Relax, the British State and a myriad of charities are protecting our children, helping them lead happy lives, helping them find foster Mums and Dads and helping them find long term loving adoptive parents. So no worries there then? Well, quite a few actually.
Let's start with the recent announcement that CORAM and British Association of Adoption and Fostering (BAAF) have merged to create the CORAMBAAF Adoption and Fostering Academy.
According to the media their demise was due to “significant changes and economic conditions” making it impossible for the charity to continue offering its services. BAAF's opaque corporation speak for 'we're bust' was lamely blamed on the cost of a new IT system to view images and videos of children, together with a sideways swipe at unspecified decisions made by Head of the Family Law Division Judge Munby. Whatever the cause, the reality was a rapid BAAF fold which caught staff unaware and left just 55 of 185 employed. Administrators Smith and Williamson stiched up the deal with Coram and hey presto a fostering and adoption academy was, well, adopted. What is an adoption academy? No idea.
The minimum that emerges from the CORAM BAAF saga is the increasingly big business aspect of everything and anything to do with children. Children are money and we have only to look at the £198m turnover of Action for Children, or the charity name Core Assets to understand what is really going on. Children with families are assets, and the child's value can only be realised when they can be taken into the British state 'care system', where care provision, fostering, adoption and special needs, all represent increasingly profitable cash cows.
It's not money alone though. On the 29th July 2015, a few days before the announcement of the CORAM BAAF's amalgamation (31st July) came CORAM's fanfare media release that Former Pearson Group businessman, Common Purpose guru and Leveson Inquiry expert, Sir David Bell had been appointed as President of CORAM. According to CEO Dr Carol Homden, Bell's business, arts and charity experience was a perfect match for CORAM and their role with children.
Quite why Dr Homden would feel this way, we are not too sure. Big business, the 'Arts' and children? The experience and expertise doesn't sound too relevant, and is perhaps not helped by Bell's position as Chair of Trustees of the Transformation Trust. Don't worry though, they are helping schools transform young lives.
But leaving aside that transformation, whatever it is, and Bell's big business knowledge and experience, it is his time as a Trustee of Common Purpose, and particularly his time as Chairman of Trustees, that brings a number of key questions as to his suitability for his new role.
Without attempting to recreate much of the analysis UKColumn and Common Purpose Exposed have already done into the working of political charity Common Purpose, suffice it to say that CP has, from its inception circa 1985, heavily targeted school children and young people. Its declared agenda has been to reframe young minds from 11 y.o. into matters of 'leadership, change and networking' with the objective of changing society at a local and global level. CP has been rather reluctant to explain exactly what change they are seeking, but clues are to be found in their widely pro-EU approach, and their desire to fill the 'invisible space between the individual and the State with their people.'
In targeting young minds with their quasi political change agenda, CP under the hand of Sir David Bell has worked to use the secretive Common Purpose networks to tap into education budgets and thus spread their 'charitable' political agenda at the expense of the taxpayer. Moreover this has been done by using staff who have not always been police CRB checked, but who can use powerful and largely undeclared applied behavioural psychology. Leaving the dangers of the psychology to one side, a prime example of the safeguarding issues occured in Sheffield where it took local residents to flag up the CRB breaches by CP, and call the Local Authority to account for placing children at risk.
A member of the public raised formal public concerns as to the potential for child grooming during a full Sheffield Council meeting on 5 November 2008. The concerns related to 12 -14 year old girls who were taken for training weekends by Common Purpose trainers who lacked police CRB checks. Surprisingly, or perhaps not, the then Leader of the Council, now Lord Paul Scriven, was reportedly hostile in his reaction to this child safeguarding concern. A short time later Sheffield Council's handling of the media over the affair led to a libelous local newspaper report concerning the member of the public, for which the Sheffield Star was later forced to print an apology.
Pressed by the Sheffield public for action on these safeguarding concerns, Scriven selected Sheffield City Council's own Executive Director of Children and Young People and Common Purpose trained 'leader' Sonia Sharp to investigate and report. Sharp had previously been in the same Director's post in Rotherham during the widespread abuse of youngsters in the town and under the protection of the Rotherham Council. UKColumn has reported on Common Purpose connections with Rotherham in our investigative article the Rotherham Common Purpose Effect.
To date no report on the Sheffield child safeguarding incident has ever been seen. Sonia Sharp meanwhile was to leave Sheffield in March 2009 for a post in Melbourne Australia advising the Ministry of Education. She was later forced to resign when her track record of repeated failure in children's services emerged into the Australian press.
To date, CP has 'trained' many tens of thousands of children and young people in Britain alone, with countless others overseas. The exact number is unknown because CP regards training programmes, exact content and the names of attendees as secret 'commercial' information. The lack of clear information on CP's penetration of schools, colleges and academies should be of immediate concern to parents and those involved in child safeguarding. If CP is such an open trustworthy charity, why is it so secretive about its real agenda around children?
Having asked this simple question, the picture becomes cloudier when we learn that CP has often penetrated and trained members of Child Safeguarding Boards. In Oxford, where youngsters were seriously sexually abused at Oxford and Cherwell Valley College OCVC, and the assaults then covered up, key individuals responsible were not only Common Purpose trained, they were closely networked. Sara Thornton then Chief Constable of Thames Valley Police and Joanna Simons CEO Oxfordshire County Council and Sally Dicketts Principal OCVC were all senior Common Purpose 'leaders' operating behind closed doors under CP's Chatham House rules. They were deeply implicated in the OCVC abuse case as UKColumn repeatedly exposed in a series of published articles.
Surely Sir David would have had deep interest and concern in these matters? After all he trained at the Oxford Mail.
Youngsters at OCVC were bullied, vicitimised, assaulted, sexually assaulted and shown sadistic pornography so severe that some have never recovered. Yet these activities pale when set against convicted Common Purpose trained 'leader' James Rennie CEO LBGT Youth Scotland. A three month old boy was amongst his paedophile victims, in what was one of Scotland's largest paedophile rings. Or consider convicted Common Purpose Advisory Board Member Matthew Byrne, a paedophile who was also highly dangerous and sadistic in his brutal treatment of women. His crimes are too disgusting to describe here, yet Byrne is shown receiving the praise of Prime Minister David Cameron and Tory grandee Michael Heseltine in a publicity photograph.
In his Advisory Board position Byrne was ideally placed to identify, select and help train children and young people as part of Common Purpose courses. He was also in an 'open-door' position on the Advisory Board to bring other paedophiles into the management layers of the secretive Common Purpose networks.
How many other paedophiles did Byrne and Rennie recruit into Common Purpose? We shall never know, because this pernicious charity took no overt public action to assess the risks to their networks. Moreover Common Purpose has usually taken an aggressive stance against members of the public who have openly questioned them as to their activities and objectives around children and young people - even threatening legal action.
Access to children via schools, colleges and other venues, coupled with powerful psychology to change the views and values of children must surely be a dangerous cocktail. Couple this with secretive networks of Common Purpose graduates, and their declared interest in "leading outside authority", and surely this charity becomes a 'sweety shop' for perverts? Does Common Purpose recognise the risk of their operating procedures? From their aggressive stance, it appears not.
Sir David Bell, longstanding Common Purpose Trustee and former Chair of Trustees, was in post when Common Purpose was failing to take minimum Due Diligence precautions to background check its trainers. He was also in post when Rennie and Byrne were plying their deadly abusive trade as selected and trained Common Purpose leaders. What action did he take to ensure Common Purpose networks were ruthlessly cleansed of individuals presenting risks to children? Again we shall never know. Not the Chair of Trustees, nor the CEO of Common Purpose have ever made any public acknowledgment of the potential risks of their organisation to children and young people.
So Sir David is now President of CORAMBAAF Adoption and Fostering Academy. He comes with his considerable Common Purpose background in political quasi socialist reframing of the beliefs of adults, teenagers and children alike. He has also demonstrated via the work of his Media Standards Trust, and its offspring, the Hacked Off campaign, devious collaboration and manipulation towards what many see as creeping State control of the press and media.
This clearly political activity around press and media was first exposed in UKColumn and later widely taken up by the Daily Mail, Telegraph, Sun and Guardian. Suppression of transparency in the media and suppression of free speech, and children? If you feel uneasy remember that Home Secretary Jack Straw changed the law to make it more difficult for parents to report on Family Court cases and children in care to report what was happening to them.
Sir David Bell arrives in his new post with the baggage of the failure of Common Purpose to properly protect children, and the obvious penetration of the Common Purpose networks by at least two highly dangerous paedophiles. It doesn't have a good feel to it.
Sir David will nevertheless also arrive at CORAMBAAF with a warm feeling, knowing that Common Purpose has already penetrated these organisations to train staff. He will thus surely be amongst admiring friends and 'future leaders.'
In the meantime, yet another 'pop-up' charity Children England, has adopted draconian UN political objectives for children adorned with the trademark green and purple colours of Common Purpose. It also links a myriad of organisations, few of which are well known, to 'protect and nuture' children.
Could it be that the real meaning of a CORAMBAAF Adoption and Fostering ACADEMY under the hand of Sir David Bell is now coming into view - uniform re-education of children into the new world view. Perhaps we should perhaps remember the real goals of Sir David Bell's Common Purpose.
Vision: In every society there is an invisible space between the individual and the State.
Aim: Our aim is to fill this space with as many people as possible.
Ethos: As we create a common educational experience within and across many countries, Common Purpose remains independent and non-aligned.
Never mind his big business, profit and charity expertise, or the attempted control of the media, just how darkly will the Common Purpose wand of Sir Bell's arts expertise be cast in the magick circle of child adoption and fostering charities?
