Christian child forced into Muslim foster care

No doubt the child will be charged with some sort of offence for saying the carers didn't speak English.

The people responsible for these decisions should loose their jobs immediately and then be sectioned before they cause anymore damage.

Someone on the Jeremy Vine radio prog says its all just lazy reporting with a right wing, racist sub-text. Obviously the judge who sent the kid back to her nan's is all part of the plot!

Thank Goodness the judge has seen sense - poor wee mite.  I hope to hear all the details in due course.

http://www.towerhamlets.gov.uk/News_events/News/2017/August_2017/Response_to_fostering_story_in_The_Times.aspx

^ & shame on The Times if it is fake news.

Apparently it's not quite as it seems though-  the mother was raised in a Muslim family, albeit not a strict practicing one.

Very hard to find a religious Christian family in Tower Hamlets or Newham.

Make sure you also read the 3rd of the Times's stories here. Unbelievable reporting! 

Tower Hamlets council under fire for fostering Christian girl with Muslims
A council that placed a child with a foster family whose use of Arabic confused and upset her is to be forced by the children’s commissioner to explain its decision.
The Times revealed yesterday that the five-year-old girl, a native English speaker from a Christian family, has spent six months with Muslim foster carers who allegedly removed her necklace, which had a cross, and refused to allow her to eat bacon.
A social services supervisor for Tower Hamlets in east London described the child sobbing and begging not to be returned to the foster family because “she doesn’t understand the Arabic”. The girl is also understood to have said that she was regularly expected to eat meals on the floor.
Anne Longfield, the children’s commissioner for England, said that her office would contact the director of children’s services at Tower Hamlets to establish more about the facts of the case.
“I am concerned at these reports. A child’s religious, racial and cultural background should be taken into consideration when they are placed with foster carers,” she said.
Local authorities in England making a foster placement are required to give due consideration to the child’s “religious persuasion, racial origin and cultural and linguistic background”.
Robert Halfon, chairman of the Commons education committee, said the situation was “incredibly concerning” and that it was vital to establish whether the case was a one-off.
“I’d be equally concerned if a Muslim child who didn’t speak English was placed with a Christian foster carer whose family didn’t speak the child’s language and at times appeared to show little respect for his cultural heritage,” he said.

Parents begged Tower Hamlets council to let child in Muslim care stay with grandmother
A council that forced a Christian child to live with conservative Muslim foster carers has blocked a number of attempts to move her to families where she would feel more at home.
Inquiries by The Times have established that the girl’s family has spent the past six months begging the London borough of Tower Hamlets to allow the five-year-old to be released into the care of close family friends or relatives.
The east London council has most recently opposed attempts to place the child into the temporary care of her grandmother.
Instead, she initially spent four months with a carer whose family often spoke Arabic when she was with them, leading the girl to complain that she was unable to understand what they were saying.
A Tower Hamlets employee who supervised regular meetings between the child and her family recorded the child’s distress, at the conclusion of each meeting, when she was handed over to the carer.
In a written report of one meeting, the contact supervisor described the girl as “very emotional and tearful”.
“She said they don’t speak English at the home, she doesn’t understand the Arabic words where she is. [The girl] said she wants to go back home to her [mother].”
The social services employee heard the child whispering Arabic words to her mother that she was allegedly told must be said aloud to ensure that “when you die you go to heaven”.
Her reports also describe the child’s account of her necklace, which carried a Christian cross, having been removed, and not returned, by the first foster carer.
After another supervised meeting, the council worker heard the child explaining to her mother that the foster carer “said she needs to ask [her social worker] if she can learn Arabic”.
At the end of the meeting, the girl “started crying and saying that she doesn’t want to go back”.
For the past two months, the child’s care has been entrusted by the council to a second foster carer. Both women concealed their faces when they were with the girl in public, the first by wearing a niqab and the second with a burka.
It is understood that the five-year-old has also spoken of the first foster carer having refused to let her eat a meal of carbonara because it had bacon in it.
Friends of the family said she had also told her mother that “Christmas and Easter are stupid”.
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child says that any state agency considering a foster placement must pay due regard to “the desirability of continuity in a child’s upbringing and to the child’s ethnic, religious, cultural and linguistic background”.
Tower Hamlets has refused to respond to requests from The Times to explain why it has twice chosen to place the girl in an environment that is wholly alien to her heritage and upbringing.
A council spokesman said yesterday that its fostering service “provides a loving, stable home for hundreds of children every year”. All its foster carers received training and support to ensure they were “fully qualified to meet the needs of the children in their care”.
“In every case, we give absolute consideration to our children’s background and their cultural identity.”
A national shortage of foster carers from minority ethnic backgrounds, particularly in rural areas, often leads to a non-white child being placed with white British foster carers. It is far more unusual for a white child to be placed in a non-white foster home.
According to published fostering statistics for England in 2016, 84 per cent of approved foster carers were white, as were 77 per cent of fostered children.

Judge rules child must leave Muslim foster home
A girl at the centre of a care dispute was removed from her Muslim foster parents yesterday and reunited with her family as a judge urged councils to seek “culturally matched placements” for vulnerable children.
The five-year-old, a native English speaker from a Christian family, was taken to her grandmother’s home after a court ruled that she should not remain in the placement organised by the London borough of Tower Hamlets.
Judge Khatun Sapnara, a practising Muslim, said it was in the girl’s best interests to live with a family member who could keep her safe, promote her welfare and meet her needs “in terms of ethnicity, culture and religion”. The judge ordered the council to conduct an urgent investigation into issues reported by The Times, saying that the newspaper had acted responsibly in raising “very concerning” matters of “legitimate public interest”.
Friends of the child’s family said that they were hugely relieved by the decision to move her from foster placements where all was “foreign and un- familiar” into surroundings where she would feel “much more at home”.
When The Times told Tower Hamlets last week of its intention to reveal the council’s decision to place a white British child with a family whose culture, faith and primary language were alien, the local authority tried to block the story. It contacted the East London family court, where the girl’s case was the subject of care proceedings, and told Judge Sapnara that confidential court documents had been unlawfully leaked and publication of an article would be an offence.
Security staff at the court, where a case hearing took place yesterday morning, ordered a Times journalist to leave the building and threatened an escorted removal by security guards unless the reporter left voluntarily. When Judge Sapnara was informed of the newspaper’s wish to attend the hearing, the reporter was readmitted.
Earlier this week, the newspaper revealed that the child, who was taken into care in March, initially spent four months in a foster home where, she said, the family often did not speak English at home and encouraged her to learn Arabic.
Social services reports noted that she was tearful and distressed when she was returned to the home. For the past two months she has been in the care of a second Muslim couple, where she spoke of regularly eating meals on the floor. In both households, the primary foster carers veiled their face in public.
A council employee heard the child say that the first foster parent, to whose care she was due to have been returned this week, had taken away her necklace, which had a cross. The same family was said to have refused to allow her to eat a carbonara meal because it contained bacon. Any local authority making a foster placement is required by law to give due consideration to the child’s “religious persuasion, racial origin and cultural and linguistic background”. Addressing lawyers for Tower Hamlets yesterday, Judge Sapnara said that her “overriding concern [was] the welfare of the little girl”.
“You would presumably accept that the priority should be an appropriate, culturally matched placement that meets the needs of the child in terms of ethnicity, culture and religion?” she said. Kevin Gordon, counsel for the local authority, agreed but said that when the girl initially became the council’s responsibility, no white British foster carers were available.
The Fostering Network charity has estimated that 7,600 new foster families need to be recruited in the next year. It said there was a “particular need for foster carers to look after teenagers, disabled children, sibling groups and unaccompanied asylum-seeking children” but identified no shortfall in carers for babies and young children.
A national shortage of ethnic minority foster carers often leads to non-white children being placed with white British carers. In England, 84 per cent of foster carers are white, as are 77 per cent of fostered children.
The court was told yesterday that the family’s wish for the girl to be placed in the temporary care of her grandmother had been under consideration for a number of months. Judge Sapnara said her decision to order the child’s removal from foster care was not taken “as a result of undue media involvement”. “It is taken because of the evidence available to the court today, that the grandmother is an appropriate carer for the child,” she said. All parties, including Tower Hamlets, supported the decision.
Until the child’s future is resolved, at a date yet to be set, she will continue to have regular meetings with her mother, supervised by council staff. To protect the child, The Times is not disclosing the unusual circumstances that led to her being taken into care this year.
The judge said she had not seen reports of meetings in which a council employee observed the child’s distress and unhappiness and asked Tower Hamlets to provide her with copies.
Tower Hamlets council said it had the “welfare of children at the heart of what we do” and would like to give more details about the case to correct “inaccuracies”, but was legally restricted from doing so. “The decision to choose foster carers for a child is based on a number of factors including cultural background and proximity to contact with the child’s family . . . in order to give them as much stability as possible,” a spokesman said. “We have always been working towards the child being looked after by a family member and will continue to do so.”

Some very slanted reporting here. It seems that the girl is actually mixed race with muslim heritage (Grand mother cannot speak proper English) and fingers were pointed at the foster family. The original stories were very misleading.

The true story behind the Muslim foster care case
Why let a lie get in the way of a good story? This seems to be the case in the reporting of a Muslim foster carer hitting the front pages of the rightwing press.
The Times could find itself in hot water this week after publishing several false claims in its sensationalised report of the Muslim foster care case.
Bank Holiday Monday saw the News UK title run a front-page story about a Christian child who had been “forced” into Muslim foster care, with brash and brazen reports of a “white” girl who was taken against her will to live with a Muslim family who “don’t speak English” in the “scandal-ridden borough of Tower Hamlets”.
The story also claimed the foster carer “removed her necklace”, which had a Christian cross, and suggested that she should “learn Arabic”.
Not discounting the fact that foster care is often an unselfish, heartfelt act on behalf of the carers who have been demonised in The Times reporting; the story has since been proved to be comprised of several falsehoods.
Tower Hamlets Council said there had been several “inaccuracies” in the reporting of the case, particularly the claim that the foster family did not speak English, but it was prohibited from proving specific details.
So why not jump to the most logical, bigoted version of the events?
At least, that seems to be The Times mentality, which has since run several follow-up pieces to its sensational scoop, one of which claimed her parents “begged Tower Hamlets council to let child in Muslim care stay with grandmother”.
Today many of the traditionally right leaning newspapers printed follow up stories about the case.
The sad truth is that fostering is a selfless act which can be difficult and challenging at the best of times. There is already a shortage of foster carers of all backgrounds in the UK. However, there is a specific shortage of those who identify as Muslim. In fact, a Muslim child is more likely to be fostered by a non-Muslim carer than vice versa [which of course isn’t newsworthy it seems].
These sensationalist headlines will do nothing but damage the already struggling care system.  It’s likely that Muslim families considering volunteering as foster carers will be put off by the hostility and sensationalist headlines in this week’s mainstream newspapers.
Reports about the fostering have been seized upon by far-right activists including the English Defence League founder Tommy Robinson, as well as Britain First and the EDL, showing how the media is fuelling right-wing views in Britain.
According to the Fear and HOPE 2017 report, released today, a quarter of English people now think Islam is a dangerous religion that incites violence, with 52 per cent saying that Islam poses a threat to the West.
As Miqdaad Versi, the assistant secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, which has secured dozens of national press corrections over reporting about Islam and Muslims, said in recent Tweets, stories like this hardly help.
A spokesperson for Tower Hamlets council said: “While we cannot go into details of a case that would identify a child in foster care, there are inaccuracies in the reporting of it. For example, the child is in fact fostered by an English-speaking family of mixed race in this temporary placement. We would like to give more details but we are legally restricted to do so.”
They added: “We have always been working towards the child being looked after by a family member and we continue to do so.”

Is this the same case where it has been proved  the Daily Mail photoshopped a veil onto a picture of a Muslim woman ?

Thinly veiled "thinly veiled" thread

hope it worked out for child- Adoption not easy- not something to enter lightly

So we have a Christian child from a Christian family  being placed in foster care with a muslim family.
How can this be legal in Britain?

Tower Hamlets council seem to have been very evasive in their their statements about this case.