The Child Stealers

I am originally from the UK, but now living in New-Zealand. The legal system here , NZ being a Commonwealth country, receives it's "direction" from the UK. I work as a volunteer with  NGO (non government organisation) concerned with mental health human rights issues. Almost all of the women members who have had children have entered the mental health system upon having a child removed by social services. The mental health system is often used as a "tool" to ensure that if a parent shows ANY signs of distress or emotional upset or even disagrees, or conversly to protect their mental health, shows too little emotion on removal of their child, for any reason, then they are encouraged first and then pressured to enter the mental health system. If they refuse then all promises of access to their child are withdrawn until they can be proven that they are mentally fit to parent. Once a parent agrees to have a mental health assessment  they then considered to have a "mental health history" and so legally deemed to be a unfit parent. Furthermore this process circumnavigates any access to the first parent and child "rights" advocted in the so called and much touted as the "new enligtened" "soft" option of "open" adoption. This option is usually used as a "carrot" to lure older children away from their parents. These children are often provided with goods and services way beyond the means of the first parents and done in a way to alienate the first parent. Often this is done at the expense of granting the first parents the services that they are legally entitled to under normal circumstances such as home aid or educational services. When challenged the excuse is always that either the pearents are undeserving or the services are unaffordable, and finally "too hard to provide". Of couse this is totally unacceptable.I have experienced this with both closed and open adoption proceedures. (Or lessons on how to convert a open adoption to a closed one).It is one thing to take a child into protective custody and provide care and access services to vulnerable parents who may have difficulty managing and another to use these reasons as an excuse to permanently remove children without recourse and put the family through a psychological alienation process that will ensure that child is a "freehold commodity or product " for the adoption market for life. Many relationships between vulnerable parents and their children are subjected to alienating psychological processes instigated by the adoptive services staff and foster parent inhouse "training" which often introduce foster parents to the practise of parental alienation. These processes are designed by highly trained professionals to ensure that the emotional bond between parent and child is psychologically severed in favour of the adoptive family by using rigidly constructed "one way" or TINA (there can be no alternative) policy making processes, usually in the name of "privacy" and "security" or "protection" and finally if all these excuses fail affordability or convienience or simply continual non-compliance, (not turning up to meetings etc.).  Regular media "expose's support campaigns which usually promote news stories demonising first parents and deitizing "heroic foster parents" protect against the possibility of success for any public campaigns promoting positve interventions to assist families in managing, such as making supervised access a humiliating and arduous for all involved. Visiting parents and children are often treated unfairly and punitively in order to make visiting a bad experience for all, including the foster parents. There are positive alternatives, but many people who support the current system/industry have too much to "loose" to allow a more positive system to take over let alone survive. There are only a handful of people who manage to go on the be able to lead a normal life of any description, as recent mental health industry only promote a compliant recovery from mental illness, which means a relinquishment of first parent rights.Adoption Services currently have the might of Church and State behind them, and are continue to protect their investment vigorously.