'Twice a month, she sat on the local fostering panel, which oversaw the removal of children from their parents and placed them with new families. It was heart-rending work, as she recalls. ‘At each fostering meeting we were presented with horrifying cases of abusive parents, almost always depicted as “substance abusers”, mentally unstable or “unable to put the needs of their children over their own needs”. ‘Often, this portrayal was supported by an expert report from a psychiatrist, psychologist or medical doctor,’ says Lucy.

‘It never occured to me, or any member of the panel, that the information we were presented with might be a distorted, twisted fiction — or that the reports were anything other than independent.’

Now, her view has changed. She suspects that many of the damning reports were written by experts who had never met the families in question, to suit the wishes of social workers under pressure from the Government to increase the number of children adopted.'

Read more: The 'Experts' Who Break Up Families: The Terrifying Story of the Prospective MP Branded an Unfit Mother by Experts Who'd Never Met Her - a Nightmare Shared by Many Other Families