The truth will be told
The truth will be told about Herefordshire Children’s Services
In Herefordshire there has been more than a decade of egregious failures in Children’s Services. To date, only a handful of the appalling failures have reached the public domain - see our press coverage page. But it is becoming clearer than ever, that the stories already in the media are just the tip of a colossal iceberg of injustice and damaged lives.
When victims of injustice realise that what has happened to them is not a one off, but part of a pattern of chronic failure, and that there are hundreds of others affected, they gravitate to each other. Their shared experiences bind them. As a victim community forms, voices are amplified and the determination to get to the truth strengthens.
Unless and until the Council shifts its thinking and employs people who have it within their hearts to deal with the truth and to treat families with compassion, there will be no resolution of this long-running sore. The current band of hard-nosed fixers will not bring about resolution.
Many of the families who have been harmed are realising that there is little point in trying to talk to the Council as there is no serious intent to listen. The only thing left is to talk about the Council. So this website will be a repository for the evidence already in the public domain and a place where more people can tell their stories and share new evidence.
Everyone caught up in this tragedy wants to heal. But without truth, justice and compassion, there can be no moving on. If the Council won’t engage meaningfully with families and come clean about what has happened, people will make their stories public.
We hope the media will be listening. Like the people of Liverpool after Hillsborough, the victims of the contaminated blood scandal and the sub-postmasters, it may take the families of Herefordshire years to get justice, but without truth and accountability hearts don’t heal, so families will keep pushing.
Injustices on the scale that have unfolded here in Herefordshire cannot and should not be forgotten. The people who have been harmed cannot be discarded like litter.
The hundreds of children needlessly placed into care or worse still adopted into other families will reach adulthood and will start to reach out to their lost families and to lawyers. One by one the lies will be unpicked.
The truth will be told.