Is it safe to get out of bed ?

Since April 1, hundreds of thousands of State employees, from police to teachers, youth and nursery workers, social workers and sports coaches, have been entitled to interrogate children aged up to 19, using the 'Common Assessment Framework' (CAF), a creepy, eight-page, 60-section questionnaire. CAF includes eyewateringly intimate questions about children's sexual behaviour, their family's structure, culture and religion, their views on 'discrimination', their friends, secret fears, feelings and family income, plus 'any serious difficulties in their parents' relationship'.

y bizarre coincidence - or not - this assault on treasured British notions of privacy and propriety was devised by the woman responsible for Britain's most notorious social-work scandal. ECM was launched in September 2003 by Margaret Hodge, Tony Blair's shocking choice as Britain's first Children's Minister. Her main 'qualification' was being his pal and running Islington Council when its 12 children's homes were awash with paedophiles and sympathisers of the 'Left-wing' Information Exchange. This campaigned for sex to be legalised with children from the age of four.

A couple who had their three oldest children taken away by social services after false claims of abuse went to court last week in a bid to make legal history by reversing their adoption. A lawyer acting for Mark and Nicky Webster made an impassioned plea to three appeal court judges to right the unimaginable wrong that robbed them of the children - all under nine - who can be known only as A, B and C.
And the Websters, who now have another son, Brandon, and a fifth child on the way, are hopeful of success after judge Lord Justice Wilson remarked on the brevity of the original hearing that ruled they should be put up for adoption. He told the Appeal Court `One thing that strikes one about that judgment is not only that it is very short but that there is very little context.'
The children were taken away in 2003 after B suffered leg fractures that doctors wrongly deemed were due to abuse. Speaking outside court, Nicky explained "We want to clear our names properly and we want the children to know the truth. They need to know that their mummy and daddy did not hurt them, that they loved them and cared for them."
The Websters first hit the headlines when Nicky fled to Ireland before Brandon was born in 2006 so Norfolk social services could not take him away. The couple fought a long battle to prove they had not harmed their children and last year experts agreed B's leg injuries were not due to physical abuse but a disorder that stopped him eating anything other than soya milk. At that stage, a judge concluded Brandon, now two, was not `at risk'.
But winning back the older children, now eight, seven and five, will be much harder, as reversing an adoption means rewriting the law. Nicky said "It's taken us years to get this far and this isn't the end. But we have to fight. We've been told adoption is irreversible and that however wrong it was there's nothing we can do about it so to just give up. But would you do that if they were your children? When would you decide, "Well, we've tried for long enough now. We'll just stop"?" The two eldest children, A and B, were adopted into one family while the youngest, C, went to another.
Nicky said "I gave birth to those children and we were a family for longer than they have been with their adoptive families. So it's hard to sit and listen to lawyers argue that we can't fight to have our children back because it would be unsettling. When it comes down to it the only feelings I'm interested in considering are my children's. We still "feel" the children. Brandon looks so like his brothers, it can really catch you off-guard. I know I'm expecting a girl this time and I'm excited but I'm scared. Will she look just like my first little girl?'
Astonishingly (and smugly) last week, Norfolk County Council's lawyer argued the Websters have no right to contest the adoption as the children are no longer theirs. "Adoption orders possess a peculiar finality," she said. "The child becomes to all purposes the child of the adoptive parents as if he were their natural child."
But Mark and Nicky's QC, Ian Peddie, said "It is hard to understand how the parents cope with this injustice but the children also stand to suffer if they do not know the truth of what caused them to be taken from their parents. It is assumed that the older children are aware of their Webster heritage. Child A was five years 11 months, Child B almost four and Child C two years five months when the adoption was finalised. They have sibling contact three times a year. Child A had spent more time with her natural parents than the adoptive parents and may well have memory of her time with them. We are well aware that adoptive orders are meant to be permanent and final. But we assert that this is a fundamental miscarriage of justice and denial of natural justice and in that case this court will interfere with an adoption order. We are conscious of the floodgates argument but this case is quite exceptional."
Judgment was reserved until January. In the meantime, the Websters are still unable to work with children. Nicky said "We're still on the abusers register. Mark wants to be a taxi driver but he's not allowed to drive a child unaccompanied. A friend asked me to help at a music class for pre-school children. But I'm not allowed."

Where is their guidance on whether a baby is being beaten to death in all that ?
Saddos'