Social workers snatched our girl because we fell out with them
Ombudsman slams council after teen was abused and left to eat cat food in her new foster home
SOCIAL workers snatched a vulnerable 15-year-old girl from her school without any warning and placed her in a new home where she was abused, it was revealed yesterday.
Aimee Gardiner was taken from school and banned from the home of the aunt and uncle with whom she had lived for almost all her life because a social worker had fallen out with them.
With her new foster family, Aimee said, she was abused and assaulted, and left so hungry that she was driven to eat cat food.
One day her new carers left her on her own in a park – from where she hitched a lift with a stranger who took her back to the home of her aunt and uncle 12 miles away.
The legal abduction of the teenager has now been condemned by an official inquiry which found that social workers took her from a safe and loving home without good reason, and sent her to a new family where she was exposed to genuine harm.
It said Essex county council then botched an investigation into its own wrongdoing, and delayed an apology and compensation to the family for more than five years.
Because the case has not been shrouded in the secrecy routinely imposed by judges in the family courts, the girl’s family have been free to speak to the Daily Mail. Aimee had lived with her aunt and uncle, Carrie and Chris Stevens, and the couple’s two other children, in Gravesend in Kent for almost 13 years before the disagreement with a newly-appointed woman social worker.
Mr Stevens, a 47-year-old ambulance driver, said Aimee, now 21, still suffers flashbacks over her abduction from school in July 2011. He said: ‘I got a phone call saying they were coming to remove
‘Terrified they’ll take her again’
Aimee from school in an hour and a half, that was it. I then had to call Carrie and tell her. There was no warning. We weren’t even allowed to say goodbye to her.
‘It was heartbreaking for us and a shock for Aimee too. She told us she was crying as they put her in the car. We didn’t know where she’d been taken, we weren’t allowed any contact.’
The abduction came after the appointment of a specialist social worker for Aimee. There followed a disagreement over what the family believed was inappropriate advice given to Aimee, who has learning difficulties.
Aimee’s grandfather, Alan Gardiner, complained to the council and asked for a different social worker. The family believe this triggered a campaign against them. He said of the social worker: ‘She was giving her advice and telling her she could do things, like go to town unsupervised, which we didn’t think was appropriate, given her vulnerability.’
Mrs Stevens, 45, a hairdresser, added: ‘ We weren’t saying social services couldn’t visit, we were just saying that we didn’t want her. She wasn’t suitable.’
Aimee was removed from the family for six weeks, before she hitchhiked back to her aunt and uncle’s home.
Sobbing, she told her family she ‘wanted to come home’ and later spoke of being so neglected she had to eat cat biscuits as she was not being fed.
The inquiry, carried out by the Local Government Ombudsman, criticised Essex county council for a series of unjustifiable and disastrous faults.
It said: ‘The decision to remove the girl from the uncle and aunt’s care appears to be based on concerns about the uncle’s refusal to allow the girl’s social worker to come into the house.’
The report noted social workers’ concerns that before her removal from her home Aimee had said she no longer wanted to live with her aunt and uncle, and that she had locked herself in the bathroom during a row.
It found no evidence to support Essex claims that Mrs Stevens had not turned up to meetings about the girl and that Mr Stevens was ‘ aggressive and non-cooperative’.
The inquiry also found that during the failed five-year internal investigation into the case carried
‘It was so bad I ran away’
out by Essex, the officer in charge had not been allowed to see social work files.
The family said social workers had wrongly accused them of leaving Aimee dirty and of failing to take her to a dentist for years – even though she had braces. ‘The lies are just shocking. It was all fabrication,’ Mrs Stevens said.
‘They took her away from a loving home and put her somewhere where she was physically abused and resorted to eating cat biscuits she was so hungry. It’s a disgrace.’ She added: ‘For years afterwards, she screamed in her sleep. She would often say to us that she was terrified they were going to take her away again.’
Aimee said: ‘When they took me, it was horrible. It was so bad I ran away.’
The scandal is the latest of a number of incidents in which Essex social workers have been criticised for their treatment of vulnerable people.
In 2005 the council was backed by a High Court judge after its social workers removed two children from intellectually slow parents who nevertheless kept them loved, clean, well- dressed, wellfed, and safe from harm. An academic report later accused social workers of wrongly taking children from thousands of parents with learning difficulties.
Essex county council’s cabinet member for adults and children, Dick Madden, said: ‘We acknowledge the findings of the report and accept mistakes were made in the way this case was handled. We apologise for any distress caused and are complying with all of the suggested recommendations.’