More tales of the growing danger posed by Parental Alienation abuse.

It would appear that society remains either ignorant or hostile to the plight of men, including fathers. But as parental alienation, the contrived rejection of one biological parent by the children, as a result of the negative influence of the other (usually resident) parent, grows to impact more mothers, will it be treated with the seriousness it should be?

Well two developments in the last week may hold out some hope.

Firstly, the good news is that the WHO or World Health Organisation now recognises parental alienation and this must mean that agencies like CAFCASS will have to up the pace of their long debated reforms.

The second incident, however, was yet another tragic case in which another resident parent (in this case a mother) and her partner (not the biological parent) killed and injured six children in their care in one night.

I won’t share morbid details here but there are now too many of these incidents occurring for society to continue to turn a blind eye to the fact that BOTH genders are capable of cruelty and that actually the SAFEST scenario for the children of separated families is for shared care, enabling both biological parents to co-parent, share the pressures and provide safeguarding safety nets.

Much-respected shared parenting advocate Dr Sue Whitcomb explains:

“IMO the gendered lens used far too often conflates the violence of men with the violence of fathers, as in this heavily cited paper “The murder of children by fathers in the context of child abuse” – 62% of the “fathers” were NOTin fact birth fathers “

“A failure to undertake independent, objective research through a non- gendered, ideologically driven lens leaves children at risk of harm. This research report from DCSF  again suggests birth fathers are no greater risk to their child than birth mothers.

As Dr Sue points out, the relentless depiction of men as child safety risks falsely maligns birth fathers. The actuality is that bad people are capable of bad things regardless of gender.

Mothers and new partners are likely to present a higher physical risk to children when all factors are taken into account. And that is before recognising the harm that emotional and psychological abuse of children causes rather than physical abuse alone especially as the former is far more prevalent including issues like the alienation of a child’s biological non-resident parent and the impact this has upon their development and wellbeing in the medium to long term.

To illustrate these points consider this haunting story from one of the parents in our large social media community of parents desperately trying to either address the alienation of their children or re-connect with them, mindful of the harm it is doing to their children and them personally.

“My former partner used to work with me in our HR function. I used to respect her for being efficient and professional when dealing with matters like redundancies and tribunals etc. Little did I know that those “skills” would be used to cause me, my family and our children immeasurable hurt and harm.

She left me shortly after the birth of our second child, a bolt from the blue as, despite the normal pressures of starting a family, we had a fairly idyllic life.

I soon discovered that all was not as I had thought. She had been siphoning money from our business, had shut down my backup financial accounts and moved finances into the children’s accounts to which only she had access.

We initially agreed to split amicably and focus on the children. But soon her lawyers began a ridiculous abuse narrative that my solicitor naively felt we shouldn’t challenge for fear of recriminations.  However it was her fast track to seemingly bottomless legal aid at the time, something I never realised.

We had shared every aspect of parenting but she had moved the kids hundreds of miles back to her parents. They then colluded in the asset stripping that followed using the children as leverage.

The worst happened, however, when she moved her new boyfriend into the house my assets financed. He started emotionally “grooming” our youngest and most impressionable. This guy would literally turn up to events we were all at, our young daughter in his arms and spend the whole time grinning and winking at me.

I discovered that she was using this new “babysitter” to go out with girlfriends, and he would have free access to bathing and putting her to bed. To cover his tracks, he soon stopped her from coming to stay with us during her “court allocated” Daddy time.

When I would call for the children, he would stand in the window with our youngest laughing at me and mocking me, stroking her hair or kissing her. How I retained my self-control I will never know.

They then started making additional financial demands, the implication being that they would make access to the children harder unless we complied. When I refused to play ball, they took me back to court and used the pathetic “abuse” narrative to gain legal aid.

During one especially public event, he turned up on his own with our youngest and I confronted him, politely and said that we should “make an effort to get on literally (if reluctantly) offering the hand of friendship.

He refused. He just stared at the floor frozen with shame and fear while the entire neighbourhood looked on.

That night I was invited to attend the local police office to help them with an “emotional abuse investigation”. It turned out I was the “accused”.

The gloves literally being off now, I went to my MP, the Headmaster of the school, wrote to the senior partner of her legal firm, wrote to the Prime Minister and District Police Commissioner and lifted the drains on the case. After a few weeks of hell in which I still faced prosecution for allegedly “bullying them” (somehow), I eventually received a formal apology from all concerned. But the abuser faced no charges or consequences and I was told to “trust Mum’s judgement”. When I politely declined the investigating officer privately agreed with my judgement.

A week later her lover left her. This stranger who had bathed my children, who got into bed with them and babysat them unsupervised had been cheating on her the whole time. When he failed to extort money from me and could see that I couldn’t be intimidated, he left overnight.

But far from concluding and improving matters, this now tipped the children’s mother into a new phase of hate and rage. Of course, she blamed me for her latest woes and turned up the heat on the children,

Our youngest never came to see us again something that still bends me double with indescribable anxiety, and our eldest lasted several more months despite constant negativity, surveillance while with us and control via electronic devices.

We turned to the court for help. But they were pitiful, constantly reinforcing the sexism and even corroborating the “Mum knows best” line. Despite formally warning her to comply with the order they took no action to address her behaviour.

There is no doubt our lovely, lovely innocent children have been abused, whether physically I can’t confirm. But most certainly emotionally. They have been treated inappropriately and they will now sadly see this behaviour as normal, which is outrageous.

During the very occasional moment of civility with my ex, perhaps most terrifying of all is the fact that she never takes responsibility for her behaviour. At work she used to blame others when she was ruining people’s lives. Now she abdicates responsibility to lawyers, her mother and other parents who “advise” her. She even blames the children for not “wanting to come and see us”. Again, she is woefully negligent in her parenting and this will have a lifelong impact on all of us. It is truly terrifying that the powers that be don’t, won’t or can’t recognise this behaviour for what it is, deliberate and calculated alienation, bullying and abuse.

The most obvious missing link is the understanding that passive aggression is often the worst form of abuse and that is where we are now…zero communication, zero contact, complete bullying by ignorance and denial of loving parenting, a child’s most basic right”

Now this parent’s woes have not turned out as tragically as some, in a physical sense. But he has suffered years of constant abuse simply trying to be a father and fights back terrible depression caused by the emotional, financial and coercive abuse his former partner and enablers have deliberately directed at him using and abusing the authorities and his children.

But still his greatest pain comes from knowing what she is capable of and now teaches the children without any checks and balances from him.

If you have a parental alienation story to tell, then please do share it either here on the social media platforms. We will only end this social disease linked to mental health abnormalities if we all keep talking about it. Silence is sadly compliance so please, please speak up. Yes, it hurts. But your children will be hurting for a lot longer…your grandchildren too, unless we can stop this.

 

 

The Rape of Innocence

I, like many parents, have been horrified by the creeping propaganda infesting children’s culture which recently plumbed new depths in a “cartoon” depicting the sexual assault of a fairy princess by Prince Charming.

This was widely shared by organisations like Amnesty International, allegedly as part of the #MeToo movement seemingly in an attempt to raise awareness of the need for mutual sexual consent.

Right!

Of course, any parent in their right mind supports the aim of programmes and campaigns designed to improve the safety and security of our children. That isn’t my concern. What troubles me, as the title of this blog alludes, is the corruption of innocence and the erosion of childhood by the people behind this early-years targeting approach.

The cartoon in question depicts the archetypal Disney-esque Princess, a sort of mashup of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, in a deep sleep in a classic forest glade. She is then approached by the archetypal Disney Prince who first kisses and then, to use the street phraseology, clearly  begins to “finger” her.

The message is clear and obvious once they over-lay the street patois and interject the chat about “meeting at a party” etc? But my biggest objection is that it would have been far more powerful and far less cynical to have made a film about teenagers for teenagers deploying the tropes, medium and platforms that relate directly to teenagers. But, I guess the issue is, they probably wouldn’t have stirred up the same controversy and outrage leading to the “buzz” the juvenile social media drivers seem to dictate.

The pressing questions I have with this cynical approach to alleged education is “where are the grown ups?” or “why has nobody stepped in to question the wisdom here?”.

The Disney Princess demographic is probably age 3-11. Like it or not, however, children are finding ways to access the internet using our devices a lot earlier than they should be. Children of that age range will see this!

Parents are most likely to be reading fairytales and stories to their children at that age. So are you ready for the “fanny banging” chat at bedtime?

Oddly, if you’re like the vast majority of parents and want to stimulate their imaginations and cultivate mysticism and magic and romance for as long as you can while gently and carefully introducing values, wisdom and life skills, you do not want teenage or other extreme propagandists dictating this for you.

It used to irritate me watching advertisements during children’s prime time tv that are devoid of male role-models, all aimed at mothers. It  disappointed me watching children’s tv programmes in which Dads are the perpetual idiots and butt of all jokes or superhero movies devoid of female role models. And I thought I had seen it all when I was forced to introduce positive male characters into certain stories like Mermaid SOS while reading them to the children as THEY were asking where the boys were?

But then I watched Maleficent, the re-imagining of Sleeping Beauty by Angelina Jolie, infamous for her personal family issues, and had to spend days reassuring the children that there were “good men in the world” after all, “honestly”.

The use of fairytales as moral exemplars and ways of conveying the values of the times is nothing new. If you read the classics in their original form, they echo the big issues of their age, be they the danger of strangers, the difficult relations within extended families or the impact of dangerous play, disease, war or famine. And yes, they do deal with relations between the genders and romantic love as a bastion of stable society. These classics have been adapted down the years to suit changing mores and norms. But we now appear to be going way too far too fast.

What is it saying about our society when stories aimed at 3-11 year olds depict explicit sexual assault? Well, clearly, it sends very mixed messages via a format, the fairy story that should be a safe, innocent space in a world that seems to have fewer oasis of calm and innocence by the day. And what or who is next on the agenda, Father Christmas?

This trend towards sexualiising  children and the undermining of their innocence through excessive involvement in adult matters is, in my view, considerably concerning given the fact that children are increasingly portrayed as disaffected and unhappy in virtually every opinion poll. I believe the same applies to the abuse of “wishes and feelings” reports used in child arrangements disputes. Adults are forcing children into positions where they are having to choose between parents underpinned by a mistaken belief that they are both neutral and empowered enough to make decisions that are only fit for adults. It is actually damaging to the children and completely misses the point that it is impossible for the child to be objective as they are being controlled by the parent with whom they spend most of their time and who has control over their schooling, relationships and key activities.

So what can we , as parents, do about this relentless rape of innocence?

A few quick and simple things.

1. If you still have influence over your children, then please do monitor what they are watching and reading and when. It is YOUR responsibility to ensure they get a balanced picture in line with YOUR core values. Set parental controls on social media and devices and get rid of and/or have conversations about messaging that you believe is contrary to your beliefs.
2. Source great stories or tales in films and books that support a balanced view and ensure these are easily available. I always had a great selection of the classics to supplement the inevitable Disney and sought out authors that I believe portrayed healthy role models. Ian Buckingham’s Legend of the Lost is a current case in point.
3. Make your voice heard and complain about the buzz-feeding nonsense like the latest campaign or films like Maleficent that are nothing short of sexist propaganda.

If you’re in a a dispute over shared parenting, you owe it to your kids to make your views known about the way wishes and feelings reports etc are used and make a stand for your kids.

Innocence doesn’t last very long. Our children need their parents, the adults, to stand up for theirs.

SO make your voice heard.

Remember, (and this is an apt use of the metaphor) you need to be clear about what is and isn’t acceptable.

Silence by those properly empowered to know better, actually does encourage abuse.

Ten Steps to End Parental Alienation

It has been well over a year since the CEO of Cafcass, Anthony Douglas, openly acknowledged that his organisation recognised the existence of Parental Alienation or PA and were taking steps to adapt their internal processes, procedures and staff protocols and training to help address it.

At the start of the Summer, I composed a letter with a select group of well-informed parents, requesting an urgent update and progress.

We were sent a polite, but clearly “holding” reply, although we were assured that our suggestions would be factored into the improvement work.

Since then we have seen little practical change. We have learned that Anthony Douglas intends to retire in March yet no commitment has been made regarding the outstanding work. Although worryingly, it has been suggested by certain commentators, that people see the change work taking around ten years.

A decade.

A childhood.

Our network includes lawyers, doctors, social workers, entrepreneurs and management consultants. So we asked shared parenting advocate Ian Buckingham, a respected change management and organisation culture change specialist who has spoken out about PA in the past, for his views on the position and what could and should be done to address an issue now affecting millions of children and parents in the UK alone.

“I’ve worked on change programmes with organisations across sectors from investment banks and oil companies through to charities and government departments and the first point, which should provide some comfort to suffering parents enduring this abuse, is that change starts when a senior leader has both the conviction and drive to lead it.Mr Douglas clearly has the conviction, but now he’s leaving, the drive is going to be questioned.

The second point is that a problem as deep rooted as this needs to be addressed upstream nearer the source, not just downstream where the symptoms present. With this in mind, PA is not solely the responsibility of Cafcass. It’s pointless blaming them. Many agencies contribute to the root cause, from the legal profession and police through to social services generally.

A cross-agency approach to finding a lasting solution is clearly required. And  special interest groups like mothers and father’s groups don’t always help. They can entrench positions, if not careful. We are trying to change gender stereotypes and that isn’t easy because they have become ingrained in norms.

But to give people some sense of reality, you can change a corporate culture within 18 months. However, it requires cross-functional working between departments and the organisation needs a clear strategy. It must take a consistent systems and behaviours approach and implement it thoroughly and professionally with external support to keep the top team accountable and focused.

So, given the importance of the issue and the fact they have been aware and have acknowledged the problem, in terms of their sphere of influence, I would expect Cafcass to be most of the way there by now. I would also expect to see their CEO promoting a cross-agency solution, with the support of MPs. We have seen some signs of that. But progress appears to be very, very slow.

With regard to PA in the wider context, I believe the joint-working, cross-agency approach needs to bring about the following ten things:

1. A law change to bring the same rigor to family law that we see now in employment law, where gender discrimination is illegal. This should mean 50/50 rights and responsibilities for both biological parents, meaning they both have to work out how to care and provide financially for their child and ensure that both parents have the security and stability to do so. This should be part rebuttable based on capability and fitness to parent based on hard evidence not conjecture or accusations.
2. “No-fault” divorce to minimise acrimony and an exaggerated adversarial narrative.
3. A law change to make shared parenting an absolute obligation, ensuring that biological parents have to work together to co-develop thorough child arrangement plans.
4. Role of lawyers to change dramatically, with 1 lawyer appointed to a family and to focus on the needs of the children in the short and longer term based on the shared parenting and 50/50 premise and the child’s right to a relationship with both parents. This will take away much of the adversarial, winner-takes-all approach that currently creates acrimony and lasting harm. I would also expect to see different and better training of family lawyers to accommodate this.
5. Much more support provided upstream for the family unit in the form of:
   1. marriage, relationship, grief and couples counseling
   2. facilitation and coaching to help parents move on respectfully and complete their shared parenting plans constructively
   3. child-centric mediation and conflict management
   4. child-centric courses and workshops
   5. mentoring and advocacy for family units
6. Legal-aid available to family units, not individuals to help finance and ratify the agreements not prolong acrimony
7. Court to ratify and finalise shared parenting only once these steps have been completed and to insist on a sliding scale of enforcement options.
8. Enforcement to be a last resort, but to include:
   1. financial penalties (costs met by the defendant not litigant)
   2. community service
   3. modification of the financial arrangements and shared parenting plan
9. Third party to provide a secure and confidential communications platform for couples to communicate about the child arrangements and to act as a permanent record, replacing contact books and the slew of ad-hoc data.
10. An independent body (like an OFSTED) to own and review the process, continuously improve it and handle complaints.

Of course, the elephant in the room is that there are a great number of vested interests at play. Family law and its aftermath is a multi $£billion industry. However, resisting change for self-serving reasons renders complicit parties as guilty of contributing to child abuse as malicious parents. It is clear that unless the various government and other parties change, they will become obsolete. Witness the rise in LIPs and mounting talk of a class action by alienated parents.

The trade-off with this solution is that it is still likely that a similar quantity of funding will be required that currently trickles into the pockets of law firms and grief counselors downstream. Only, service providers who adapt to the upstream support model, however, will be able to fund their services. not as litigation specialists and enforcers, but as coaches, mentors, mediators and advisers upstream, preventing problems rather than creating or sweeping up after them.”

Interesting food for thought from someone who knows about culture change and how transformation works within organisations.

But perhaps Ian’s final words are the most pertinent.

“Of course, multi-agency change is more complicated than just changing 1 organisation. But assuming Cafcass is on track, I see no reason why PA shouldn’t become as extinct as institutional racism or sexism within 2 years, provided the reformers get the right people in the “room.

After all, if this were an oil company with a leaking pipeline, it would be sorted by now,. Yet arguably PA causes much more damage. We just don’t have the same photos of impacted penguins to grab the attention of the world’s press. “

There is now a very strong wind of change blowing, motivated by the passion of millions of voting tax payers clearly being widely bullied and abused, as their children are, by a system oddly no longer fit for modern purpose.

And what’s more important than our children?

The right change shouldn’t be so hard, should it? But the big question is, what do the people currently responsible for child protection and family law really care about:

•  reforming to end the bullying and abuse?

or

• maintaining the lucrative status quo?

Very interested in your comments on this blog either by posting below or contacting us. Please do share this far and wide as we need to continue to raise awareness as, if you’re not affected, the odds are you soon will be.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ongoing dialogue with Cafcass

A week ago, I co-crafted a letter to Cafcass CEO, Anthony Douglas, on behalf of distressed and concerned parents of the hundreds of thousands of alienated children and their relatives.

It sought clarification from the head of Cafcass, of the practical steps they were taking, at least a year following his strong affirmations that his organisation not only recognised PA but was implementing measures to stem, combat and address it.

His office were quick to reach out.

I returned to him for much needed details about the practical measures they are taking as the reassuring words mean little to our children and families, without change, without action.

—————————————————————————————————————————————

Dear Mr Douglas,

Thank you very much for your prompt response to our recent letter acknowledging that you will now take on board our points as part of the reform process.

However, unfortunately you haven’t addressed any of our concerns. While we again appreciate your reiteration that “we recognise parental alienation,” you haven’t explained why:

• There is no evidence of this on the front-line, where your employees are contradicting you.
• It is taking so long to engage your staff with this, re-train and re-calibrate the culture and practices there.
• It is taking so long to develop the measures to combat parental alienation.
• Shared care isn’t recommended in the majority of cases.
• There has been no mention of re-unification of alienated parents with their children
• There are no target change dates and milestones.

You may well have noticed that our 21 point document has started to circulate around social media, including Linkedin, where the issue is attracting the attention of a number of media contacts as well as organisational change and leadership commentators and experts.

As we stated in our letter, enough is enough.

We are aware of your own personal background so know that you will be able to appreciate the incredible distress this issue is causing a great many people.

With that in mind can we please ask you to expand on your generalised statements about the assessment framework and provide very concerned parents with more clarity and reassurances about the other change pathways and measures you alluded to in your press releases last year?

Given the number of people involved and scale of this growing issue, this is every bit as serious an issue for Cafcass as similar challenges presented to CEOs of organisations of a similar size; not least the Windrush scandal at the Home Office, VW’s emissions problems or even the culture change issues at Carillion. Arguably, parental alienation affects many more people, especially children.

The fact there is a plethora of evidence that this form of abuse has such a lasting negative impact on both the short and long term mental health of the effected children should make the urgency of any reforms that much more a priority for the numerous stakeholders/agents of change involved. There are also detrimental effects on the mental health of the targeted families. We are proud of our gender neutral stance, however with 97% of residencies being given to mothers by the Family Court in the UK, (Kielty, S., University of East Anglia, 2006) this forces those fathers that don’t get granted residency  into the highest risk group within the UK for suicide rates.

We can count amongst our numbers several well-respected leadership and change consultants who have worked with director’s general of senior government departments, including the Cabinet Office. They are appalled by the lack of apparent urgency, absence of collective responsibility and clear disconnect between your enlightened view and front line service user experience. Look at what Starbucks has just achieved on the back of a single race-related incident, having mobilised mass training and communication in under a month? Yet they are only entrusted to sell coffee, not influence children’s lives and their profit margins are considerably less than the money spent in Family Court, daily.

Please don’t take this as negativity or hostility on our behalf. We want to do all we can to help you bring about expedient change. But we do hope you can appreciate the seriousness of our concerns, the extent of our desperation and the strength of will to resolve the most important issue we all face, the future of our relationships with our children.

This will in part be decided by your next actions.

We trust you are able to reply with reassuring specifics about what you as CEO of Cafcass and your leadership team and board will deliver this year and when we can expect to see positive change in the practice of your front line staff.

We look forward to your response, ideally within the next seven days.

Yours sincerely,

 

—————————————————————————————————————————————–

 

Status Update:

Still waiting……

 

The consequences of dis-engagement in our public services

An interesting piece by an organisation change specialist, featuring observations about how public services organisations must change:

A lot of people jumped on the employee engagement bandwagon in recent years and one of the side-effects is that it has become a bit of a cliche.

There’s so much noise that it engenders a sort of social-media equivalent of an ice-cream headache.

Why?

Because so-many opportunists are offering silver-bullet solutions to the scourge of the walking dead employee in the form of “an app” or “a tech solution” that the zombies have become immune, especially those in the leadership positions who should be taking the subject very seriously indeed.

As I’ve proven and illustrated time and again throughout my consultancy career, whether with the Omnicom group helping blue chip brands or my consultancy career helping the likes of the Nuffield Group, Northern Ireleand Tourist Board or even tech companies like ARM Holdings, organisation culture, people processes and leadership behaviour are the keys to building sustainable brands.

Yet in recent times we’ve seen organisations like United Airlines and VW/Audi, Bell Pottinger forget these principles, involving them in costly, high-profile brand disasters. It also affects the public and non-profit sector too as we have seen at Oxfam and even today, Theresa May’s government has plunged itself into another avoidable crisis over the deportation of the Windrush generation. This was yet another reputation crisis that could so easily have been avoided with judicious internal culture management and internal communication/engagement rather than reliance on PR to sweep up after yet another disaster.

But this disconnect appears to run deep in too many organisation as well as across government.

On the subject of PR, last year ended with CAFCASS CEO Anthony Douglas making a series of high-profile, ground-breaking announcements about a growing malaise being experienced by loving parents nation-wide, namely the scourge of parent alienation or PA. It is a relatively modern phenomenon where one parent, usually the resident parent, post divorce or separation, exploits the current family courts and blind spots of the social services infrastructure, to abuse their extra time with the children they share to erase the non-resident parent from the children’s lives. This has been proven to happen over a lengthy period of time using, what amounts to psychological abuse, to bend the children to their will.

Douglas has now formally recognised the existence of PA and the fact that it is affecting around 1 million of the cases CAFCASS oversees, although pressure groups suggested the figure is more like 4million. Factoring in the 5-6 extended family members this will also affect, that’s as many people as the population of Wales and Scotland combined ripped cruelly from the lives of their own children.

Psychological abuse of this nature has been widely proven to have a long-lasting and damaging future impact on children measured in under-perfromance at school in later life, problems with depression, self-harming and failure to thrive. Now add to this the impact on the adults in terms of depression and psychological harm and the impact of as many people as the population of Wales and Scotland combined wasting money on unnecessary legal fees, time off work and the cost of treating them, not to mention the rising levels of related suicide in the targeted population (men around 40), and that is a considerable business case for change.

However, almost a year since Douglas’s announcements, pressure groups report that there has been little or no evidence of:

1. general awareness or acknowledgement of PA on the CAFCASS front line by vital case staff
2.  alternative approaches to recognise and address alienating behaviour

So, not to sugar the pill, while corporates would be hemorrhaging money; in the public sector and social/child protection services, because of a failure to engage properly with their own staff, the child abuse continues unabated with little or no change. That too leads to indirect losses of money. There appears, sadly, to be a clear disconnect between the great PR and fine words and employee engagement by the most senior of leaders within CAFCASS.

As a consequence, family courts, reliant on CAFCASS support, remain powerless to address the growing problem and more and more cases of alienation are reported.

Putting the sensitive issue of emotional child abuse and the impact on the economy and well being of people aside, just consider the impact on the trendiest of topics, gender equality and pay at work. Around 97% of UK “singe-parent” households are female led. That’s at least 1 million single mothers who will likely be lost to the job market because they are not sharing the parenting of the children they treat like possessions. *

So, ask yourself again, what are the consequences of  dis-engagement to organisations?

Well, the example of CAFCASS illustrates this perfectly. Businesses, organisations and brands are not built by external PR and fine words alone. What really counts is action, on the front line, where employees face customers, daily. Communication has not landed until CHANGE occurs.

Hopefully the latest addition to the CAFCASS leadership team, Edward Timpson, will recognise the importance of culture change within CAFCASS and wider social services and the need for proper external support. Because if an organisation set up to protect the welfare of our children can’t get this right, will it really matter what commercial organisations hoping to sell to them in future do because goods and services can’t compensate for the love and support of both parents.

* Figures taken from the Peace not PAS website who asked me to comment on the OD aspects of  an article by @daddyduwsf  “Parent Alienation and Organisation Culture”

Open letter to Anthony Douglas, CEO of Cafcass

The following is an open letter we co-authored for the Peace not PAS blog, as representatives of a network of passionate anti-PA campaigners.:

Dear Mr Douglas,

We are a network with a significant international reach.

We represent hundreds of UK parents, fathers, mothers and grandparents.

We write to you as good, loving biological parents and relatives who, at the conclusion of our marriages or relationships, despite following advised protocols to agree the arrangements for our children and obtaining court orders, have since been denied a relationship with our own children/grandchildren. This has not been through any conscious action of our own, but as a consequence of deliberate, calculated and contrived action by the other parent.

We are not a gendered group and recognise that parental alienation can and does happen to mothers as well as fathers, but sadly, in the majority of cases this has been mothers, as resident parents, perpetrating the alienation after using the children to secure the assets of the former family by controlling the children.

It is a rapidly spreading scandal.

You must be acutely aware of the consequent escalating public concern about your organisation, set up to represent the best interests of children and which claims to “Build Stronger Families.”

Given the scale of the issue, conservatively said to involve between 1-4 million UK children, Cafcass is patently not doing enough to either prevent the alienation of parents and families from their children, to reform or hold alienating parents to account or to reunite those children estranged from one half of their family infrastructure, usually the paternal.

This is having an increasingly detrimental impact on alienated parents and children, as you, yourself acknowledge.

As parents with loved ones being abused as a consequence, we’re greatly distressed, greatly concerned and have run out of patience.

This letter follows your personal acknowledgement of the impact of parental alienation on families last year, recent debates at Westminster concerning the same, in part led by Andrew Brigden MP, and in light of how the perpetuation of this growing issue is fast undermining the authority of family courts and credibility of the support services, including your organisation.

As you are clearly aware, there are hundreds of thousands of children and their parents in this country, who are being systematically failed by your organisation. This is evidenced in your own research and that carried out by several independent bodies. These findings are very similar to those carried out in other countries.

These failings result in a loss or significantly reduced child contact, parent alienation, and mental health issues in both children and parents, some cases contributing to 82 male suicides a day.

These failings stem from the way the family law process is currently applied, how Cafcass has failed to adapt to changing times and gender roles and how your agents are deployed, especially with regard to the initial decision-making process at the point of separation in dealing with this country’s most precious asset, our children:

1. Your organisation fails to acknowledge that both genders are equal in the eyes of the law and subsequently fails to identify the underlying reasons for hostility between separating parties.  Much of this is dealt with according to gender and/or parental stereotypes and any hostility is more often than not a direct result of the adversarial legal process which pits parents against each other. This process also places children in the middle of a war for resources, given the parent with ‘custody’ secures the assets and income at the expense of the other party and the less time that party spends with the children the more they are rewarded. This encourages allegations in order to secure finances.

2. Your organisation does not act fast enough, despite it being widely acknowledged that time to adversely influence the children is the alienating parent’s greatest asset and, despite no evidence to support this, your representatives actively promote ‘cooling off’ and further delays and often reference intractable hostility between parties when in fact, in most cases, the hostility is generated by the parent with the power, namely the resident parent who controls the children.

3. It has unfortunately become a common tactic to perpetuate a convenient but false abuse narrative both in order to obtain legal aid and discredit the other party, glean sympathy from third parties and play to gender stereotypes. Seldom are these allegations substantiated as it would appear that allegations are enough despite these originating from an entirely biased party with much to gain. This potentially leads to children’s time being reduced with the non-resident parent who then becomes a target for alienation.

4. The identification of when allegations of domestic abuse started is a key failing of your organisation. Separation is a difficult and emotional time for both parents and children and with emotions running high in an artificial environment, patience and tempers can flare. Some parents manipulate this emotion to their advantage, a characteristic of parental alienation, and your organisation is failing to differentiate between genuine abuse claims and fabricated, engineered events (as in the 2015 Operating Framework), even in cases when presented with the evidence. There is an unfortunate but very clear gender bias at play here.

5. Alienating behaviours brought to the attention of your organisation’s Family Court Advisors (FCAs) in the course of your process are being ignored, even when solid and tangible evidence is provided. Although the Operating Framework (page 62) recognises it and says “It is important to intervene early, before alienation becomes a way of life and the relationship between a parent and child breaks down irretrievably,” it is not being applied and your organisation is not equipped to deal with and identify these behaviours and act accordingly nor does it help with reunification when alienation has occurred, even when your organisation is known to have been a key driver, albeit seemingly unwittingly.

6. Your organisation claims in its Operation Framework that you will “consider the needs of children” when “serious welfare concerns become apparent” [1.3] and does not seem to apply that in its report outcome and recommendation. It is also implied that these welfare concerns are physical and very little reference is made to the psychological abuse that the alienation process represents. It is also questionable whether an impressionable child’s wishes and feelings can ever be said to be unbiased when one parent dominates time, control and influence over them. It places children in a position of too great a responsibility over their parents and opens them up to abuse by the alienating parent who has a biased agenda.

7. Despite your clear declarations about your organisation’s recognition of and plans to address parental alienation, throughout our network of thousands of parents, several months on from your public statements, none of your front-line staff either echo your personal stance, will hardly acknowledge the term parent alienation nor are they able to suggest appropriate pathways for addressing the problems. This does, on the face of it, appear to represent a serious organisation leadership failing in terms of basic communication, engagement and change management. We refer you to these comments by organisational change, culture change and employee engagement guru Ian Buckingham (who kindly wrote an article for us in December 2017, entitled Parental Alienation: Is the continual spread of this abuse caused by organisation culture?) This does imply systemic culture change issues akin to the human rights abuses and problems the Home Office has recently experienced in the mismanagement of the Windrush scandal.

8. Parents that attend a Separated Parents Information Programme (SPIP) [46% in the sample of data used] are deemed suitable for a co-parenting support approach. Disappointingly, courts frame the dispute as interpersonal conflict not as purely obstruction by one party (as already discussed above). The percentage of shared care and co-parenting outcomes should ideally match this percentage but are much lower; this is a core failing in your process as there is no continuous improvement built-in and no accountability.

9. There are a number of courses that form part of recommended outcomes but there are none for parents who have been described as ‘alienators’ to obtain support. These could and should include counselling accompanied by psychological evaluations and psychometrics in an attempt to help parents re-frame their attitudes and behaviours. Your organisation fails to identify this abuse and as such has no way to deal with it effectively, if anything this failing is creating major problems downstream and the very delays enable parental alienation to become further entrenched.

10. Your organisation refers to non-molestation orders (NMO) as an indication of someone who has been violent towards another party. That is a complete misinterpretation of the purpose of such orders which can be granted for a range of reasons including as a means of avoiding excessive arguing between parties outside of the legal process and bear no relation to violence or abuse. It is clear from research, however, that non-molestation orders can and often are abused as a weapon in separation to prevent dialogue and communication about the children and to force communication via children or the court. Again  this is an attribute of parental alienation, and to potentially secure legal aid. Little evidence is required to be successful in obtaining an order. Ex-parte NMO’s are granted in 98% of applications [2] and are rarely contested due to the cost and complexity of defending therefore no charges are brought by the CPS. Your organisation needs to have increased governance and careful consideration around the treatment of NMOs in its recommendations.

11. Your organisation does not have a rework loop in your process once a case is closed. Your organisations Proportionate Working Principles states you will “work with HMCTS to ensure Cafcass is removed as a party once we have closed.” This goes against every best practice in Continuous Process Improvement as your organisation will rarely find if and why the outcome of your decision was successful. This control and feedback mechanism is a key metric to making your organisation stronger and better, continuously improving. Again, this is a leadership issue Your organisation is pushing unaddressed issues downstream and these poor decisions can take several years to re-mediate leaving children and parents vulnerable and resulting in significant psychological harm to targeted parents and children.

12. 30% (12,179) of cases managed by your organisation return to court in two years, with 3,654 returning multiple times. In a sample of 100 cases (just 0.008%), 76 were due to ‘alleged’ conflict (As highlighted above) or safeguarding; two areas of expertise your organisation claims to manage and support. This ’defect rate’ is unacceptable in any organisation, more so when children and parental well-being and mental health is involved [1]. Your own figures suggest that these cases involve around 1 million children. If we attribute 6 relatives affected by parental alienation to that child that is more people affected by parental alienation than the combined population of Wales and Scotland. This is not a minority/marginal issue.

13. An independent audit of a range of cases at senior level should take place at regular intervals with the results published to ensure that the key facts of each case are picked up, have been addressed and were they have not there is a process rework. A Risk Management and Control Framework with sufficient governance is not referenced in your Operating Framework implying once a case is closed there is no subsequent audit. This is a major learning and development failing if this is the case

14. An Early Intervention scheme should be considered that provides both parents with transparency, communication, clarity and support and giving both parents an indication of what to expect before being forced into an adversarial legal environment. Andrew Bridgen MP is advocating a pilot scheme with an aim to provide parents with much-needed clarity and certainty through proceedings. But again, this is taking far too long given the scale of the issues and importance of the subject.

15. Children are being interviewed to ascertain ‘thoughts and feelings’ in isolation with no supervision and the sessions are not recorded. Yet the interviews are not taking into account the influence of the alienating parent and are placing children in what we consider to be an undue position of responsibility for decisions adults would struggle with. This is a major failing and needs immediate attention. All sessions should be independently supervised by either a teacher or other independent adult and the practice itself needs significant overhaul.

16. No work is currently undertaken to ascertain and then mediate between parents to resolve alleged ‘implacable’ differences. No regard is given for the fact that the party alleging ‘abuse’ can simply refuse to comply with any third-party action, can refuse to comply with Cafcass recommendations and can refuse to comply with court orders without any checks, balances, or accountability for their actions and this does not seem to prejudice their case or require remedy. There is also no consideration given to the fact that the same individual, who wields so much power they can ignore Court Orders, ironically can claim that they are being bullied, impossible given they clearly wield all the power. It is now clear that common phraseology is used in cases to justify their actions “I will not force my children to do what they don’t want to” etc, which should be key indicators of a deep-seated parenting problem and deeper mental health issue.

17. FCA’s need suitable time with clients prior to court hearings, at the moment an FCA can request a fact-finding or section 7 report after just several minutes with a client and no evidence to support allegations. This causes distress to parents in a difficult situation, who often have no legal support and it distresses children who often have had no cause to deal with third parties/strangers, an act which is alienating in its own right and used by alienating parents to cultivate blame/perpetuate the abuse narrative.

18. All evidence, no matter what stage of the process should be reviewed and considered. The ownership lies with your organisation and when new informationcomes to light it should be acted upon, this is not happening. This evidence can validate behaviour and safeguarding issues relevant to the case especially where a parent refuses to recognise or follow your recommendations or the court order.

19. Your Parenting Plan should be mandatory prior to a First Hearing and Dispute Resolution Appointment (FHDRA) taking place and should be the primary focal point upon couples divorcing and deciding child arrangements. Mediation should also focus on this. Yet it is currently discretionary. Where parties fail to participate it should be noted in any report and appropriate action taken. The Plan is an excellent document but is not enforceable so there is little value of it in certain situations.

20. The unanimous feedback from all participants on several recent SPIPs (mothers and fathers) was that their experience of your organisation was poor and the format of the sessions were ill-devised, poorly facilitated and deeply distressing to attend. Each and every one said your process increased conflict in their relationship in trying to resolve childcare. There is a basic lack of communication between FCAs and clients; FCAs do not listen, there is little in the way of support to help resolve shared care with both parents who want to be involved in their upbringing and development. I can only assume your organisation, has a mechanism in place like successful commercial organisations to capture the ‘voice of the customer/parent’ and act on this feedback.

21. Your FCAs appear to have little to no understanding of mental health, particularly in the context of parental alienation. All the available evidence regarding the effective assessment and case management of parental alienation informs us that parental alienation should be viewed within the context of mental health. There is a plethora of evidence that informs us that in severe cases of parental alienation, mental health issues such as personality disorders are all too often the driving force behind the abusive behaviours of the alienating parent. Furthermore the same body of evidence informs us that there can be short and long-term detrimental effects on the mental health of the alienated children as well as the alienated parent and their alienated family. Despite the evidenced link between mental health and parental alienation your FCA’s appear to be ill-informed regarding this. As a result of this clear lack of evidence based knowledge and approach, certain traits, risks and other such factors that are associated with mental health and inextricably linked with the abuse go undetected by your organisation’s FCAs.

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Parents are being made to feel criminalised by your organisation and the draconian court process that is being forced on them.  Can you not see the irony in the fact that non-resident parents are accused, time and again, of using the family court as an extension of an alleged (and false) abuse narrative, when in actual fact it is the only alternative available to us when denied a meaningful relationship with our children, a course of action recommended by police, solicitors and indeed your own organisation? But when we turn to the courts for support, we are accused by opposing lawyers of “abuse by litigation” and only 1% of contact orders, gained as a result of your intervention, are enforced.

There have been several high-profile criminal cases that have collapsed due to lack of material and non-disclosure of evidence yet your FCA ‘experts’ are making decisions on the same basis in a limited time-frame that have major repercussions for family life and children. Your organisation sits back and endorses this by a slow, reactive process with no intervention that has no certainty of outcome.

We urge your organisation to change and for you to hold your leaders to account for delivering that change via their front line staff. Your intervention and process places undue and unnecessary pressure and stress on parents through inappropriate work with our children and undermines people who simply want to move on with their lives with their children, most of whom want fair and reasonable access ideally in a shared care environment.

Providing guidance and support to both parents early in the process would be a simple procedure to implement and this along with suitable mediation and support would negate the need for protracted court hearings downstream. These are changes you could and should be making NOW!

No CEO of a profit-making commercial organisation would settle for the inefficient and ineffective processes your organisation has. So why do you Mr Douglas? Your professional and personal reputation is very much on the line. You should be aware that there is increasing talk of a mass class action by alienated parents in deep distress, such is the scope and scale of this issue. And you will be aware of the campaign to deploy our local MPs, who will also be copied in on this letter.

You should be aware that we have a social media reach of 1 million per week and growing fast and given this is literally the most important issue we all face, those of us who survive the abuse, are not going to go away.

We have emailed you a copy of this letter direct. We would like to meet and discuss the contents and can come to a meeting supported by social workers, reunification specialists, psychiatrists, lawyers and organisational change consultants should you need additional input.

We trust and hope you will take our considered points seriously and look forward to your response, ideally in the next seven days.

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Outcome:

Anthony Douglas replied reiterating that ” We do recognise Parent Alienation”.

He also repeated that they are working on changes to their systems and procedures.

A supplementary letter requesting specifics and timescales was sent, which we will publish after he has had a chance to respond.

Petition for 50/50 responsibilities/rights

Paul Archer is just one of a growing number of parents who have had their lives shattered by a system that fails to recognise that parents are equally responsible for their children and should be afforded 50/50 consideration when it comes to parenting in the best interests of their children who deserve to have both parents in their lives.

Sadly, the current adversarial system shatters relationships, bankrupts families, undermines the institution of marriage and fills the bank accounts of unscrupulous third parties with the school fees of our children.

He has started a petition as one tactic to address this ongoing injustice which will one day be recognised as a corrosive anomaly akin to the civil rights injustices in the USA as recently as the 60s or the lengthy denial of female suffrage.

Please follow this link to lend Paul your support:

<a href=”http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/children-family-court-corruption.html”>Children, Family Court Corruption Petition | GoPetition</a>