

When we eventually got him home, the abuse he had suffered left him traumatised, something he has not recovered from. My smiling funny child had lost his love of life. This is what’s called the ‘care system’.

We know that thousands of children like my son are taken from loving mothers in ‘secret’ courts, not because these children have actually been harmed but because funding for support for mothers and children has been cut in favour of the privatised removal industry making millions in profits on the back of children’s misery.

SNS started in 2017 when it published a dossier, Suffer the Little Children and their Mothers – although LAW which co-ordinates it had been going since 1982. SNS includes organisations of single mothers, women of colour and asylum seekers/refugees, women with disabilities, rape survivors, breastfeeding advocates, kinship carers, psychotherapists, men and former social workers, committed to defending mothers and children’s rights against unwarranted separation and the devaluing of the mother-child relationship.

We work closely with the Scottish Kinship Care Alliance and with Give Us Back Our Children in the US – both are part of SNS – and with mothers in other countries who share our aims. The Disabled Mothers’ Rights Campaign, organised by Winvisible, brings disabled mothers together to defend our rights to have a family and to keep our children.Our Charter of Rights demands council support, not discrimination, and that disabled mothers should never to be cut off benefits.

Since 2017 we’ve held monthly pickets outside the Central Family Court in London and a twitter storm (@NotSeparation) as well as monthly collective self-help meetings in the Crossroads Women’s Centre where we’re based with mums from all around England and Wales fighting their cases, as well as online. Mothers exchange tactics drawing on their own experiences and the collective experience of the organisations based at the centre, esp WAR, WinVisible, WOC in GWS, all committed grassroots women’s organisations. We also have a blog and an online self-help guide.

Our starting point is to demand recognition of the relationship between mother and child because mothers are most often children’s primary carers, loving and protecting them from the time they are in the womb, and this establishes a special bond between us, and leads to huge trauma when it’s broken. Mothers are being tortured by the constant threat that our children could be taken, and by the devastation when they are taken, compounded by the trauma the children face – which is hardly ever mentioned or considered. Mothers who suffer domestic violence are often too afraid to ask for help for fear that the father will use the family courts to have the children removed and even to get custody of them. Many mothers have committed suicide after social services took their children.

The crisis in the family courts is best illustrated by the experiences of the hundreds of mothers that we’ve been in touch with over the past 8 or so years, and which we’ve published in our Dossier.

94% were single mothers, mostly on low incomes; 

83% had suffered domestic violence; 

42% had mental health issues

40% were women of colour and/or immigrant;

17% had a physical disability, which was used against them.  

Nearly all were fighting over contact with their children They were trying to stop violent fathers having unsafe unsupervised contact, or to have contact or be reunited with children in foster care as a result of hostile social workers and judges.    

Over half the mothers had had their children removed, including 10% whose children had been adopted without their consent.  This shocking figure gives lie to the idea that forced adoptions are historic, they are in fact a present-day policy of punishment and social engineering.

Over 4m children now live in poverty in the UK and child “neglect” ie poverty is the single biggest target of the corporate parent, together with domestic violence, which is also connected to poverty and financial dependence which stops women escaping.There are over 84,000 children in care in England, a disproportionate number of children of colour (including those taken because their immigrant parents have no recourse to public funds) and disabled children often taken from disabled mothers. Children in the poorest neighbourhoods are at least 10 times more likely to be in care than children in the most affluent ones.

Local authorities and professionals refuse to implement Section 17 of the 1989 Children Act, or Section 12 of the Care Act if the mother has a disability, which entitle mothers to financial or other support to enable children to stay with their families.Whilst spending on keeping families together has been cut by 50% to £2.2bn, since 2015 spending on removing children has increased by 30% to £9bn.   As S17 resources have shrunk, being disabled, being a victim of domestic violence (which disproportionately affects disabled women), as well as being young, of colour or having grown up in care or living on low incomes – can all be flagged up by professionals as a “safeguarding issue”. This means that mothers get referred to social services, where we don’t get the support or help we or our children need but come up against preconceived ideas and prejudices thinly disguised as ‘concern for the wellbeing of our children, who can then be taken from us.

Some mothers, are falsely accused with inventing or exaggerating their children’s disabilities (even when they have a genetic illness inherited from a parent) which is described as Fabricated Induced Illness, or their child’s behaviour is blamed on the mother’s bad parenting rather than on the child’s disability. The problem starts with Child Protection and so called ‘parental blame’ which is really ‘blame the mother’. Unlike mothers who are constantly investigated, blamed, and punished, “child protection” professionals have near-total impunity. As do social workers who harmed children by forcibly removing them from loving families, those who abused children in residential homes, and police who didn’t act to protect children.

The increasing privatisation of children’s services has led to fostering and adoption becoming a highly profitable industry worth millions, which depends on a continual “supply” of children. By identifying more children as ‘at risk’, children’s social care is driving its own demand. A recent report found that the largest 20 independent providers of children’s social care made profits of more than £300 million in 2022. Not surprising since they charge 200,000 per child per year!This is having an impact on adult services which are being cut for lack of money and where young disabled women are placed in old peoples care homes rather than have their needs met at home. This is obscene profiteering from children and mothers’ misery., and a licence to rape and abuse. Let’s not forget the thousands of children raped and abused at Shirley Oaks, Rotherham, Hesley Group, while in state care.Disabled children are 5 times more likely to be abused in care as non-disabled and they are moved far away from their families and friends into locked institutions where they neither get the care, education, or support that a mother originally asked for. While mothers are under scrutiny, what happens to children once they are in the hands of the ‘corporate parent’ is covered up by layers of professionals.

There is now publicity about privatisation but no-one is asking why are the kids in care in the first place. That is the crucial question.

Why are children taken into care when the outcomes in care are horrendous? Shouldn’t the family courts take this into account when they make their decisions?  Care leavers are are over ten times more likely than their peers to be not in education, employment or training by 21; when they leave care, 50% will be in the criminal justice system by age 21; 25% will end up in prison; 50% have mental distress; 70% die prematurely and are 20 times more likely to die by age 25.

Last year we worked closely with Channel 5 on its national news programme where a disabled mother in our network spoke movingly about having her child forcibly adopted, and her daughter who had just reunited with her described the trauma of being separated from the mum who fought so hard to keep her.Ch5 released new research with the shocking finding that parents with a learning disability are 54 times more likely to have their children taken into care. We have also worked on a second C5 news program on Fabricated and Induced Illness and mother blame so our voices are being slowly heard.

Whilst I wont repeat what some of the other speakers have said about private law it was a big victory when the MOJ’s Harm Report published June 2020 found that women face a number of barriers in the family courts including “sexism, racism and classism”.  This confirmed all our experiences – and we would add disability discrimination.  But I must mention that mothers fighting to protect children face a hostile environment in the family courts because the misogynist fathers’ lobby is embedded in CAFCASS, the body supposed to promote children’s welfare, and they are good friends with the President of the Family Division who praises them and speaks at their events.Children have been removed and placed in care showing fathers were never interested in their children, just control.

But things are changing – there is a very different climate now from when SNS began in 2017. Campaigning by grassroots groups like ours and mothers fighting our individual cases and supporting each other are resulting in some victories, including the partial opening of the family courts.

We are calling for a Care Income for mothers and other primary carers so that the bond between mother and child is respected, the work of caring for children is financially recognised and no mother can be accused of neglect because she is poor. This would protect mothers and children from professionals abusing their powers and acting as if they know best, as if the children belong to the state and not to their families, and prevent the institutionalisation of children and the lifelong trauma it causes.

We will not stop till this system is changed, the courts are open, prioritise support to mothers to keep children and families together, and give money to mothers who do the work of caring for and raising children. We are building a movement of mothers to change the priorities of children’s social care so they stop abusing their power and profiting for their abuse. Mothers and children have the legal right to financial and other support and we are determined that we will get it, and we will shut down the child removal industry and stop forced adoptions. The brutal separation of children from their mothers and other primary carers must end.

Speech by Cristel Amiss of Women Against Rape and Women of Colour/Global Women’s Strike for The Global Conference: Health & Justice approaches to violence vs women & girls on 11 June 2024

VAWG has always been an urgent issue for grassroots women’s anti-rape and anti-racist movements nationally and internationally.

• Since we began in 1976, WAR has been multi-racial and provides rights information, support and advocacy. We take up individual cases on the basis of collective self-help. We work with women fighting for justice, asylum and compensation, and this informs and shapes all our campaigns.
• For years we’ve challenged the appalling way the police and courts handle rape and DV, their sexism and racism, particularly made visible by those of us who are women of colour.
• We work with survivors of any age, race and nationality, immigrant and migrant, seeking asylum and those who are refugees, women with disabilities, trans women and sex workers.
• WAR works closely with other self-help orgs based at Xrds: AAWG – a self-help group of women asylum seekers from all over the world who have fled war, starvation and the climate crisis./ECP/LAW/WoC/SnS/WinV – having orgs we can easily consult with makes all the difference.

Some of WAR’s history is here https://womenagainstrape.net/archives-all-our-campaigns/

• Our 15-year campaign spearheaded the movement that changed the law to make rape in marriage a crime, won in 1991;
• In 1995 with ECP & LAW we set a legal precedent in bringing the first successful private prosecution for rape, after the CPS refused to prosecute a rapist of two sex workers. He got an 11-year sentence.
• In 1997 we won a key ruling at an immigration tribunal which established that a victim of gang rape seeking asylum was not “unwilling to give evidence but was unable to do so”.  The Tribunal accepted our expert report & a psychiatric/medical report of the rape trauma syndrome she had suffered.
• Over last 20+ years we’ve helped to get rape and sexual violence recognised as forms of torture and therefore grounds for asylum

Current context: what women and girls are up against and it’s grim:

• It’s clear that rape is being further deprioritised – conviction rate has fallen from an already shockingly 6.5% to 1% — practically decriminalised.
• Police abuse their powers – even before the abduction, rape, and murder of Sarah Everard, we campaigned with women like Jackie Berkley raped in 1985 in a Manchester police cell.  Following a public outcry which included women officers and wives, a report by Baroness Casey confirmed that the police were institutionally racist, misogynist and homophobic – sharing obscene selfies taken with the bodies of murdered Black sisters Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman. She also confirmed that rape is deprioritised in comparison to armed police units.  Armed Met police officer, David Carrick pleaded guilty to 49 offences against multiple women including multiple rapes. We’ve called for officers who commit violent sexual and racist crimes to be sacked and prosecuted, but most are still in the job.
• Following public protests about the strip search of Child Q in 2020, the Children’s Commissioner in 2021 and 2023 reported on the widespread strip searching of Children as young as eight had been strip searched,Black children in England and Wales were up to 6 times more likely to be strip searched when compared to national population figures. This is a racist child abuse. https://womenagainstrape.net/tell-the-home-office-the-police-must-stop-strip-searching-our-children/#more-9438

Half of all women murdered are killed by their partners often after multiple calls to police for help. Figures from the Metropolitan Police show of the 21 femicide victims recorded by the force in 2022, nine victims (43%) were black despite being just 13.5% of population.

• As Liz Dalgarno’s research found, 5 mothers had died as a result of the biased and traumatic family court process, including 3 who committed suicide.

What we do: our support services shape our campaigns

WAR & WOC have worked together for years with individual women and girls of colour to get protection and justice.

We call out racism of police which is often most visible when women of colour seek help eg – the dv we suffer is treated even less seriously by the police who don’t come when called or dismiss domestic violence as “cultural differences” especially if we are Asian or African. Or they arrest our Black partner instead of the perpetrator. A local Somali Muslim mother who was racially abused and punched in the face by her white racist neighbor in front of her children, was a classic case.  The police came – saw her bruised and broken face – and tried to arrest her Somali husband instead of her attacker.  It took us two days to get the police to take a proper statement and the real attacker was jailed for GBH – but not racially aggravated because the CPS didn’t present the evidence. 

We also work in SnS to challenge racist and discriminatory practices by social services who often use our poverty to claim we are neglecting and abusing our children – instead of giving us the resources we are entitled to by law. Children of colour are 10 times more likely to be taken from their families. T will say more [put in the chat  – recent webinar Children need their mothers https://www.youtube.com/live/q7wbQk1lqLU ]

How we work:

Our collective self-help services have been developed with women to help them fight their cases. We win a lot by

Providing a supportive environment through self-help group case work meetings where survivors can speak about what they have suffered. We help them draft a summary of their case so they understand their claim. This provides a tool which women can use to get help from others eg an MP or a lawyer

• Enabling women who’ve faced similar situations and won to share their experiences
• Making clear that every woman is central to her own case and to every action taken on her behalf.
• Building woman’s confidence to work on her case and providing resources and info to strengthen it.

We’ve published a Self-help guide: Justice is Your Right – For Survivors of rape and sexual assault https://womenagainstrape.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/JusticeGuide-July-2021.pdf

Legal Action for Women’s Self-help guide Against detention & removal is available for Asylum seekers and their supporters – also available online http://legalactionforwomen.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/SHGWebversion.pdf

Context for Rape survivors seeking asylum:

• 70% of women have suffered rape and other sexual violence. Face hostile environment – draconian legislation
• 88% are disbelieved by the Home Office.
• But with WAR’s help, their appeal is six times more likely to win.
• Most women who come to self-help meetings are victims of rape (including domestic violence)
• Most haven’t been able to report rape/dv due to stigma/shame.

We ensure that AAWG demands are front and central in the movement to End Detention, Deportation & Destitution.  We’ve had to call out careerist feminists, NGOs, politicians and groups who either suppress our voices or use grassroots struggles to advance themselves at our expense – such personal ambition in our movements is a corrosive force which undermines our struggles and must be opposed.

Over the years we have

• Defended women on hunger strikes in Yarl’s Wood detention – since 2005 and helped amplify their voices against horrendous conditions  – including rape, sexual and racist abuse by Serco guards [link in chat documented here https://againstrape.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Report2015.pdf. With AAWG and other grps we’ve helped 100s of women get out and win status and prevented 100s more from being deported
• WAR is active in a national network Action v Detention and Deportation–in Glasgow, Liverpool, Bristol, in Kent and elsewhere.  We take action across the country eg exposing conditions for families in Manston Kent, a notorious detention camp for people who arrive by boat, and the Bibby Stockholm barge in Devon, life-saving emergency phone work for people in the Med like Alarm phone, groups on the south coast that welcome refugees which they describe as “beach work”, pickets at detention centres by groups like LGSM and No2Hassockfield outside Durham connecting with and offering practical support to people inside.
• Grassroots activist lawyers have invited us to be part of a forum. Lawyers rarely represent us as they should and too often side with the state against us – shockingly many women are advised not to mention violence they suffered because they won’t be believed. But with our help women do expose the violence and often win the right to stay. Recent training webinar with Lawstop – is an example https://refugefromrapeanddestitution.blog/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/awg-war-subinterviewpreses-ntation720.mp4
• Increasingly women of colour are speaking out and being heard, and more white women & young people are supportive, concerned to ensure that those most impacted by every injustice get justice.  There is more respect for those of us who have been campaigning for decades, making the case from women’s point of view that we have a right to be here based on our unwaged work that enriched Britain over centuries and a right to be safe regardless of we’re from.
• It’s key to all our survival that younger people are increasingly connecting the issues of violence v women and children and genocides from Gaza to Sudan, Haiti to Congo. As the Johannesburg Declaration against the genocide in Gaza says: children and women are targeted for reproductive genocide; women who create, sustain and defend life.  To end violence v women and girls it’s essential that all our movements come together to oppose, stop and prevent every genocide.
• We know from decades of experience that politicians do not care about us and do not represent us – if they don’t think it’s an abomination to imprison pregnant women, send refugees to genocidal countries like Rwanda – we are none of us safe unless we build and protect a movement that’s autonomous and mutually accountable to the grassroots.