🧵 Mother is an important word. It has a specific legal meaning for very important reasons, many of which centre on the #safeguarding of the babies born to mothers. A baby's mother is the woman who gave birth to it. Mother has a legal status.
The most fundamental safeguard of a newborn baby is the legal parental responsibility (PR) automatically given to its mother. The reasons for this are laid out in the judgement in the Freddie McConnell case.
So we should beware when this word with an important legal status comes under challenge. It's about the right of a baby to be safeguarded in law, not the self image of adults who may, in various different ways, be invested in that baby. We remove legal safeguards at our peril.
The McConnell judgement also lays out how the law deals with the issue of surrogacy.
And with adoption.
A baby's right to be safeguarded, in the form of PR, is given to the woman who gave birth to it, who has the important legal status of mother. It can only be transferred through other legal means. We cannot have babies born without this safeguard. Without it they are unprotected.
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PROPORTIONALITY IN #SAFEGUARDING - a quick thread on the *correct* definition of proportionality and other guiding principles from the Care Act 2014.
The principle of proportionality in #safeguarding is to ensure any interventions you make are the least intrusive possible for the level of risk TO THE CHILD OR VULNERABLE ADULT and NOT the practitioners who are intervening. It's protective of the client, NOT the practitioner.
Proportionality is one of six guiding principles in #safeguarding of vulnerable adults. The others are empowerment, protection, prevention, partnerships and accountability.
More #safeguarding fails. Please could you watch this video by @claireOT about a discussion in a recent podcast, in which adult sexualities are projected onto pre-school children by adults and #safeguarding red flags are ignored.
@claireOT Here's a thread about the same issues by @TaniaAMarshall. We should *never* place children outside normal #safeguarding frameworks because we are more interested in how we can interpret their behaviours to suit preferred narratives of men with paraphilias.
@claireOT@TaniaAMarshall Finally, please read my own thread about the dangers of infiltration by abusers which all organisations working with children or their parents face and must guard against. If you ignore #safeguarding red flags, such people will see you as an easy mark.
INFILTRATION: okay, a bit of dust has settled so I'm going to try to explain one particular aspect of why the way organisations react to having #safeguarding concerns raised with them is important. This thread is inspired by recent events but is not about them specifically.
The risk to children is ever present. The National Crime Agency's most recent estimate is that there are between 550,000 and 850,000 people (almost all of them men) who pose a risk to children IN THE UK ALONE. standard.co.uk/news/uk/nca-fa…
Men who abuse children don't go about wearing dirty old macs. They are often charismatic, engaging, and charming. They work hard to gain trust. They do good deeds. You'll like them. These men circle anywhere children or their parents are, working out ways to gain access.
Minor thought experiment on the idea that destigmatising certain male sexual behaviours - "understanding the poor suffering man better" - is the best strategy and will make something pro-social out of something anti-social.
What if we substitute a different human impulse that is anti-social rather than pro-social? Let's take theft. Some people are covetous. They get really distressed if they can't have the things they want. If they can't buy them, they steal them. Some become kleptomaniacs.
Well, it's sad for the kleptomaniac, isn't it? We live in a materialist society after all. Some people are more vulnerable to it. Some people are even born covetous. They remember those covetous feelings from when they were 3 or 4. They were born that way, poor things.
You know, the most damning thing about the @UKLabour conference is how ignorant they all are about the women they have been traducing. Few people are highly political in the activist sense and most view those who are, as rather crankish.
@UKLabour But women opposing genderism have been through an intense period of political education in the last five years. They've learned about concepts like regulatory capture and institutional capture and the difference between them. They know about policy laundering.
@UKLabour They know about legislation: how EqA and GRA interact; what the Children Act says and how schools guidance undermines it. They've educated themselves about grooming techniques and the patterns of narcissistic abuse.
Privacy and single sex services: an analogy of workable policy.
You must be 18 to purchase alcohol in a pub in the UK. This is an age-based safeguard for young people. There are sanctions on pubs who serve under-age customers.
If the pub suspects a customer is under-age, they ask to see an identity document proving age. If the customer does not have one, the pub must refuse service or face those sanctions, which can be significant.