Children with families are assets, and their value is realised when they are accepted into the UK government's “care system”, where care, foster care, adoption and special needs are all increasingly profitable cash cows.
Rest assured, the UK Government and countless charities are there to protect our children, help them live happy lives, find foster or adoptive parents and help find long-term, loving adoptive parents. So there's no need to worry? Actually, there is a lot to be worried about.
Let's start with the most recent announcements. CORAM and the British Adoption and Foster Care Association (BAAF) The merger led to the creation of the CORAMBAAF Adoption and Foster Care Academy.
According to the media, the cause of their deaths was “Big changes and economic conditions” BAAF's opaque corporate slogan of being “bankrupt” was blamed on the cost of a new IT system for viewing images and videos of children, as well as criticism of unspecified decisions made by Judge Manby, head of the family law division. Whatever the cause, the reality is that BAAF went bust rapidly, unbeknownst to its staff, with only 55 of 185 people still employed. Administrators Smith and Williamson finalised a deal with Coram and lo and behold, the Foster Care and Adoption Academy was set up. What is the Adoption Academy? No idea.
The bare minimum to emerge from the CORAM BAAF debacle is that everything to do with children is increasingly big business. Kids are money, and one need only look at Action for Children or the charity Core Assets' £198 million turnover to understand what is really going on. A child with a family is property, and a child's value is only realised once they are placed into the UK government's 'care system', where care provision, foster care, adoption and special needs are all increasingly profitable cash cows.
But it's not just about money: on 29 July 2015, just days before the CORAM BAAF merger announcement (31 July), CORAM made a much-admired media announcement that former Pearson Group businessman, Common Purpose guru and Leveson Inquiry expert Sir David Bell had been appointed Chairman of CORAM. According to CEO Dr Carol Homden, Bell's experience in business, the arts and philanthropy made him a perfect fit for CORAM and their role with children.
We're not quite sure why Dr Homden feels this way. Big business, the arts and kids? The experience and expertise don't seem very relevant, and it probably doesn't help that Bell is chairman of the Transformation Trust. But don't worry, they're here to help schools transform young people's lives.
But whatever the changes, Bell's big-business knowledge and experience aside, his tenure on Common Purpose's board, and particularly his term as chairman, raises some important questions about whether he's suited to his new role.
Without attempting to replicate the UKColumn analysis, A common purpose revealed Given that it has already influenced the work of the political charity Common Purpose, suffice it to say that CP has targeted schoolchildren and young people heavily since its inception around 1985. Its stated agenda is to refocus the minds of young people from the age of 11 on issues of “leadership, change and networks” to change society at local and global levels. CP is reluctant to explain what specific changes it seeks, but clues can be found in its broadly pro-EU approach and desire to “fill the invisible space between the individual and the state with citizens”.
Led by Sir David Bell, the CP has sought to target young people with a pseudo-political change agenda, utilising secretive common purpose networks to exploit education budgets and promote a “philanthropic” political agenda at the taxpayer's expense. Moreover, this has been done using staff who have not necessarily been police CRB checked, yet who have access to powerful and little publicised applied behavioural psychology. Putting the dangers of psychology aside, a classic example of a safeguarding issue arose in Sheffield, where local residents reported the CP for breaching its CRBs, leading to the local authority being held accountable for putting children at risk.
On 5 November 2008, a member of the public raised concerns about a possible child abduction at a Sheffield City Council general meeting. The concern concerned a Common Purpose trainer who had not been police CRB checked, taking a girl aged 12-14 to training sessions at the weekend. Surprisingly, or perhaps unexpectedly, the then leader of the city council, now Sir Paul Scriven, reportedly responded to the child protection concerns with a hostile reaction. Shortly thereafter, Sheffield City Council's media coverage of the incident led to a local newspaper publishing a libelous article about the member of the public, and the Sheffield Star was later forced to apologise.
Pressed by Sheffield residents to address these safeguarding concerns, Scriven chose Sonia Sharp, Sheffield City Council's executive director of children and young people and a Common Purpose trained “leader”, to investigate and report. Sharp previously held the same directorship role in Rotherham when the city was under the care of Rotherham Council during a time of widespread abuse of young people. UKColumn has reported on Common Purpose's links to Rotherham in an investigative piece, “The impact of Rotherham Common Purpose”.
There have never been any reports of child protection cases in Sheffield. Meanwhile, Sonia Sharp left Sheffield in March 2009 to take up a position as an adviser to the Department of Education in Melbourne, Australia, but was forced to resign after her record of repeated failures in child protection services was exposed in the Australian press.
To date, CP has 'trained' tens of thousands of children and young people in the UK alone, and countless others overseas. The exact numbers are unknown as CP considers its training programmes, exact content and the names of participants to be confidential 'commercial' information. The lack of clear information about CP's infiltration of schools, colleges and academies should be of immediate concern to parents and those working in child protection. If CP is such an open and trusted charity, why is it so secretive about its actual plans for children?
After asking this simple question, the picture becomes murkier when we learn that CP frequently infiltrates and trains members of child protection committees. In Oxford, when young people were seriously sexually abused at OCVC, Oxford and Cherwell Valley College, and the assaults were then covered up, the key people responsible were not only trained by Common Purpose, but had a close network. Sarah Thornton, then Chief Commissioner of Police for Thames Valley Police, Joanna Symons, CEO of Oxfordshire County Council, and Sally Dicketts, principal of OCVC, were all senior Common Purpose “leaders” who operated behind closed doors under CP's Chatham House rule. As UKColumn has repeatedly exposed in a series of articles, they were deeply involved in the OCVC abuse scandal.
Sir David would no doubt have had a deep interest and concern in these issues, having been trained at Oxford Post.
Young people at OCVC have been bullied, abused, beaten, sexually assaulted and shown sadistic pornography so severe that some never recover — but these actions pale in comparison to those of the convicted Common Purpose-trained “leaders.” James Rennie Consider the CEO of LBGT Youth Scotland, one of Scotland's largest paedophile rings, where a three-month-old boy was among the paedophile victims. Or the convicted Common Purpose advisory board member. Matthew Byrnewas a dangerous and sadistic paedophile and brutal treater of women. His crimes are too heinous to describe here, but he is shown in publicity photos receiving praise from Prime Minister David Cameron and Conservative Party heavyweight Michael Heseltine.
Byrne's position on the Advisory Committee meant he was ideally placed to help identify, select and train children and young people as part of Common Purpose courses, and his “open door” position on the Advisory Committee enabled him to bring other pedophiles into the management layers of the secretive Common Purpose network.
How many paedophiles did Byrne and Rennie recruit into Common Purpose? We'll never know because this harmful charity has not taken any public steps to assess the risks to its network. Moreover, Common Purpose has typically taken an aggressive stance, even threatening legal action, towards members of the public who openly question its work and aims in relation to children and young people.
Combining access to children through schools, universities and other venues with a powerful psychology to change their mindset and values must surely be a dangerous combination. Add to this the secret network of Common Purpose alumni and their declared interest in “channeling outside authority”, and this charity surely becomes a “candy store” for perverts. Is Common Purpose aware of the risks of its operating procedures? Given their aggressive stance, it seems not to be.
Sir David Bell, a long-time Trustee and former Chairman of Common Purpose, was in office when Common Purpose failed to pay minimal attention to background checks on its trainers, and when Renee and Vern were selected and trained as Common Purpose leaders when they engaged in deadly abusive behavior. What steps did he take to ruthlessly remove individuals who posed a danger to children from Common Purpose's network? Again, we may never know. Neither the Chairman nor Common Purpose's CEO have ever publicly acknowledged the organization's potential risks to children and young people.
Sir David is currently Head of the CORAMBAAF Adoption and Foster Care Academy. He has extensive experience of Common Purpose, a political quasi-socialist restructuring of beliefs for adults, teenagers and children. He has also, through his work for the Media Standards Trust and its offshoot, the Hacked Off campaign, demonstrated pernicious collaboration and manipulation of what many see as creeping state control over the press and media.
This clearly political campaign around the press and media was first exposed in UKColumn and then Daily MailThe Telegraph, The Sun, The Guardian. Suppression of media transparency and suppression of freedom of speech, and children? If you feel uneasy, remember Home Secretary Jack Straw. Changed the law This is to make it more difficult for parents to report family court cases and for children in care to report what is happening to them.
Sir David Bell comes to his new job bearing the burden of Common Purpose's failure to adequately protect children and the apparent infiltration of at least two extremely dangerous paedophiles into the Common Purpose network. That is not a good feeling.
Nevertheless, Sir David will arrive at CORAMBAAF with warm feelings, knowing that Common Purpose is already in place within these organisations and training staff, so he will no doubt be surrounded by respected friends and ‘future leaders’.
Meanwhile, another “pop-up” charity British childrenhas adopted the strict UN political agenda for children, emblazoned with Common Purpose's trademark green and purple colors, and has partnered with countless little-known organizations to “protect and nurture” children.
Perhaps the true meaning of the CORAMBAAF Adoption and Fostering Academy under Sir David Bell's direction – the uniform re-education of children to a new world view – is now becoming clear. Perhaps we should remember the true goal of Sir David Bell's Common Purpose.
Vision: In every society, there exists an invisible space between the individual and the state.
Objective: Our objective is to fill this space with as many people as possible.
Philosophy: In creating a common educational experience within and across many countries, Common Purpose remains independent and non-aligned.
Putting aside his big business, commercial and philanthropic expertise, or attempts to control the media, how darkly will the common purpose wand of Lord Bell's artistic expertise be cast into the magic circle of child adoption and foster care charities?
