Times Change , livre ebook

Troubador Publishing Ltd - John Ellison

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123 pages

English

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Robert Fordham is a young and newly qualified solicitor who, in the autumn of 1979, joins the staff of the Borough Solicitor for the London Borough of Haringey. Anxiously, but enthusiastically, he takes on child removal cases one after another, taking orders from the borough's social workers. Robert's adventures as a lawyer (and his quest for a girlfriend and a social life) are woven into a light touch narrative with a serious underlay which discloses the dilemmas and difficulties arising in those times in court processes, not excluding bruising encounters with other lawyers - and with presiding magistrates. Change is in the air in 1979. A keener sense of the importance of human rights is emerging, and the disciplinary cane is being banned in schools. Meanwhile, Haringey's controlling Labour Party councillors (who include a youthful Jeremy Corbyn) are unhappily adjusting to the budget-cutting policies of Margaret Thatcher's new government. And if one Iron Lady is in Downing Street, another is leading the magistracy in Tottenham's juvenile court.The era of major public inquiries into the tragic failures of Haringey Social Services and other agencies to protect Victoria Climbi and Baby Peter from dangerous adults are decades away and beyond imagination. Yet the legal framework of the seventies and eighties was strangely ill-equipped to protect children in extremis, and the outcome of child protection cases was often unpredictable. However 'real the feel', this book is fiction and much more about what could happen than what did happen.Times Changewill appeal to readers interested in a real world now past, in child protection and the law, and even those beguiled by a strong narrative and the pleasures and pitfalls of romance.

Informations

Publié par	Troubador Publishing Ltd
Date de parution	18 octobre 2018
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781785897887
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0200€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

TIMES CHANGE

BEFORE THE CHILDREN ACT

A Novel

John Ellison
Copyright © 2016 John Ellison

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study,
or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in
any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the
publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with
the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries
concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events
and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination
or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons,
living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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‘The times they are a-changing’ – Song by Bob Dylan
Contents
1. A Newcomer to the Legal Department
2. Tranquillity Disturbed
3. The Newcomer Digs In
4. More about the Legal Service
5. The Newcomer’s First Week Ends
6. George Ballam Under Pressure
7. Into the Highgate Juvenile Court
8. The Newcomer’s First Big Test
9. In the Legal Building…
10. A New Relationship?
11. A Meeting of Solicitors and Managers
12. Preparing for the Revue
13. October Begins
14. More about Beth and Robert
15. The Amy Stewart Case Again
16. A Social Services Committee Meeting Looms
17. Mr. Shimble has a Tantrum
18. Robert Advises Action
19. A Meeting of the Social Services Committee
20. Another Shimble Outburst
21. Another Care Proceedings
22. An Evening at Dingwalls
23. A Parental Rights Resolution Looks Iffy
24. Fresh Revelations
25. Chin up in the Juvenile Court
26. In the High Court of Justice
27. Tribunal Interlude and More Tottenham Justice
28. The Day of the Revue
29. Christmas Celebrations
30. Into the High Court Again
31. George Ballam Says Enough
32. A Revue Reunion
33. More George Ballam
1
A Newcomer to the Legal Department
A diverse crew of solicitors, legal assistants, clerical assistants, typists, someone called a muniments officer, plus the Borough Solicitor himself, Mr. Edward Shimble, and his secretary, made up the staff of the legal department of the London Borough of Haringey in September 1979. They were dispersed around the two upper floors of a three storey building, in a dusty and dirty road, exhausted by vehicular traffic, leading off Wood Green’s High Road. Its grey, modern façade curved round to the side, faintly resembling a quarter of a large orange, and had much exterior glass. In appearance it was more modest than the blander but grander, wide-fronted Civic Centre, where the borough’s councillors – ‘the members’ – met, took refreshment, talked and made decisions. This was to be found around the corner and uphill a few hundred yards away, set back from the road.
The legal building in Station Road had a touch more individuality than the Civic Centre. Its substantial window volume had caused one inmate extravagantly, possibly after lunch in the adjoining public house, to declare that the place had ‘almost exclusive entitlement to the sun.’ Furthermore, the rear upper windows had access, on a clear day, to a distant view of the roof of the borough’s own Alexandra Palace (whose title exaggerated its splendour), planted majestically on a height beyond which lay the prosperous shopping streets of Muswell Hill.
The London Borough of Haringey extended – and, as I write, still extends – from Tottenham in the east to Highgate and beyond in the west, nudging Enfield’s borough boundary to the north and Islington’s to the south. It was and is one of more than thirty such municipal structures gathered together seamlessly in a giant jigsaw, forming just one dimension of England’s capital city.
A relatively autonomous section of the legal department (to which Edward Shimble generally paid limited attention), consisted of two solicitors who bore primary responsibility for work for the borough’s Social Services Department, mainly in relation to children. The two solicitors were Melanie Cusack, who had been unenthusiastically in post for almost two years, and just-qualified Robert Fordham, who had taken up his duties at the beginning of the week. Robert Fordham’s doings occupy much space in this narrative.
He had not yet sized up the lack of devotion to the task of his partner-in-social services-work, but his own eagerness was unquestionable. Yet his only relevant experience was as a trainee – then entitled an Articled Clerk – within a rural county council in the south-west. There for some three months during his two years of training he had dogged the heels of fully fledged practitioners, and he was hopeful that this would be enough to fit him for the times ahead.
His main links were to be with ‘fieldwork’ social workers based in each of the borough’s area offices, located chiefly in the north and south of Tottenham, in Wood Green and in Crouch End. Less frequently he would be dealing with the senior management, headed by urbane and eloquent Social Services Director Michael Stone, whom he had met at his interview and who was stationed in what had once been Tottenham’s own Town Hall.
So Robert Fordham, a clean-shaven young man of middle height and more on the side of good looks than the alternative, and the owner of a friendly, open personality, was no longer just the shadow of a proper lawyer. He was the person responsible for advising and representing a Social Services department – which meant, in practice, guiding and being guided by individual social workers and their supervising ‘seniors’, each of whom managed a small team.
On his second working day, Robert Fordham drove his not very new Ford Escort car to the north Tottenham Social Services building where a child protection case conference concerning a three-year-old child called Amy was programmed to take place.
He had with him a typed request for a legal representative to attend. The author was the family’s social worker, whose name – typed below her large and legible signature – was Jessica Palmer.
The North Tottenham office, a detached and ageing building, looked on to a shop-adorned high street close to a well-known football stadium, and was advertised by a large sign, imprinted high on the building’s wall. Robert managed to park his car without difficulty in a side road, relishing the summer-autumn sunshine during a short walk before he entered the reception area. This was sparsely but not badly furnished with a mix of upright chairs, armchairs and even a plastic-covered sofa which tolerated a freshly committed rip on one arm-rest, apparently the work of a sharp blade. A worn carpet filled most of the room. A middle-aged black female receptionist sat behind a desk.
He told her why he had come, and was in friendly fashion advised that he would be collected shortly. Minutes later a young woman, perhaps in her mid-twenties, slim and well-formed, with flowing auburn hair expressed in a simple pony tail, her oval face bearing a slightly upturned nose and dark brown eyes encompassed by much light, emerged. She identified herself simply as ‘Jessica’ and welcomed him and, indeed, several other visitors, to whom he had paid scant attention, but who had secured seats before his own arrival. Robert was immediately taken with her.
Stairs were climbed and he and the others were ushered into a large room with grey walls. There was little furniture save a long wooden table, scratched and battered from much use, hemmed in by metal-framed chairs, with more of the same in reserve stacked against a wall. He sat down. Within minutes, after a late-comer had joined the group, almost all the chairs were occupied, leaving a single place vacant at one end of the table.
This was where the chairman would sit, and this seat was soon filled by a middle-aged man. He had a large and kindly face and was wearing, Robert noticed, thinking of his own smart dark pin-striped suit, brown corduroy trousers and a sky blue sports jacket which failed signally to match the trousers.
The chairman identified himself by name and as the Area Manager. He had a soft unhurried voice and avuncular manner, and used both to welcome the various visiting professionals: a health visitor and her supervising manager; a male, middle-aged and bespectacled consultant paediatrician from a local hospital – the North Middlesex; the manager of a day nursery which the child Amy attended; two police officers in civilian garb and Robert himself. The procedure to be followed, said the Area Manager, was that Dr. Alan Pearson would contribute first, followed by Jessica Palmer and others. The conference had to consider whether Amy was a child at risk, and if so, whether there should be an application to the court for a protective order, or whether some other plan should be followed. But before any verbal contribution, those present introduced themselves, one by one, in their seated sequence.
One of these, not mentioned by the chairman so far, and sitting next to him at the table corner, was a young woman who spoke her name swi