Children removed from care because foster Parents are Members of UKIP

This is outrageous and Rotherham Council should be ashamed.

Just on the News, a couple who have fostered children for 7 years took in 3 young non U.K. children who had been moved from pillar to post. An anonymous call to Rotherham Council suggested that because the Foster Parents were Members of UKIP, that made them racist. Social Workers visited the Foster Parents and after Council Meetings a couple of weeks later decided to remove the children from their care.

Had the Foster parents been members of the BNP there might have been cause for concern. !!!

Just announced, the Leader of IKIP, Farage is going to speak to the Council today.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9700001/Foster-parents-stigmatised-and-slandered-for-being-members-of-Ukip.html

Very worrying indeed if this has been reported correctly.

Not Born Yesterday wrote:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9700001/Foster-parents-stigmatised-and-slandered-for-being-members-of-Ukip.html

Very worrying indeed if this has been reported correctly.

Morning NBY, a Member of Rotherham CC has just been interviewed on Breakfast and without being rude, Kate did ask searching questions. Apparently , RCC sought Legal advice over the phone call and were told that the ethnicity of the children was important and they were only meant to be with the couple until a new home could be found with a suitable family of the same Religion. Obviously she was bull****ting and . No mention of the Parents of these children or whether they were related, the Boy was removed first. Nigel Farrage says he is furious and will be in Rotherham this afternoon and would be pleased to discuss UKIP with anyone inreeested.

I note Rotherham is a Labour council and UKIP is gaining in popularity because of the EU crisis.

UKIP Foster Care Row: Investigation Launched


A council that removed three ethnic children from the care of foster parents who are UKIP members is to investigate the decision.


2:07pm UK, Saturday 24 November 2012



Video: UKIP Fury Over Fostering Row
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Education Secretary Michael Goves wades into the foster care row and tells Sky News Rotherham Council's decision to removed three ethnic children from the foster care of parents who are UKIP members was "plain wrong" and "indefensible".

Video: Gove: UKIP Foster Decision 'Wrong'
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Rotherham Council has launched an investigation into the decision to remove three foster children from a couple because of their membership of the UK Independence Party.

Councillor Paul Lakin, cabinet member for children, young people and family services, made the announcement following widespread criticism from across the political spectrum.

"This was a decision taken by social services professionals and I have ordered an immediate investigation to establish the full facts of this decision and asked for the report to be on my desk on Monday morning," he said.

UKIP leader Nigel Farage condemned the case as "outrageous", while Education Secretary Michael Gove, who was himself adopted as a child, said the Labour-controlled council's decision was "plain wrong" and "indefensible".

Three children were removed from the care of an unnamed couple from South Yorkshire who have been fostering for seven years.

They took on a baby girl, a boy and an older girl from an ethnic and troubled family background in September.

Less than eight weeks into the placement they were visited by a Rotherham social worker and foster agency official who accused them of belonging to a party with "racist policies" which meant they were unsuitable to look after the children.
Michael Gove has said the council was "wrong" to remove the foster children
The husband and wife told The Daily Telegraph they were left "dumbfounded" and "offended".

The visit followed an anonymous tip-off about the couple's party membership.

Rotherham Council said earlier it needed to consider the children's "cultural and ethnic needs" and highlighted UKIP's policy on multiculturalism.

Mr Gove told Sky News: "I think it's quite, quite wrong for Rotherham Council, or indeed for any other local authority, to say that people should not be foster or adoptive parents on these grounds.

"We need more people to come forward to be foster or adoptive parents, and of we start saying that there's a very tightly prescribed range of political views to which you have to agree before you can be a foster or adoptive parent, then we won't get the fosterers or the adoptive parents that we need."

He added he had asked staff in his department to get to the bottom of the matter as quickly as possible to clarify the guidance.
The couple say the children were take away because of their UKIP membership
Joyce Thacker, strategic director of children and young people's services at the council, said the children had been placed with the couple as an emergency and it was never going to be a long-term arrangement.

"These children are from EU migrant backgrounds and UKIP has very clear statements on ending multiculturalism, not having that going forward, and I have to think about how sensitive I am being to those children," she told BBC Breakfast.

Mr Farage demanded the council apologise "wholeheartedly for the "concern and the upset they have caused".

He told Sky News he had spoken to the couple, who were "very upset and distressed" by what had happened.

"My first and primary concern is that they get a fair deal and these three children get a fair deal because what has happened is outrageous," he said.

"UKIP is a non-racist, non-sectarian political party. I mean, for goodness sake, we have got the Croydon North by-election going on at the moment where Jamaican-born Winston McKenzie is our candidate, so there are absolutely no grounds for this at all."

He said the council was now "backtracking" and had decided the couple can foster again.

"I am pleased that at least they have done that, but what they've said is rather insulting - they've said the couple may foster again, but only white children," Mr Farage continued.
UKIP leader Nigel Farage has condemned the decision "outrageous"
"That, frankly, is pursuing an apartheid-style policy, dividing up children and categorising adults. That simply isn't good enough ... heads should roll within that council."

He added: "I think we should be colourblind in these things ... it's the interest of the child that matters, not some politically-correct theory."

Labour leader Ed Milband told Sky News: "Being a member of UKIP should not be a bar to adopting or fostering children."

The Daily Telegraph said the couple denied they were racist and told the officials they would not have taken them on if they were.

The wife said: "I was dumbfounded. Then my question to both of them was, 'What has UKIP got to do with having the children removed?'

"Then one of them said, 'Well, UKIP have got racist policies'. The implication was that we were racist."

"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 youngsters were taken away from the couple, who are former Labour voters, within a week last Friday.

She 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."

Robert Tapsfield, chief executive of Fostering Network, said: "On the face of it this does appear to be a very strange decision. The children we understand were being well cared for by the foster carers and if there was a need to move them in the longer-term, there certainly doesn't appear to be a need to have moved them in the shorter-term."

Parliamentary by-elections for Rotherham, Middlesbrough and Croydon North are due to take place next Thursday