Bringing up children in UK a nightmare

Zimbabwe families losing children to social service

STATISTICS from May Bulman of the Standard UK indicate that children in the UK now live in dangerous conditions under the council’s children services, as councils are failing to cope with the number of children referred to them by the social services.

Bulman wrote: “A child is referred to social services every 49 seconds in England and Wales, figures show, prompting urgent calls that a lack of funding is leading to ‘catastrophe’ for the next generation of youngsters and their families.”

Data published by the Department for Education shows there were 646 120 referrals overall to councils’ children services during 2016/17, equating to 1 770 referrals every day – a rise of four percent compared to the previous year.

The number doubled after the Covid pandemic. And most of the children taken away are Zimbabwean. The children are being separated from their families for flimsy reasons.

The Makumbe family from Luton had their two children taken by social service because the older child  aged 14 complained that he was being forced to go to church.

The social service ruled that forcing a child to go to church was abuse. According to the social service, a child must be allowed to choose what she or he wants to do without the parents ‘pressuring’ her/him to do anything.

In London, one Matambo, an ardent Christian, lost his two sons to social services because he taught them that gays are bad.

He was judged to be a hate preacher when the youngest child complained that dad was ‘slaying the gays’.

The social services went further to refer the father to a mental health institution as they believed that his faith had crossed the threshold of sanity.

In light of the figures, council leaders have warned that children’s services – which the Local Government Association (LGA) says face a funding gap of £2bn by 2023– are dealing with pressures on a ‘staggering scale’, and urge the Government to provide more funding or leave many children ‘at risk’.

Council leaders said there are a number of reasons for the rise that include increased public awareness and reporting of potential abuse, the impact of poverty and deprivation on families and a lack of funding to help families early on before problems escalate.

But the reality is the lack of understanding of social divides and differences of cultures which has set Zimbabweans in UK on a collision path with the authorities. With the Conservative government advocating severe cuts in social services, the situation has become dire. A report from the LGA last year found that cuts to early intervention services had led to an ‘unprecedented surge’ in demand for urgent child protection support.

The analysis revealed that three-quarters of English councils exceeded their budgets for children’s services in the last year, totalling a £605 million overspend, while the number of young people subject to child protection increased by 140 percent. The irony, however, is that these children are being protected from the protection of their parents.

There has been a serious miscarriage of justice where children are taken, most of them against their will. Counsellor Richard Watts, chair of the LGA’s Children and Young People Board, said: “While these figures are encouraging as a reflection of heightened awareness and identification of child abuse, they also highlight the staggering scale of the pressures that have now been building on children’s services for a number of years.

“With councils now having a child referred to them every 49 seconds on a daily basis, it is vital that they have the resources necessary to provide an effective response.”

The dilemma is that authorities tend to believe the social workers more than the parents. Some of the social workers only apply knowledge of children they got from school as they have no children of their own and they are not familiar with foreign cultures.

Zimbabweans are not Britons and the way we raise our children is totally different from British ways. Campaigners are pleading with the authorities to use a very open assessment in deciding when a child can be taken from the parents. The institution of the family is being destroyed here.

While it is British culture being used to judge what is good and bad parenting, what has been completely disregarded is the fact that Britain is a multi-cultural nation.

With no long-term funding solution on the table, many children’s services are having to move towards a ‘crisis’ fire-fighting approach which has endangered the children.

It is absurd that children continue to be separated from their parents and being put in a system struggling to take care of them. Javed Khan, the chief executive officer of Barnardo, an organisation concerned with the welfare of children, has conceded that children services have insufficient resources.

“We are working closely with local authorities on preventive strategies that support families to reduce the likelihood of children being taken into care,” said Khan.

While the British might view the children of foreigners with pity, their parents are trying to raise them according to their cultures and not ways of the British.

Children are now growing without direction because the world allows them to grow blindly.

Kids are not allowed to have guidance and they are raised with little discipline.

–Herald

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