I've never fostered, so I can't empathize with the level of attachment a foster parent has with a foster child. I think I can be certain that it is no small attachment, and that for the time a child is in foster care, the foster parent loves the child in a real way that lasts a lifetime.
To the extent that this story is true and not purposely colored to portray something it is not, or obfuscate facts, this is an absolutely intolerable outrage.
As a parent of a Chinese daughter who is the light of my life and the apple of my eye - but who is being raised as an American child, just as all my other children are - I can only imagine being told by some "authority" that my failure to teach her Mandarin, or to indoctrinate her into moral relativism in regard to communist China, makes me unfit.
I think I might kill and run before I would allow my child to be taken from me for the sake of Leftist ideology. The consequences for doing so would be so far down on my list of reactions, I can't imagine doing anything else but fight & flight.
UK Foster Couple Lose Children for Being Members of Conservative PartyA UK couple had their three foster children taken away after social workers decided that the couple’s support for the supposedly “racist” policies of the UK Independence Party (Ukip) made them “unsuitable” caregivers, The Telegraph reports.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Ukip, it’s the conservative wing of British politics...
...The Ukip advocates lower taxes, limited government, freer markets, and immigration reform. However, to certain social workers in the Labour-controlled Rotherham borough, supporting the above makes you an “unsuitable” foster parent.
The parents claim they were made to feel like criminals and that they had a “black mark” on them for supporting the conservative group. And now it has culminated in the loss of their foster children, one boy and two girls...
The foster couple wishes to remain anonymous because they don’t want the children they cared for being involved. However, it has been revealed that they are both in their 50s, the husband is a retired Royal Navy reservist of more than 30 years who currently works with disabled people, and the wife is a “qualified nursery nurse.”
It is also being reported that they have spent seven years acting as foster parents and have looked after about a dozen different children.
...So let’s do a quick recap: The husband spent three decades as a reservist in the Royal Navy and currently works with disabled people. The wife is a qualified nursery nurse. The two of them have cared for dozens of children in the past seven years. But they’re “unfit” to act as foster parents now because they support a conservative political group?
The Telegraph describes the moment when the couple were visited by the anti-Ukip social worker:
[blockquote]… they received a visit out of the blue from the children’s social worker at the Labour-run council and an official from their fostering agency.
They were told that the local safeguarding children team had received an anonymous tip-off that they were members of Ukip.[/blockquote]
An anonymous tip?
“I was dumbfounded. Then my question to both of them was, ‘What has Ukip got to do with having the children removed?’” the wife said in the recent Telegraph article.
“Then one of them said, ‘Well, Ukip have got racist policies.’ The implication was that we were racist. [The social worker] said Ukip does not like European people and wants them all out of the country to be returned to their own countries,” she said.
“I’m sat there and I’m thinking, ‘What the hell is going off here?’ because I wouldn’t have joined Ukip if they thought that. I’ve got mixed race in my family. I said, ‘I am absolutely offended that you could come in my house and accuse me of being a member of a racist party.’”
The wife continued: “These kids have been loved. These kids have been treated no differently to our own children. We wouldn’t have taken these children on if we had been racist.”
But despite her words, the boy was taken away the next day and the two girls were removed at the end of the week.
The wife said the social worker told her: “We would not have placed these children with you had we known you were members of Ukip because it wouldn’t have been the right cultural match.”
The wife said she was left “bereft,” adding: “We felt like we were criminals. From having a little baby in my arms, suddenly there was an empty cot. I knew she wouldn’t have been here forever, but usually there is a build-up of several weeks. I was in tears.”
Her husband added: “If we were moving the children on to happier circumstances we would be feeling warm and happy. To have it done like that, it’s beyond the pale.”
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