Suffer the Little Children
Stopping forced separations
of children from mothers in UK and US
Tuesday, 7 June 2016 6.30 - 8.30pm
Grimond Room, Portcullis House,
Bridge Street, SW1A 2LW
 Westminster  All welcome.
(Portcullis House is part of the Houses of Parliament - please allow time to go through security)
Kindly sponsored by Tulip Siddiq, MP for Hampstead & Kilburn
Guest speaker: Richard Wexler, Executive Director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, USA, and author of Wounded Innocents: The Real Victims of the War Against Child Abuse
Other speakers:
 Cristel Amiss, Black Women’s Rape Action Project
Nicola Mann, Women Against Rape
Anne Neale, Legal Action for Women
Kim Sparrow, Single Mothers’ Self Defence
Mothers fighting for their children
Suffer the Little Children –
a Dossier by Legal Action for Women documenting mothers’ struggle in
the family courts in England, will be launched at the meeting.
Following
the US-model, forced separations of mothers and children have increased
massively in the UK in the past 20 years, especially against those of
us on low incomes, of colour, immigrant, teenagers, with learning
difficulties … Sexism, racism, domestic violence, usually suffered by
the mother, poverty, homelessness … all influence decisions to remove
children from their mothers. Everyone knows that mothers are children’s
first line of protection and defence, but this is increasingly denied.
Early
intervention by the state in the name of protecting children has led to
cruel and traumatic separation rather than compassionate support. One
third of children report being abused while in care. It has spawned an
industry which feeds on the attack on parents’ capacity to raise their
own children. As“emotional abuse and neglect” have
become a more common basis for intervention than physical or sexual
abuse, the discretionary powers of social workers have dangerously
expanded. In Scotland, the new ‘Named Person’ legislation is being
challenged in the Supreme Court as it raises concerns that the state is
undermining families by taking parenting powers upon itself.
A child protection social worker warns us about the government’s latest plans:
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