Foster parents desperate for return of child

LITTLE GIRL IS IN CHILDREN’SHOME OVERSEAS DESPITE REPEATED ATTEMPTS TO BRING HER HOME

A LITTLE girl has been left stuck in a children’s home overseas for at least two years, despite her foster parents’ desperation to bring her home to London.

We can’t reveal all the details of this case for privacy reasons but even the outline of the story is heartbreaking.

A report into the heartrending case tells how the girl was placed in the home after UK authorities found her birth mother fit to take her back to her home country.

But when the pair got overseas, the the child was promptly taken off the mother again.

Her London foster parents have since accused Kensington & Chelsea Council of mistakes in the case and a report has been put together investigating the council’s actions by the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman.

The problems started when the mother was found to be fit to take her daughter back from the foster parents - who we can only identify as “Mr and Mrs X”, in April 2016 by the High Court.

That July, the council planned the girl’s gradual return from her foster parents to her birth mother over three weeks, helping them to get a passport so they could take her on a family holiday before the handover.

The mother then demanded the girl and the passport, as she wanted to leave the UK within days, cutting the transition period short and preventing the holiday.

Mr and Mrs X sought legal advice after they learned of the new situation and because of this, the council put them under investigation, which they later complained about.

Once the mother took her abroad, the girl was taken from her again and placed in the home.

Mr and Mrs X claimed when they tried to seek more information from the overseas children’s authority, its staff told them a Kensington & Chelsea Council social worker had described the foster parents as being “blacklisted”.

The council disputes the claim. However, based on the evidence, the Ombudsman found it most likely the social worker did tell their overseas counterpart, incorrectly, the pair had either been “terminated” or were no longer the girl’s foster carers because of the ongoing investigation. Foster parents have accused Kensington and Chelsea Council of making mistakes in the case of the child taken abroad by her birth mother

But despite upholding the complaint about what the social worker told their overseas counterpart, the Ombudsman found no injustice to the foster parents or to the little girl.

The findings reasoned that because the council had told the overseas authority by October 2016 that it had no concerns about Mr and Mrs X as foster parents, and yet the girl still remained in the home in September 2018, it suggested the parents had no intention of trying to return her to the UK. The girl was taken into a children’s home almost as soon as her birth mother took her abroad, leaving her foster parents devastated

Fostering law expert Polly Morgan, deputy head of the East Anglia University School of Law, said it was unlikely British authorities could do anything for the foster parents.

“Once they moved abroad, this country had no further jurisdiction: decisions about the child will be made by the home country,” she said.

Ms Morgan said the nature of fostering meant children could be removed suddenly and entirely legally, “and that causes trauma to both sides”.