MPS’ ANGER AS CHRISTIAN GIRL FORCED INTO MUSLIM FOSTER CARE

Call for inquiry over 5-year-old’s plight

MPs demanded an urgent review last night after it emerged a ‘distressed’ Christian five-year-old had been forced to live with Muslim foster carers.

The Government was urged to examine the case, which has seen a scandal-hit council place the girl in two Muslim households in the past six

months, against the wishes of her family.

Social workers said the child sobbed and begged not to be returned to one foster mother – who wore a face veil in public – as the household spoke no English.

She also claimed her foster carer had said she should learn Arabic and had taken away her Christian cross necklace, The Times reported. The child – who is white, was born in Britain and has a UK passport – was allegedly not allowed to eat a spaghetti carbonara prepared by her birth mother because it contained bacon.

She was said to have told her biological mother ‘European women are stupid and alcoholic’ and ‘Christmas and Easter are stupid’, prompting questions over cultural attitudes in her foster homes.

Her current foster mother wears a burka in public which completely hides her face. The placements

were arranged by Tower Hamlets council in east London, where children’s services were criticised by Ofsted earlier this year.

Inspectors rated the council’s children’s services ‘inadequate’ and said there was an ‘entrenched culture of non-compliance with basic social work standards’.

Last night, MPs said the five-year-old’s apparent distress over her foster homes raised disturbing questions over the council’s decision to place an English-speaking Christian child in Muslim households.

Robert Halfon, chairman of the Commons education committee, urged the Government to examine the case and establish whether the issue was widespread within the foster care system.

He said the child should ‘have the right to be placed with people who reflect her heritage and background’.

Philip Hollobone, Tory MP for Kettering, said: ‘What if it were a Muslim girl being looked after by a Christian couple and they insisted she deny her Muslim upbringing and become a Christian – how would the Muslim community feel about that?

‘It seems to me the original heritage of the child ought to be respected by the foster family, whatever their own faith happens to be. The council needs to review this case urgently … All religions should be treated equally and respected in the same way.’

Andrew Bridgen, Tory MP for North West Leicestershire, added: ‘This just feels wrong. This is the wrong decision for the long-term welfare of the child.

‘My constituents will wonder what world they are living in, in Tower Hamlets … Someone needs to take a look at this. Imagine the outcry from the Muslim community if this had been a Muslim child adopted by a white Christian family.’

Former justice minister Shailesh Vara, Tory MP for North West Cambridgeshire, said the decision was ‘completely wrong’, adding: ‘The local authority should have ensured that in placing the child in a foster home her religion and cultural background would be totally respected.

‘There should be clear and unambiguous undertakings from potential foster parents that they will honour the beliefs of the children who are entrusted to their care.’

The girl’s biological mother was said to be horrified by her daughter’s foster placements and their effect on the child.

A family friend told The Times: ‘This is a five-year-old white girl. She was born in this country, speaks English as her first language, loves football, holds a British passport and was christened in a church.

‘She’s already suffered the huge trauma of being forcibly separated from her family. She needs surroundings in which she’ll feel secure and loved.

‘Instead, she’s trapped in a world where everything feels foreign and unfamiliar. That’s really scary for a young child.’

It was not clear why the girl was taken into care earlier this year, but councils are required to consider a child’s ‘ religious persuasion, racial origin and cultural and linguistic background’ when deciding foster placements.

The girl was initially put in a household where her foster mother reportedly wore a niqab – a headscarf and face veil – in public.

Confidential council reports seen by The Times said the child begged not to be returned to the home because ‘they don’t speak English’.

A social services supervisor said she was ‘ very distressed’ and claimed her foster carer had suggested she learn Arabic, had taken her cross necklace and had not allowed her to eat Italian food provided by her biological mother because it contained bacon.

The girl spent four months there before she was placed with a foster carer who wears a burka when she accompanies her in public.

Mr Halfon, Tory MP for Harlow, added: ‘ Anyone, whatever their religion or background, should be welcome as foster parents.

‘However, just as a Muslim foster child should have the right to be with a Muslim foster parent, if required by their family, so too should this child have the right to be placed with people who reflect her heritage and background.’

Neil Carmichael, former Tory chairman of the education committee, was leading an inquiry into fostering but it was cut short by the general election.

He said the committee should examine how children are placed. ‘I think it is really important that young children are made to feel at home, made to feel comfortable, made to feel a fully-fledged member of the family that they are in – they must be the key tests,’ Mr Carmichael, who lost his seat on June 8, told the Daily Telegraph. A Tower Hamlets spokesman said: ‘We are unable to comment on individual cases or those that are subject to court proceedings. ‘Tower Hamlets council’s fostering service provides a loving and stable home for hundreds of children every year … we give absolute consideration to our children’s background and cultural identity.

‘All our foster carers receive training and support from the council to ensure they are fully qualified to meet the needs of the children in their care.’

The council’s website said it was recruiting foster carers, offering up to £471 per week per child, depending on the child’s age.

It previously warned it needed to recruit from a range of backgrounds to enable it to match children. Adverts for foster carers in 2008 listed ‘white’ among underrepresented communities. The council would not reveal if it currently had a shortfall of white foster carers.

The 2011 census found 31 per cent of Tower Hamlets’ population was white British, compared with 80 per cent nationwide.

Anne Longfield, children’s commissioner for England, said her office would contact Tower Hamlets children’s services to establish more about the facts of the case.

‘I am concerned at these reports,’ she told The Times. ‘A child’s religious, racial and cultural background should be taken into consideration when they are placed with foster carers.’

A Department for Education spokesman said local authorities must ensure a placement is ‘the most appropriate way to safeguard the child’ and their background was ‘an important consideration’.

The department has launched a National Fostering Stocktake, to consider recruitment and retention of carers. It is expected to report back at the end of the year.

In 2009, a Christian foster carer was banned by her local council after a Muslim teenager in her care converted to Christianity.

‘ She should be in a foster home where her religious and cultural ’ background would be respected MP SHAILESH VARA YESTERDAY

THE social services industry prides itself on its cultural sensitivity, especially when it comes to fostering and adoption.

Respect for background and identity is meant to be central to the process of finding a home for a vulnerable child.

But that ideal has utterly broken down in the case that emerged yesterday, in which it was reported that a five yearold girl from a white Christian family was placed by Tower Hamlets council in London in two successive Muslim households.

Much to the child’s distress — as logged in confidential local authority reports seen by The Times — neither family seems to have shown much respect or understanding for her upbringing or faith.

One supervisor is reported to have described her sobbing as she begged not to go back to the carer’s home because ‘they don’t speak English’.

A necklace with a crucifix was apparently taken from her and she was told to learn Arabic. She was also told that ‘Christmas and Easter are stupid’ and ‘European women are stupid and alcoholic’.

Alienation

When, on a visit to her birth mother, she was given her favourite dish of spaghetti carbonara to take back to her foster home, she was banned from eating it because it contained bacon.

Compounding what must have been this child’s sense of alienation, her first carer, with whom she spent four months, is said to have worn the niqab — a face veil — when outside the family home.

In the second and current placement, her carer wore the all-enveloping burka and fully concealed her face in public.

(In my view, this is a garment that should have no place in British society. Both the burka and niqab should be banned, as they have been in France, Belgium and elsewhere.)

It is absolutely right that MPs demand an inquiry into this appalling example of forced cultural convergence.

Social services bosses love to prattle about human rights, but the treatment of this little girl represents a denial of her most basic rights.

If the reports are correct, she has been plunged into an unfamiliar environment of language, creed and dress code, where her carers make plain they have little time for her family or heritage.

To a young child, of course, such words mean little — but we can imagine her confusion and anxiety at the apparent hostility towards her background, the dismissive description of its women and its ancient festivals.

And let’s not forget that she is likely to have been traumatised already by difficult family circumstances.

This is yet another case in which the dogma of liberal political correctness appears to have triumphed over common sense. How else could one even begin to rationalise placing this child in strict Muslim households?

Here is what should happen now. The girl should be removed immediately from her current foster parents to a more appropriate placement. Then the social workers and their line managers who made this insensitive decision should be named, shamed and dismissed.

I would go further. If the reports are confirmed, these foster parents should be barred from taking in more children, even those of Muslim heritage.

You may think my judgment is harsh. But the kind of religious intolerance these reports suggest is not found anywhere in the Koran, which demands respect for all faiths. There are some beautiful verses which speak of every believer, irrespective of their faith, reaching Heaven.

Tragically, a reactionary version of the Muslim religion, known as Wahhabism or Salafism, has been imported into Britain from the Middle East, mainly Saudi Arabia. A central feature of Wahhabism is its antagonism to the freedom of women, hence the growing prevalence of the burka and the niqab.

Here in Britain, Wahhabism is becoming the dominant Muslim sect. It increasingly holds sway in conurbations such as Luton, Slough, Birmingham, Leeds and Bradford. But nowhere is it stronger than in Tower Hamlets.

Poisonous

One of this girl’s family friends claims ‘she is trapped in a world where everything feels foreign and unfamiliar’. That could almost be a description of a borough that has been rocked by scandals, with a council that at times became a byword for financial corruption, tribal conflict, election fraud and poisonous identity politics.

This is clearly no recipe for a cohesive society.

Yet the authorities, typified by the social services, remain trapped in their deluded ideology of multiculturalism, where sectarian habits and backward-looking customs go unchallenged because they are held to be indicators of vibrant diversity.

Such an attitude has bred a tremendous amount of hypocrisy and double standards.

Can you imagine the mass hysteria from the Left if Tower Hamlets had decided to place a five-year- old Muslim girl with fundamentalist Christians who forced her to eat pork and read the Bible?

So far, there has been barely a peep from any of the usual voices, such as Labour’s Diane Abbott, who love to wallow in ethnic minority victimhood.

Yet in Tower Hamlets, this girl is a representative of an ethnic minority — given that, according to the last Census, just 31 per cent of the local population is ‘white British’.

These double standards are, sadly, not confined to Tower Hamlets. Rotherham council barred one couple from fostering children because their membership of Ukip was deemed incompatible with multiculturalism, even though there had been no complaints about their competence as foster parents.

Yet this same council did nothing for years about Muslim grooming gangs in the town preying on hundreds of vulnerable white girls, despite a wealth of evidence about this systematic abuse.

It is exactly this kind of institutionalised cowardice that allows exploitation to flourish across the country, along with all the other features of Muslim extremism such as jihadism, hate preaching, misogyny and intolerance.

We cannot go on like this. Should an inquiry confirm the reports about this case, then, as well as sacking the staff responsible, we should abandon the obsession with political correctness in fostering and adoption cases. What should count is the competency of the carers, not their backgrounds or beliefs.

We should drop the discredited fixation with multicultural diversity. In fact, we should move in the opposite direction, seeking to create a viable society that upholds indigenous traditions and hard-won liberties.

Tolerance

This focus on integration through the acceptance of historic British values of tolerance, liberty and respect is the only way to avoid tearing apart the cementing fabric of our society.

By definition, a good foster parent is already open, tolerant and loving, eager to provide the best possible home to a troubled child. Race and religion should not enter into it, except in the sense of respecting the values of the child’s identity.

If only that had happened with this little girl, she might not have faced such a traumatic upheaval.