Travellers gather in Greenwich to protest against taking of three children into care
By Joe Coughlan, Local Democracy Reporter
Roma travellers have staged a protest outside Greenwich council’s offices to demand three children who had been placed into foster care be returned to their birth family.
The group held the demonstration on Monday outside the Woolwich Centre in Wellington Street, claiming that the children have been wrongfully separated from their family.
Toma Nikolaeff Mladenov, 58, is the chairman of Roma London and said the protest had been held in honour of International Romani Day.
He claimed the children’s current housing situation was having a negative effect on their health. He claimed the children were put into care by Greenwich council after their father was reported to the police for an alleged theft.
Mr Mladenov said: “We’re making a peaceful protest in front of the council because a social worker from this council took three small children [from their father].”
Mr Mladenov claimed that one of the children had complained to her father and grandparents about the living conditions in her new foster home. He said the Roma community staged the protest to ask for a conversation to be arranged between the council and the family.
He said: “The child was very stressed. Their father went with her to the hospital to see the doctor. The doctor examined the girl and diagnosed the child as being stressed.”
The children’s father, whose identity is being kept anonymous to protect the privacy of the children, said that he brought his kids to London from Eastern Europe before they were taken into care two months later.
He said he wants to bring the children back to his home country so that they can see their mother – his divorced partner – and be enrolled in school there.
“I feel depressed. I’m really stressed, I don’t know what’s going to happen to my children. I miss them so much,” he said.
Jacob Wills, 34, of Roma London, said the group held another protest outside the council offices on April 4 and were told by the authority that a member of children’s services would be in contact that day, but no message has so far been received.
He added that data from the Department for Education showed that the number of children described as being part of the Roma or Gypsy community who were living in care had increased by 933 per cent between 2009 and 2017.
Mr Wills said: “The social workers made bad decisions, but this isn’t an isolated incident where it’s just about a single person’s prejudice. The problem is it’s not just Greenwich council, and so today is not just about this one family. It is about the wider systemic issue of Roma kids being taken into care.”
He added: “Greenwich council needs to take responsibility around what training their staff are being offered. The government needs to take responsibility about what the funding is like for children’s services that is leading to these kind of shotgun, quick, terrible decisions that are having an intense detrimental effect on specific communities.
“There’s a lack of cultural competency and recognition of different forms of culture, especially ones that are a bit further away from some of the norms.”
A Greenwich council spokesman said: “We are aware of a protest that took place outside Woolwich Town Hall. Without commenting on individual cases, we respect any individual’s right to peacefully demonstrate and the council remains in contact with the family concerned.”
Pictured top: Monday’s protest outside the Woolwich Centre in Wellington Street (Picture: Joe Coughlan)