- Keira Roberts worked for Dr George Hibbert at Family Assessment Centre in Swindon
- He set parents odd tasks, like changing a car tyre while caring for a child
- Keira: 'We had to put only bad things in our reports'
- Dr Hibbert made more than £40,000 a week
By Katherine Faulkner
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'Playing God': Dr George Hibbert specialised in helping local authorities identify dangerous or neglectful parents
Anyone who works in child protection will tell you that one of the worst aspects of the job is having to take a youngster from its motherâs arms, possibly for ever.
It is heart-breaking enough, even when you are 100 per cent sure that being taken into care is the best thing for that child. But what if you are forcibly removing a child from a mother you believe to be a good and caring parent?
Keira Roberts never imagined that she would find herself in such a position when she accepted a job with an eminent psychiatrist who specialised in helping local authorities identify dangerous or neglectful parents.
Dr George Hibbert was regarded as one of countryâs leading experts on child abuse, had lectured at Oxford and had advised MPs on the family courts system.
When Keira agreed to work for him, it was at one of his Family Assessment Centres â" places where families who had come to the attention of social services departments were r eferred. They were placed under round-the-clock observation while it was determined what should happen next.
It was a very intrusive set-up, but Keira assumed that Dr Hibbert â" who was highly trusted (and very well paid) by a string of local authorities â" knew what he was doing.
And in the wake of the Baby P scandal, she understood how important it was for any concerns about parental abuse to be acted on.
But protecting children is one thing. Ripping families apart â" apparently for little reason â" is another. Yet this is what Keira claims Dr Hibbert did, and on a scale that is staggering.
From the Mail, March 17
Alarm bells first started ringing when she felt Dr Hibbert wanted his staff to concentrate on recording only the negative aspects of what they observed.
And she became dismayed when the parents were set bizarre and, she felt, unfair tasks, to assess how they coped.
She watched one young mum struggle to vacuum the stairs while carrying a baby. Another was sent off to the supermarket with her child in tow to grapple alone with a huge shop for 14 people.
But her bemusement at Dr Hibbertâs methods turned to horror when she realised that when parents âfailedâ to complete these tasks to Dr Hibbertâs high (or âimpossibleâ, as she puts it) standards, it counted against them and their chi ldren were being taken.
And what haunts her is that she was sometimes the one doing the forcible removal of the children.
The case that still keeps her awake at night involved a young mother called Anna â" a woman Keira had been observing for 14 weeks, and considered a good mother. She had come from a difficult background, but there was no evidence that she was abusive or neglectful towards her child.
Under investigation: Dr George Hibbert, pictured outside the Family Assessment Centre in Swindon
Indeed, Keira was impressed with what a good job she did of caring for her baby.
Yet at five oâclock one morning when she was working at the assessment centre, Keira was confronted by a sobbing Anna. She was cradling her baby, rocking from side to side and weeping uncontrollably, and begging for Keiraâs help.
âShe was convinced she was going home without her baby because she thought she had failed. She was hysterical. She kept asking: âDonât you think I am a good mother?â I did, but there was nothing I could do. Dr Hibbert had made his decision.â
Eventually, Keira was the one who had to take the baby from her arms. âIt was the worst thing I have ever had to do,â she says.
But Anna wasnât an isolated case. Quite how routinely babies were removed from their parents as a result of Dr Hibbertâs practices is not yet known. But Keira was not the only one to fear that her boss was abusing his powers.
Earlier this year, Dr Hibbert offered to surrender his doctorâs licence when the General Medical Council launched an investigation over accusations that he had deliberately misdiagnosed mothers as suffering from mental disorders to fit in with the view of social services.
The GMC refused to accept Dr Hibbertâs offer, and is investigating his fitness to practise.
This is the first time a member of his staff has come forward to talk about what they say went on inside one of his assessment centres.
Keira spent over a year working for Dr Hibbert at Windmill H ouse, Swindon. Her account â" given on the condition we protect her identity â" paints a horrifying picture of the lives of the parents he told the family courts were âunfitâ to look after their children.
How many families were ripped apart by Dr Hibbert is not known, but Keira confirms there must be âmanyâ.
From the Mail, April 14
Between four and eight families would live at Windmill House at any one time, with Keira and her colleagues watching them 24 hours a day, scrutinising their every interaction with their babies.
It was âjust like the Big Brother house, she says, âbut 100 times worse because they knew if they did something that was deemed wrong, they risked losing their child.â
Even at night, Keira claims, staff listened in to their parenting â" and, in the case of couples, their intimate conversations â" using baby monitors.
She says mothers were not even allowed to breastfeed in private. âI always felt it was very intrusive,â Keira says.
âWhen I was watching the parents in the same room, I would sip water or do a crossword so they wouldnât feel too watched.â
Perhaps such intrusion could have been justified had honest observations about the parentsâ interaction with their children been made.
Keira says things started in a balanced way, with staff being told to write, in the margins of their copious notes, a small âGâ for good parenting, âBâ for bad or âRâ for routine.
But later, she says, they understood they should write down only the bad aspects of parenting they observed.
She says: âDr Hibbert said: âAll I want, all I need you to do is highlight anything thatâs bad.â We did not include any good parenting because the courts would take it as read.â
Staff were horrified, believing this was going to give a âskewed viewâ.
âI donât think anyone thought it was right,â Keira says, âbut he said we had to cut down the amount of paperwork we were giving him.â
Another of Dr Hibbertâs methods was to set the parents bizarre tasks, such as changing a car tyre while caring for a child.
âThe assessments were ludicrous,â Keira says. âA lot of the staff said that if we found ourselves in their situation, weâd fail. It was a totally unrealistic, false environment.â
Incredibly, though, the mothers would often succeed against all odds. âThey were so desperate to pass,â Keira recalls quietly.
While she and her colleagues had to watch the parents round the clock, Keira claims Dr Hibbert was rarely at Windmill House.
Staff would occasionally see him driving in and out of the car park in one of his two Porsches â" one black, one silver â" or popping into the office to pick up one of his designer suits, which staff would have dry-cleaned.
But Keira claims she âneverâ saw the psychiatrist actually observing parents with their children before he wrote his reports for the family courts â" which would be extraordinary if this was always the case considering this was a man charging the taxpayer thousands for an âintensive and multi-faceted assessmentâ of a mother over 12 weeks.
Rich: Two Porsches can be seen parked outside the home of Dr Hibbert near Swindon. At one point in 2010, when he had 11 residents in the centre at one time, Dr Hibbert was raking in more than £40,000 a week
âIn the year I was there, I never once saw him watch a parent with their child,â says Keira. âIt was ridiculous. How can he have had an expert opinion on their parenting if he didnât even observe it?â
Dr Hibbert accepted he limited his direct interactions with parents because of the powerful effects he believed that could have.
Yet few would have suspected how little he seems to have observed people parenting their children.
Not only that, the sums Dr Hibbert charged for his family assessments are staggering. The courts were paying him thousands of pounds a week for his opinion.
Each parent and child at the unit earned him £4,100 per week. This rose to £6,150 per week for a couple and a baby, or £8,200 for a couple with two children.
At one point in 2010, when he had 11 residents in the centre at one time, Dr Hibbert was raking in more than £40,000 a week â" plus the £210 he charged for every hour he had to read the parentsâ paperwork.
His bill was split between local authorities, the childâs legal representative and the parentsâ legally-aided solicitor. Public money in other words.
Despite their huge costs, Dr Hibbertâs assessments appear to have relied to a great extent on notes made by his staff â" some as young as 19.
Keira insists Dr Hibbert usually saw parents for no more than 20 minutes per week. The workers â" who were paid a starting salary of £16,500 a year â" were left to observe the parenting for him.
âWe werenât experts, none of us were,â Keira confirms. âSome were totally unqualified. Yet we were the ones actually watching the parents with their children.â
With parents paying for their own food, and made to do all the cooking and cleaning themselves, workers often commented that Dr Hibbert âmust be raking it inâ from his family assessment centre. Yet this was just one of his many lucrative sidelines.
He also made a fortune attending court as an expert witness â" which he charged an eye-watering £1,800 per day. Incredibly, he even invoiced £105 per hour just for the time he spent travelling to and from court â" plus 45p per mile for petrol.
âI donât know how often he went to court, but it was about once a month ,â Keira remembers. He was not, Keira says, a caring employer. She claims he was subject to âfoul moodsâ and prone to âstomping aboutâ if he as angry. She describes him as an âintimidating presenceâ.
âHe looked down on me,â she says. âHe was more intelligent, he was the one who knew everything â" we were just his lackeys. I had never come across someone who was quite so full of himself. He also thought he was Godâs gift to women.â
In the year she worked at the centre, a number of staff resigned over what Keira believes were concerns about Dr Hibbert.
And it wasnât long before she began to have serious doubts. âWith some mothers, it didnât seem to matter what we wrote,â she says. âHe seemed to have made his mind up about them from the beginning.â
Others, she felt, were criticised âfor nothingâ.
One young father was accused of having âpaedophilic tendenciesâ after sta ff observed him lying on the floor with his daughter watching television.
Another was said to have an âintrusiveâ parenting style because he liked to tickle his baby daughter â" something Keira says the baby âabsolutely lovedâ.
But most bizarre of all was the case of a married mother who liked to write to-do lists. âDr Hibbert told us that writing a to-do list wasnât normal behaviour. He said it was obsessive. âAll of us staff said, hang on â" we do that too!â
But the patients couldnât win.
âIf parents didnât trust him they were branded paranoid,â Keira remembers. âIf they got upset, then he would say they werenât stable.â
Her final clash with Dr Hibbert came when she observed a meeting he held with a woman who was describing how she had once been raped.
The psychiatristâs reaction left Keira stunned. She says: âI saw him put his fingers in his ears and say: âNa na na, Iâm not listening to you.â I really just couldnât quite believe what I was seeing. I didnât get the impression he had any empathy.â
In early 2010, Dr Hibbert opened an extra four rooms in his assessment centre.
But then just a few months after this extra building â" known as The Annexe â" was opened, he abruptly shut the entire assessment centre down.
Staff were told that business from local authorities was drying up due to the economic climate, and that they would all be losing their jobs.
âIt was all very strange,â Keira remembers. âSomething about it wasnât right. He has spent all this money getting it kitted out, and we were still getting phone calls to the office from local authorities asking us to take more parents in.â
It was only later that Keira discovered what she believes is the real reason the centre shut so abruptly: her former employer was facing an investigation by the Genera l Medical Council.
A young mother had claimed he deliberately misdiagnosed her with bipolar disorder â" a decision which resulted in her losing her son.
Last night, a spokesman for Dr Hibbert said: âThe Medical Protection Society, on behalf of Dr Hibbert, confirm there have been no findings made against Dr Hibbert by the General Medical Council or any other body.
Dr Hibbert is unable to comment upon ongoing investigations due to his duties of patient confidentiality and his professional obligations.â
As for Keira, she says she wants to go to the GMC to tell her story.
She adds: âPersonally, Iâd like to see him prosecuted, stripped of his assets and sent to prison. What he did was unforgiveable.â
Some names have been changed.
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I worked alongside and with Child Protective services and I would never have been able to carry out orders like this and would have done something to subvert him. I hope the GMC really gets this Dr. declared unfit to practice and does this objectively- unlike their handling of the MMR/gut problem researchers who were subjected to a witch hunt by the GMC, only to be recently overturned by a higher court judge (Dr. walker- Smith appeal).
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Think how many families went through unneccesary stress because it didn't occur to the staff to go to the GMC whilst they were still being paid. If this hadn't been brought to light and the centre closed down, then I fully expect this woman would still be going to work and making judgements on people's ability to parent. All the while knowing how very wrong it. was.
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From one extreme - Baby P - to the other. How CAN this service be so unregulated and out of control. This man needs imprisonment, plus psychiatric help for his frightening mental problems.
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Being under review in such circumstances would be terrifying to any parent. Living away from their own home, presented with various tests, watched 24/7, with the knowledge that one might lose one's children if one fails to perform to a defined standard. I can't imagine how any decent, caring parent who fell into this net could even begin to cope with the stress, let alone pass tests under that sort of pressure.
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Designer suits two Porsches, says it all really. Nothing to do with child protection everything with lining his own pocket.Had a nice little earner there. Couldn't help noticing that the staff wages weren't that much higher than the minimum wage that some of them were totally unqualified. Were they recruited by an ad in the local jobcentre? The families concerned should start a class action against this creep(what I really think is unprintable) take him for every penny that he's got. Hopefully the GMC will act against him, all he's left with is £67 a week JSA. That would really be karma
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If these allegations are proved to true, , then all people working and implementing them are equally guilty under the law. How much psychological damage will have been done to these parents and children over the years by the applications of assessments by this so called doctor, we all want bad parents highlighted but, that is no excuse for the tormenting of struggling parents trying to care for their own. Time to re look at the whole social structure and root out the those pretending to have the answers when proof unavailable....prosecute him and those who put him ion position along with those who kept him there. If I was one of those parents I would be brawling for his blood.
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If her instincts were saying these children were not neglected, she should have done something about it sooner. She is as guilty as he is.
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There should be a new law where if you unlawfully have your child removed you automatically get them back with written apologies and compensation. In general law you are innocent until proven guilty yet the SS are allowed to be totally the opposite. The whole stinking bent system isn't fit for purpose. They are corrupt and I know because I've been there (and won!)
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The question remains...who employed this man? which authority has the money to set this up? ive worked for Social Services departments...I am a nurse...have worked in homelessness and never, ever heard anything like this before...even parents suspected of inadequate child rearing are not the subject of 24 hour monitoring...this is only part of the story....who decided to start throwing around public money like this and who was monitoring the service?
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Please let these poor children cruelly snatched from their parents without real reason be reunited as soon as possible.
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