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 Post subject: Re:Several articles expected in the Sunday Guardian in India
PostPosted: Sun Dec 31, 2017 10:17 am 
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Part 1 of Julija Stepanenko's article is now also on SaveYourChildren, under a different title:

Julija Stepanenko:
Scores of Latvian Children Deprived of their Families in Foreign Countries (Part I)
SaveYourChildren, 23 desember 2017

  

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 Post subject: Re:Several articles expected in the Sunday Guardian in India
PostPosted: Sun Dec 31, 2017 10:32 am 
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Julija Stepanenko:
Latvia’s inspiring campaign against forced adoptions
(Part 2)

Sunday Guardian, 30 December 2017

"Latvia’s law on the protection of the rights of minors abroad sets a global precedent, and paves a legal route towards redressing the draconian child-confiscation policies of the Nordic nations and of Britain."

"It was primarily Laila Brice’s case that provoked a strong response from the Saeima (Latvian Parliament), which on 28 January 2016 unanimously adopted the “Declaration on the Protection of the Rights of Minor Latvian Nationals in Foreign Countries”."

"The Latvian Government offers some legal aid to Latvian parents facing removal of their children abroad. Both the Latvian Ministry of Justice and their Ombusdman, whose remit includes child welfare, have issued public notices warning of Latvian children being removed from their parents and placed in new homes by foreign authorities, especially in Britain, Ireland, Norway and Germany. The Ombudsman’s notice is displayed in the airports. Parents are told to contact the Latvian embassy for assistance as early as possible in such cases."

"The Ombusdman’s notice on Norway and Britain warns that investigations into families can be opened on the report of a neighbour."

"The Latvian Government has also set up a high-level Working Group to protect the interests of Latvian minors abroad in child protection cases. The Ministers of Justice, Foreign Affairs and Welfare are part of this group."

"All countries experiencing this issue with their minors abroad should come together on a common platform."

  

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 Post subject: Re:Several articles expected in the Sunday Guardian in India
PostPosted: Sun Dec 31, 2017 10:48 am 
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Sunday Guardian's introduction to the second part of Julija Stepanenko's article:

This week in Global Child Rights and Wrongs, run in collaboration with http://www.saveyourchildren.in, we present the second and concluding part of Latvian Member of Parliament Julija Stepanenko's article on her government's efforts to retrieve children of their immigrants confiscated by foreign child protection services (CPS). Julija Stepanenko is at the forefront of these effort. Latvia has done ground-breaking work on this issue, notably the adoption by their Parliament of a Declaration on Latvian Minors Abroad, which sets out the basis in international law for intervention by the country of origin in foreign CPS cases. Detailed materials on the Parliamenyary debate on the Declaration and the Latvian authorities' public awareness drive, legal aid and consular assistance on this matter will be posted on http://www.saveyourchildren.in tomorrow.
  
  

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 Post subject: Re:Several articles expected in the Sunday Guardian in India
PostPosted: Wed Jan 03, 2018 11:12 pm 
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Part 2 of Julija Stepanenko's article is now also on SaveYourChildren, under the title

Scores of Latvian Children Deprived of their Families in Foreign Countries (Part 2) – Latvia Fights Back for its Children
SaveYourChildren, 2 January 2018

  

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 Post subject: Re:Several articles expected in the Sunday Guardian in India
PostPosted: Sat Jan 06, 2018 9:44 pm 
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Nandita Chaudhary & Heidi Keller:
Universal child-care laws undermine cultural diversity
Sunday Guardian, 6 January 2018

"Every community has its own cultural ethos, and its own specific models of care-giving. The universal ideas of child care prescribed by Attachment Theory have little practical relevance outside the West."

Dr Nandita Chaudhary taught in the University of Delhi for more than three decades;
Dr Heidi Keller is Professor Emeritus at Osnabrück University, Germany, and Director of Nevet at Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel
  

"Attachment Theory has gained much popularity in the “scientific” study of childhood and has impacted child policy, parenting and education the world over. We argue that it is a major flaw of Attachment Theory not to take into account the historical and cultural diversity in beliefs and practices related to children’s care.
    Families all over the world value children and try to do their best for them, yet the expression of care and love is different in different cultures. This is necessary, because care practices are delicately adapted to the ecological conditions and social history of any given community."


"Children for their part display an acute ability to adjust to different conditions and thrive under very diverse settings. Attachment Theory fails to accept this variability. It promotes the normative view that a baby must form an attachment with the constant presence of the mother, who is advised to dedicate her full attention and time to loving and caring for her baby in order for it to develop well."

"Although Attachment Theory is obviously promoting ideas about parenting and child development that are in stark contrast to what the majority of the world’s population thinks and believes, it has become extremely powerful on account of the moral and cultural claims of being the best way to bring up children. Once it was adopted by international NGOs, the theory became the basis of intervention programmes worldwide.
    Children’s development is considered as isolated from social context in documents like the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. This is predicated upon the notion of the individual as separate from society and human or child development as separate from culture. When we accept these as “universal principles”, there is an overestimation of the role of science based on a Western philosophy of individualism. When such rules are accepted as binding, local cultural practices are undermined. Global policy presents a globalised view of childhood without acknowledging that it is conceptualised only in Euro-American ideology. We need to keep a critical vigilance on any policy that impacts the cultural lives of others to ensure that ethical boundaries are not being crossed."


  

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 Post subject: Re:Several articles expected in the Sunday Guardian in India
PostPosted: Sat Jan 13, 2018 10:08 pm 
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Sunday Guardian's introduction to Nandita Chaudhary & Heidi Keller's article:

In this installment of Global Child Rights and Wrongs, run in collaboration with www.saveyourchildren.in, experts question the application of Attachment Theory in the field of child development. Attachment Theory is a key tenet of modern child protection thinking. Child protection agencies are removing babies and toddlers by judging the attachment with a parent (usually the mother) to have "failed" based on such things as whether the baby eeks eye contact with persons other than the mother (seen as evidence of an unloving mother), how the parent interacts with the child, whether the parent has a calm or volatile personality, the IQ of the parent, and so on. In countries like the United Kingdom and Norway, a large proportion of child removals are for such flimsy reasons, which come under the rubric of risk of "future emotional harm" or "Attachment Disorder".

  

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 Post subject: Re:Several articles expected in the Sunday Guardian in India
PostPosted: Sat Jan 13, 2018 10:22 pm 
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Nandita Chaudhary & Heidi Keller's article is now also on SaveYourChildren, under the title

Is Attachment Theory Always Reliable as a Measure of Child Welfare?


SaveYourChildren's introduction:

"In this paper experts from two very different parts of the world, India and Germany, question the application of Attachment Theory in the field of child development. Attachment Theory has become extremely powerful on account of its moral and cultural claims to providing the best way to bring up children. Once it was adopted by international NGOs, Attachment Theory became the basis of intervention programmes worldwide. But Chaudhary and Keller argue that we are bound to recognise that variety and diversity in styles of caregiver-infant behaviour is the human condition. They point out various settings in which the universalising methods and practices of Attachment Theory would not apply and would lead to an incorrect evaluation of there being something wrong with the attachment bond between a parent and child. While the need for parental love and care is universally recognised, the expression of this love and care varies and Attachment Theory fails to account for this variation, even in the West.

This paper has important insights for child protection today as Attachment Theory is a key tenet of modern child protection thinking. Child protection agencies are removing babies and toddlers by judging the attachment with a parent (usually the mother) to have ‘failed’ based on such things as whether the baby seeks eye contact with persons other than the mother (seen as evidence of an unloving mother), how the parent interacts with the child, whether the parent has a calm or volatile personality, the IQ of the parent, and so on. In countries like the United Kingdom and Norway a large proportion of child removals are for such flimsy reasons, which come under the rubric of ‘risk of future emotional harm’ or ‘Attachment Disorder’."

  

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 Post subject: Several articles expected in the Sunday Guardian in India
PostPosted: Sat Jan 13, 2018 10:24 pm 
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Mrutyuanjai Mishra:
Europe’s forgotten children and a human-rights crisis
Sunday Guardian, 13 January 2018


"When it comes to human rights it is often the West that accuses the rest of the world of violations. We seldom see a concerted effort by Asian, African and Middle Eastern countries to demand a scrutiny of how Western European nations treat their citizens.
    It is time to bring some focus on the forgotten European children abducted by social service authorities. These children are sent to foster carers who bring them up without allowing any connection with their biological parents. This is a clear violation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child which most Western European and other countries of the world have signed.
    Sweeping powers have been granted to public authorities like Barnevernet in Norway, Socialstyrelsen in Sweden and Socialforvaltningen in Denmark."


"This comes from a particularly aggressive version of feminism that sees all filial ties, even motherhood, as socially constructed to foster patriarchy and keep women confined to the home. According to this ideology, both women and children in the family are oppressed—women by male dominance, and children by parental authority (itself seen as a patriarchal concept). The state is given wide powers to supersede the parents with the intention of “saving” the child from them. But the result of these wide powers has been that too often state authorities take children without justification. Since they target mostly poor and uneducated parents or immigrants unaware of the system, such parents find it difficult to fight back."

".... Daniel Dencik, a film director and famous author has written a book, Anden person ental (Second Person Singular), about the enormous power social authorities have in Sweden and Denmark. Daniel Dencik lost contact with his two children and has not seen them for several years after he was accused of being violent. He was cleared of all accusations but contact with his children is still not established."

".... parents of immigrant background are often accused of slapping their children or of some other violence, and without proof children are removed from their custody. After six months the children, who are fed candy and kept away from their biological parents, refuse to come back to them.
    This happens very often, and she felt that none of the Swedish media would write about it as there is consensus among journalists that Sweden treats its migrants magnificently—the best in Europe. The narrative that dominates the Swedish media is how other countries treat their migrants in a despicable manner."


"In the eyes of the world, Scandinavian countries figure as the “happiest” countries in the world, but there are stories that no one writes. Very little attention is given to issues of children being systematically stolen by the state and forced to live with foster carers. This is a human-rights crisis in Scandinavia of which the world needs to be made aware."

  

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 Post subject: Several articles expected in the Sunday Guardian in India
PostPosted: Sat Jan 13, 2018 10:49 pm 
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Sunday Guardian's introduction to Mrutyuanjai Mishra's article:

In this edition of Global Child Rights, and Wrongs, run in collaboration with http://www.saveyourchildren.in, we have an Indian journalist based in Copenhagen reporting on systematic wrongful removal of children from their families by social welfare agencies in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. These agencies were conceived with the idea of helping vulnerable families, especially mothers and children. But Mrutyuanjai Mishra argues that they have come to be dominated by an aggressive, racist and anti-family version of feminism that unfairly targets poorly educated Scandinavians, immigrant communities and recently, fathers.

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 Post subject: Several articles expected in the Sunday Guardian in India
PostPosted: Sun Jan 21, 2018 7:51 am 
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Mrutyuanjai Mishra's article is also on SaveYourChildren, under the title

The Myth of Scandinavian “Happiness” and How Children Pay the Price For Radical Feminism


SaveYourChildren's introduction:

Regardless of where you stand on child protection agencies, with thousands of children being torn annually from their parents in Scandinavian countries, they can hardly claim to be the "happiest" in the world. Do we really have in Scandinavia a unique and historic case of parental dysfunction? Or are parents being misjudged by their system?
    In this article, Denmark-based Indian journalist Mrutyuanjai Mishra claims that Scandinavia's social welfare agencies are causing a human rights crisis with the systematic wrongful removal of children from parents. He argues that this state-sponsored child snatching is driven by an aggressive version of feminism that views the family as an outdated patriarchal institution which oppresses children who need to be "saved" by being removed from their parents. But the result has been the unfair targeting of the poor, the uneducated, migrants and, recently, fathers in general.


  

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 Post subject: Re:Several articles expected in the Sunday Guardian in India
PostPosted: Sun Jan 21, 2018 7:55 am 
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Vivianna Graham:
And then, Child Protection Services took my baby away
(Part 1)


The Graham family had their world shaken when their four-month-old son was taken away by the Child Protection Services in the United States. The child’s mother revisits the episode in this feature.
Sunday Guardian, 20 January 2018

"We rushed Tristan to hospital by ambulance. They did a CAT scan and gave us the devastating news that he had bleeds in his brain. I remember crying because I didn’t know what that meant for our son. A Child Protection Services (CPS) investigator came in to question us. She said that in incidents where the baby is less than 2-years-old, this is the protocol for the type of internal bleeds found in Tristan. We answered all her questions, describing what had happened.
    Tristan was kept in hospital for two nights without needing any medical intervention other than a medicine to prevent more seizures. But the hospital put him through various tests which we later learnt were not for finding out what was wrong with him, but to prove that he was “abused”. They did an eye dilation test to check for retinal hemorrhages and a full body scan to check for fractures. They unnecessarily poked and prodded him. Everything came back negative."


"As we were waiting for Tristan to be discharged, the hospital told us that they were waiting on the child abuse doctor, Dr S. [name redacted], to go over the records. She came into the room and I remember she was the only doctor that made Tristan cry. I could not believe she was a pediatrician seeing how aggressively she handled him. I remember thinking, how could this be a child abuse expert?! She examined my son for just five minutes and then announced that what we said had happened, couldn’t have happened! She questioned everything I told her: “Why did I pump and not breastfeed?” and “Why didn’t my husband freak out when he saw Tristan having seizures?” My husband is a decorated paramedic. He is trained not to panic in emergencies."

"A few hours later, the CPS investigator came in and said that Dr S. had told her Tristan’s bleeds had to have been “inflicted”! I was shocked. We had been expecting to get discharged all that day from the hospital. Then the CPS investigator said we needed something called a “Safety Plan” if I wanted to bring Tristan back home with me."

"The next morning after Tristan was discharged, we had local police detectives calling us on the phone to come to the station. We then told them we were going to get a lawyer and their reply was, “You need to let us know if you are”!
......
When Jeremy turned himself in, the police captain said he had to tell the news about our case. My husband is a fire fighter paramedic for another department and they wanted to plaster his picture all over calling him a “child abuser”. That day the story was broadcast with Jeremy’s picture on every local station. He was made to sound like a monster. But this, unfortunately, was not the worst that was to happen."

  
 

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 Post subject: Re:Several articles expected in the Sunday Guardian in India
PostPosted: Sun Jan 21, 2018 8:09 am 
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Sunday Guardian's introduction to Vivianna Graham's article:

In this week's installment of Global Child Rights and Wrongs, run in collaboration with http://www.saveyourchildren.in, we present a story that is familiar to Indian techies going to the US – parents being accused of abuse when rushing their babies to hospital with seizures or other serious conditions. As reported earlier by the Sunday Guardian, these families are managing to prove their innocence in the US courts, but only after months of enforced separation from their traumatised children, with the ever-present threat of forced adoption if they lose in court. Vivianna Graham's story is a chilling account of the torment young families are routinely being put through in the USA on wrong allegations of shaken baby syndrome.

Vivianna Graham is a special education teacher who works with autistic children in Florida, USA (cf Part 2 of the article).
  
  

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 Post subject: Re:Several articles expected in the Sunday Guardian in India
PostPosted: Sat Jan 27, 2018 5:28 pm 
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Part 1 of Vivianna Graham's article is now also on SaveYourChildren, in a version not quite identical to the one in Sunday Guardian:

And then, Child Protection Services took my baby away
(Part I)


SaveYourChildren's introduction:

The baby at the centre of this story, Tristan, was the Graham’s first born. Like many new parents, new mothers especially, they were excited about their newborn and took many photos of him, sharing them with their friends and relatives on Facebook. So, quite by coincidence, we also have a running photo documentary of little Tristan’s life from the time he was born to the very day he suddenly had a seizure and was rushed by his parents to hospital. The photos show Tristan to have been thriving, loved and happy till the day of this seizure. The photo of the baby with his father at a restaurant that was taken just a few hours before his seizure, makes us wonder, not unreasonably, as to whether it makes sense to claim that moments later when the trio came home, the father flew into a rage for no apparent reason and viciously shook him!

*

Postscript – Harsh child protection laws that presume the family to be guilty are often justified with the argument that since no one knows what goes on in the home, we have to be cautious about taking parents or other care givers at their word. We are told that child abuse is a “hidden” phenomenon. But social media, and the ease with which photos and videos can now be recorded in the home actually gives a hitherto unparalleled window in real time into life in a family. This is something that the child protection system should take into account before assuming abuse. Obviously, this is cannot be the sole basis for evaluating a family. Happy family photos are not conclusive, and nor is the absence of such photos. But they can give us a lot of information that might be relevant in a case, especially in shaken baby allegations. If a baby is shown to be unbruised, gaining weight, cuddling and playing with parents and other care givers, day after day (and typically excited new parents will have a photo every few days, if not daily) then surely that should weigh with those evaluating the family for likelihood of abuse. In the first year of a baby’s life there are regular visits to the doctor – surely their testimony that the baby was well and unhurt should also be taken into account by child protection agencies before treating the case as of being such high risk that the baby has to be confiscated immediately even before the trial, indeed even before the investigation is complete. But photographic evidence and the baby’s regular doctors’ assessments are ignored, and the baby is taken into custody based solely on the abuse doctor’s claim that the injuries had to have been “inflicted.”

There have been cases in which the baby is photographed or videos have been taken almost daily during its massage or bath – this actually gives full-body visuals in real time of the baby which can counter allegations that there may have been injuries inflicted earlier on the baby which the parents hid. This is relevant in shaken baby syndrome allegations where the abuse diagnosis is based on the claim that in addition to the bleeds or injuries for which the parents brought the baby to hospital, there is also evidence of older injuries such as “old” internal bleeds or healed/healing fractures. In some shaken baby allegations the clincher according to abuse experts is that there is no external bruising on the baby. This is because the theory behind shaken baby syndrome is that the internal injuries are caused by harshly shaking the baby (in anger or frustration) of which evidence is provided by the fact that there are internal injuries but no external such as bruises or scratches. But photos taken by parents in the normal course can show that in fact there was bruising which the investigators failed to note. For example, in one case where there was bruising, the investigators failed to show up until after a holiday weekend. When they finally visited the baby in hospital, not only had the bruising lightened, but the baby’s forehead (which had bruises from the fall) was covered under a bandage-like apparatus which was part of the system being used to measure its brain activity in the hospital. So the investigators missed the bruises entirely and claimed abuse with the finding that there was no bruising. Later in the same case, when the bandage came off and the bruises were noted, they were recorded as “old” bruises and hence further proof of abuse, even though the bruises were fresh at the time of the baby’s being taken to hospital! – SaveYourChildren.In


  

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 Post subject: Re:Several articles expected in the Sunday Guardian in India
PostPosted: Sat Jan 27, 2018 5:32 pm 
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Vivianna Graham:
They did not succeed in breaking us as a family
(Part 2)

The Graham family was reunited with their son after fighting a protracted legal battle against the Child Protection Services in the USA. But nothing can reverse the emotional damage caused by the case.
Sunday Guardian, 27 January 2018

  

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 Post subject: Re:Several articles expected in the Sunday Guardian in India
PostPosted: Sat Jan 27, 2018 5:41 pm 
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Sunday Guardian's introduction to the second part of Vivianna Graham's article:

In this week's issue of Global Child Rights and Wrongs, run in collaboration with http://www.saveyourchildren.in, we present the second and final part of the story of how US Child Protection Services (CPS) took away the only child of the Graham family on wrong accusations of shaken baby syndrome. Vivianna Graham's story is a chilling account of the torment that young families, including those of Indian techies of H1B visas, are routinely being put through in the USA when they rush their babies to hospital with seizures or other serious conditions.

  

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