Taking our kids away
Is Slovakia right to get involved when Slovaks
lose their children to British social services, or should they mind their own
business? What constitutes a good reason
for social services to take children away from their parents? Is poverty enough?
Even though I have come across this issue several times in the past two months, I did not pay increased attention to it. However, I think the article provides me with enough relevant facts, so that I can give a coherent response. I share the opinion of Jana Dubovcová. Slovak government really should not interfere with the decision-making of British authorities. Slovak citizens, who choose to live in the UK, have to be aware of their laws. They might have gotten used to the flaws in the Slovak social system. I believe the system in the UK is more sophisticated. In my opinion, the appeals from Slovak authorities are counterproductive. The families will continue to neglect their children, knowing that the government in the country of origin will back them up in the case of trouble.
ReplyDeleteIn any country, social services should step in if there was a suspicion that a child’s development might be negatively affected. Nonetheless, a poor family might still be able to fulfill the basic needs of a child, both mental and physical. In that case, there is no reason for the authorities to take an action. Much of a talk about Slovak children being taken away by the British authorities was primarily focused on the ‘adoption’ part. However, nobody really questioned the reliability of the families. It is the case of this article as well. I believe the British social workers would not step in if they hadn’t had good reasons. The Slovak media, by saying that they aimed to satisfy demand from British citizens, only proved their own incompetency in journalism. Having no evidence for such claims, they simply wanted sensational information to feed some of their naive readers with.
Regarding the Boor case, one fact caught my attention. The children’s mother and grandmother had two years two appeal, but they were not capable of doing so. Then a question stands: How will they take care of their own children if they are not able to appeal against the adoption in two years time?
I have noticed this case a few weeks ago, but have never seen mentioned reportages. My first contact was from the opposite perspective as it has been presented in medias. I have stumbled upon a blog in which a Slovak citizen working in UK (something to do with social services) wrote about a distorted picture which our TV stations produced. She stated that she had never witnessed British social service forcefully taking children from their rightful parents, were it not for a strong reason. She stated that the rules in Britain may be a bit more strict, and that people should take notice of them before they move there. The main point of the blog article was that, most likely, it is the parents’ mistake for not sufficiently taking care of their children.
ReplyDeleteThere were two published cases. First was about the couple Miroslav Gorol and Veronika Conkova who had five children taken away by British social workers. It is worth mentioning that it was a temporary foster care, something that can be reverted. To arrive to conclusion, we have too few information. We do not know why they were taken away, we do not know whether some measures were not tried prior to that. Therefore we cannot put blame on neither side, but it is hardly imaginable for me that there was not a reason to act in that way. Much less can I believe the voiced suspicion of Slovak media that “the British authorities have been taking Slovak children away from their families in order to satisfy demand from British citizens.”
The second case of Boor’s family is easier to judge. When the two sons were taken away, mother and grandmother were given a two year time to appeal for a subsequent court ruling. I really wonder how on earth could someone miss two-year deadline which decides the future of his/her own children. There are all kinds of deadline that might be missed, but not this one. Contrary to the first case, there is no doubt that the British social services had had the right to put those kids into adoption.
To the big satisfaction of both families, the two sons and the five children were returned to their parents. I still uphold an opinion that to objectively assess whose fail it was, we would need to know much more, than we do now. For now, I will just say that I am really curious about the future of these children, whether they will not be taken away from their parents once more. I hope not, but who knows what might happen, and surely, if it was (as I personally believe) the parents’ error, the children might be actually taken away for good.
Rasto raised an interesting topic when he said that Slovak media helped the parents to retrieve the children. I would like to expand on this idea in relation to Slovak authorities.
ReplyDeleteThe question is, are they the ones to blame? Once again, we lack information about the cases, which would gave us a complete picture of how the families reached for help in Slovakia, and how the help was provided, if any at all. The article writes only about the replaced director of the Centre for International Protection of Children and Youth, stating that the new director, Cisarova, has managed to cooperate with British authorities. At this point, when it was written that the Centre had information about the cases since July 2010, the failure, or inability to do something, really lies on the shoulders of this Centre. It urges me to ask, what were they doing, when after replacement of the director, literally weeks sufficed and the case was happily solved. Does it not show the competence, or rather incompetence of Slovak authorities? In my opinion, it does. Mainly, because once again, only after media coverage of the case, only after making it widely public did something change!
Slovakia's sad reality...not even the case of this extent evoked in the director the responsibility (I will directly address the director, as the one being in charge of the office, thus the one bearing the responsibility of all its employees and actions) to do anything to help the families. Unless people, and we may safely talk about devastating majority of the higher positions, are truly forced, like with a pair of stallions, to finally DO the bits of work they were expected (not by the ones who put them into this position, but at least by me) to do, they do nothing, and are satisfied. Sitting on a couch, having a secretary bringing them coffee and wondering about how great is their job, and that they should probably send a chocolate dessert to their "payangel," is their daily routine.
To summarize my point, it is truly appalling to see how unwilling and unmotivated people are in Slovakia. "Honor to exceptions." Yeah, the families are the ones to blame, but Slovak authorities are to blame as well. Paltriness of the dysfunctional system was beautifully portrayed by this case. Unfortunately, it reinforced my desire to leave this country, the country where the determinant of a change or an improvement is not a matter of one's ambitions, but rather of fear of having the inability discovered, and of losing the warm position.
In my opinion, Slovakia has the right to get involved, when slovaks lose their children to a foreign social services. They are still citizze of the Slovak republic. The Slovak republic should protect them and get involved in their problems in the same way as they do with Slovaks living in Slovakia. Moreover, they should care even more when the children are taken eaway from their parent for no provable reason.
ReplyDeleteIn the article the author mentions a documentary aired by the JOJ channel about the Bohr family who lost they children to the British child services. At first, I would like to say that there is not enough said about both cases in the article. My classmates came to the conclusion that it’s the mothers and grandmothers fault that the court was two years after they took the children and some even said in an ironic way that they maybe forgot about their children. If the article would contain more information about this case they would not come to this conclusion. I saw the documentary and at the end I blamed the British social services and the government of the Slovak republic but not the mother and the grandmother. In the documentary it is said that the British social service took the two boys because the doctor of the boys has said that the injuries which one of the boys had were caused by their farther. I personally think that it is quite normal when a child has an injury since they play around all the time and do dangerous things and it should not be a reason to suspect someone of child abuse. According to the mother the Slovak embassy and the Slovak government did nothing to help the family to get the children back.
They are 3 things which shocked me the most. The first is that after the child protective service took the children, they could give them into the care of the grandmother but social services didn’t allow it. The second thing is that the mother of the children is a Kindergarten teacher and during the two years she was fighting to get her children back, she got a license from the same social services allowing her to have a kindergarten at home . That means they allow her to have random children at home but not her own. I personally think this is ridiculous and without any bit of logic. The third is that after the children are taken they are put into families where the children don’t get enough food, the environment is horrible and in most cases the families treat the children like they wouldn’t exist. The only reason, why people take children, like the Bohr ones into their family is because they get money for it. Furthermore, I personally think that the main reason, why social services take children from immigrants is because it creates jobs. It is horrible to watch the government do thinks like this just to create jobs and make money.
I think, the social services can take a child away from its parents only when there is evidence that the parents harm the child, the child is living in an unhealthy environment and other similar scenarios. I do thing that poverty is a reason to take the child away from the parents but only when they already live on the street and not when they still have a roof above their head.
In conclusion, the Slovak families are not the only ones. It already happened to many families which immigrated to Britain from all around the world. That’s why, I think, there has to be done something about this problem and that the Slovak government should interfere.