Yes - social services in the UK are terrible. They have utterly failed to protect many vulnerable children in cases where the children were known to be at risk but were subsequently killed. On the other hand, they have been utterly draconian in the treatment of some families - many of these cases seem to be little more than vendettas against families whom individual social workers did not like. Family courts are held in private, in many cases, without the parents being involved. It is truly shameful and a tremendous abuse of power.

This story shows that economic imperatives play a role in the breaking up families in the UK. What it also shows that is now the economic imperative of neoliberalism is moving aggressive in the domestic sphere of the family and children; that children and institutional care of children is becoming a new site of economic accumulation. This father is lucky; he got his daughter back. Here is another story that tells the hidden suffering of children in Russia and how the some economic imperative of neoliberalism brought chaos and disintegration to Russian families and children. Sadly, helping children in need and their families is not the primary concern for the Russian economic elite as it is not a primary concern for the UK economic elite. http://en.rian.ru/society/20100630/159641732.html

Britain has learnt nothing from its history. Removing children from the poor has been an ongoing tradition for hundreds of years. It was done for both eugenice (paupers are unfit) and financial (the wealthy did not want to pay taxes to assist the poor) reasons. In the 1950s to 1970s unmarried, unsupported mothers had their babies routinely taken. Mothers were allowed to wean their babies for six weeks then they were permanently removed to provide infants for infertile couples. It was a barbaric practice that has never been exposed. The latest version of this trade in babies has done a full circle and rather than put money into assisting families to stay togeter the money is spent on tearing them apart.