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Dr Masimba Mavaza
The decision to relocate to England is a very serious one. It has become a breakthrough for many and a dooms gate for others.
Looking beyond our selfish selves coming to the UK has become a curse to many children we brought over. Despite other problems many have now realised that United Kingdom has been seriously overrated.
One point we have realised is that the UK government quickly blames parents for the suffering of their children. Yet, we have come to understand that when we live in a society in which children may not have access to health care, childcare, food, shelter—all these basic things—then if anybody should be charged with neglect it should be the state not the parents.
The British immigration laws prohibits children from benefiting from public fund if the visa of the parents prohibits such. This forces parents to work hard to provide quality care to their children and those they have left home. Such hard working cumulatively becomes a source of neglect.
This is then classified as child abuse. A shift starting in the late 2010 has targeted families of the foreign nationals with unnecessary investigations and child removals at the expense of services.
Most of the cases are simply cultural differences which are misinterpreted by the social service as child abuse or neglect. Many Zimbabwean families who have migrated to the United Kingdom are being welcomed by the cruel reality of the social services.
Zimbabwean children of the new arrivals are removed from their families at much greater rate than any other race or ethnicity in this country. At the same time, the sheer number of all child abuse investigations in the UK has tripled since Covid-19.
Most parents who have lost children to social service are finding it difficult to understand the reasons behind such harsh punishment. Many of these investigations and removals are unjustified and insensitive one’s cut.
The numbers of those forcibly removed from parents are astounding, particularly as the rates of serious physical injury to children of colour are far less as compared to the children of the indigenous population of the United Kingdom.
Part of the problem is an overly broad definition of what constitutes child abuse that has become politicised and “weaponised” against the vulnerable population and Zimbabweans in particular.
“Biased viewpoints regarding race, class, and gender played a powerful role shaping perceptions of child abuse. Coupled with overzealous policies and a belief among the public that serious child abuse was widespread and frequent, “these perceptions are often directly at odds with the available data and disproportionately target poor African families above others.
This over-reporting of alleged child abuse, has caused the child welfare system to get bogged down in unnecessary investigations, seriously undermining its ability to focus on its other roles. Being a foreigner is too often equated with abuse while at the same time those who are not foreigners in the UK lead in the actual abuse of the Children.
Maxwell Chirasha a care worker who has just migrated to the UK had the social service pitching a tent at his house. One morning his son whom he came with to the UK just refused to go to school. Maxwell being an elder in his Adventist church was a disciplinarian.
He sternly warned his son against playing truancy. He said in Shona “ndino uraya munhu pano ukasaenda kuchikoro”. Meaning someone will die here if you do not go to school.
The child shared with his newly found white friend what his father had said. This was reported to the teachers who took literally the words as death threats. The police were involved and social services jumped in with exaggerated zeal.
They literally pitched tents at his house removing all children from this house and the police charging him with using threatening language. All this because of the phrase which in Shona simply means be careful.
Matirasa Chiwondo commented and said ” the social services are just having investigations at the expense of providing services. Children’s services focus ever more foreign households the more they intervene in family life, the more they ignore real abuse elsewhere. We should think about parenting as an affirmative right—that parents have the right to parent their children, that families have a right to be together, and that children have a right to be with their parents. The social service only tick boxes instead of using and applying due diligence and care in dealing with new families in the UK. Children should be removed from their families only as a last resort for severe harm and social workers must include a sociology course majoring in cultures. About a quarter of all children who are removed from their homes are returned within 30 days but the trauma is significant and severe.
The problem is not that they are returned too quickly. Rather, what’s the point of taking them in the first place if they can be returned so quickly? Removal unnecessarily creates trauma for children and families and makes them less likely to seek help in other circumstances.
“We know that children from foreign families particularly poor families of colour, are reported to child welfare agencies at higher rates, and child removal happens more often and swiftly without looking at the case on the round”
Delan Smith a social worker commented. When a child from a foreign family is removed—the child is then less likely to come home and stays longer in substitute care—compared to a child from a white family. So, there’s a clear overrepresentation of poor families and families of colour.
The evolution of how society views child abuse goes back to an idea from the 1960s that parents who abuse their children are sick and need help. In order to “help” these parents the idea became to better identify them and report more often.
Once we started reporting more families, people started reporting more Black and foreign families. So, an idea that was designed to provide assistance and social support ended up being co-opted into a way to report and coerce foreign black families.
Sitholile Mpofu another care worker who is relatively new in the UK lost three children to the UK social services. His son who is six told a teacher at school that he was late because the father sat on him while he was eating breakfast. Actually the father did not physically sit on top of the child but waited for him to eat while he was watching. The misunderstanding and the language complications led the social services to grab the children and wind them away.
It has become sad that the Children’s social care services focus increasingly on black foreign households the more they intervene in family life. The scales always tilt against children from the poorest neighbourhoods in England and almost fourteen times more likely to be referred to social care services than those from the richest non foreign families in rich areas.
However, the social gradient’ increased at each subsequent level of intervention by children’s social care.
Maria Matanga spent two months in and out of social services torturous meetings because her child reported that she is forced to go to church. This was judged to be oppressive and abusive.
In a different country you will be viewed as a good parent for allowing your child to go to church.
Given the change from consent-based work with families towards increased surveillance at the child protection threshold, social workers said that “the point at which the state decides that family life needs policing is also the point at which it decides more than ever to concentrate its attention on foreign families.
Exacerbating inequalities’
Social workers talked to on condition of anonymity said “this also meant that the shift in the balance of children’s social care provision from early to late intervention over the past two years was “exacerbating inequalities and encouraging a disproportionate focus on foreign black families.
The inequalities identified had been driven by the rising identification of neglect, which accounted for a large number of removed children into child protection for the past three years, a rise which coincided with increasing migration of care givers from Africa and Zimbabwe in particular. The report found that the social gradient was steeper for neglect than for any other category of child protection plan. This many have said it’s because of the zeal to work so hard to make ends meet.
Since Covid the UK law has required the reporting not just of abuse but also of neglect, which is a very amorphous category and is too often confused with manifestations of economic background particularly in those coming from a country where we don’t have access to universal health care, or to universal social services. Reporting a family for not having what a child needs to thrive essentially amounts to reporting a family for being poor and surely some parents have been told off by social workers for failing to buy games for their children.
Reporting parents, for example, for not pursuing dental care for their child makes little sense because child welfare services are now tied up with chasing up that report, instead of providing the needed services and dealing with the real problem. We know that most reports of neglect are about manifestations of poverty.
Often children are removed and placed in foster homes where foster parents get funding from the government yet the same children are not given funding if they are with their parents as they will and are not entitled to public fund. Had that funding instead been given to the original family, they would have been able to provide what their child needs at home. So instead of addressing the underlying poverty, we remove children for other people to raise them.
Noreen Sinyoro received a strong warning after her child was observed bowing down in respect. She was told that it was child abuse. Children are not allowed to clap hands while greeting adults or any sign of respect which is perfectly normal in Zimbabwean culture. This will be interpreted as a use.
For asking a 14-year-old child to help changing pumpers and feeding a child was interpreted as slavery. Taruvinga from Cambridge lost his children to social workers after he was accused of enslaving the child.
I January 2023 a family was separated from their children after they taught their children against gays and lesbians. They were accused of being Homophobia.
We should advocate for a narrow definition of child abuse, focusing on cases of physical abuse, sexual abuse, and severe neglect with risk of imminent harm to the child, and find alternative methods to assist families with other struggles that are often
The superiority complex engulfing UK forces them to disregard cultural differences and impose their culture on the foreign families.
Not all actions should be taken as neglect.
“The identification and substantiation of neglect is therefore closely bound up with the systematic focus on children from foreign and black backgrounds within the child protection system,
Another family in Hatfield UK lost their children to UK social service because the child was trained to say daddy to his stepfather. This was taken as abuse as it was giving the child a wrong impression of his father. While this is culturally acceptable in Zimbabwe it is abuse in the UK.
When two elephants fight it is the grass which suffers. When two cultures clash indeed the children and families suffer.
Online Reporter