Alexander Grothendieck Photo: REX

Alexander Grothendieck, who has died aged 86, was considered the greatest pure mathematician of the second half of the 20th century, his name uttered with the same reverence among mathematicians as that of Einstein among physicists. Yet in the 1970s he effectively abandoned his brilliant academic career and, in 1991, disappeared altogether; he was later reported as “last heard of raging about the devil somewhere in the Pyrenees”.

A mathematician of staggering accomplishment (one reference work described him as “the mathematician whose work was to lead to a unification of geometry, number theory, topology and complex analysis”), Grothendieck’s ubiquitous presence in almost all branches of pure mathematics between 1955 and 1970 revolutionised the subject, in recognition of which he was awarded the Fields Medal (the mathematics equivalent of the Nobel Prize) in 1966.

His extraordinary creativity expressed itself in the form of thousands of pages of mathematical literature, notably in the monumental Eléments de Géométrie Algébrique and Séminaire de Géométrie Algébrique – although his achievement was matched only by the impossibility of explaining it to anyone without at least a degree in Pure Mathematics. (Grothendieck’s most important single accomplishment, for example, was said to be “the invention of the étale and l-adic cohomology theories”.)

Grothendieck’s most creative period was spent at the French Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques (IHES), and his time there was regarded ever after as the institute’s “Golden Age”, during which a whole new school of mathematics flourished under Grothendieck’s charismatic leadership. He established the IHES as a world centre of algebraic geometry, with him as its driving force.

There was, however, another Grothendieck, a man who felt deeply about the world’s injustices. As a young student, he had decided not to study physics (despite his love for the subject), as he saw the discipline, after Hiroshima, as hopelessly compromised. During the Vietnam War, to protest against American imperialism, he gave lectures on category theory in the forests around Hanoi while the city was being bombed.

In the 1960s he refused to participate in conferences supported by Nato, Nasa or other defence interests. In some cases conference organisers went to the length of securing alternative funding in order to secure his participation. In 1966, when he was awarded the Fields Medal, he refused to travel to Moscow for the ceremony in protest at Soviet militarism.

His career reached a crisis in 1970 when he discovered that IHES was being funded in part, and indirectly, by the French Ministry of Defence. This triggered a bitter debate between Grothendieck and the founder of IHES, Leo Motchane, who maintained a clear division between scientific matters, which were left to the professors, and financial ones, which were the director’s domain.

Grothendieck poured scorn on the ease with which colleagues had accepted the situation, observing that their willingness to accept military funding had not prevented them “from professing the ideas ‘of the Left’ or from being indignant at colonial wars. They generally justify this by saying that this did not limit in any sense their independence or freedom of thought. They refuse to see that this collaboration gives an aura of respectability and liberalism to this apparatus of control, destruction and depreciation. This is something that shocked me.”

^{Alexander Grothendieck (REX)}

When Grothendieck failed to secure an immediate halt to the offending subsidy, he felt he had no choice but to resign. His attempts to find a position at an alternative top-ranking university or institute failed, either because the authorities were wary of his fiery reputation or because they did not fulfil his exacting preconditions.

He found work at lesser institutions, but not in areas of advanced research; and in any case, he had become increasingly preoccupied by politics.

In the 1970s, declaring himself a “militant activist”, he founded a small group called Survivre et Vivre, an anti-war, anti-imperialist, environmental movement. But partly because of its founder’s increasingly eccentric behaviour, the group failed to establish a popular base.

By the 1980s, Grothendieck had become seriously psychologically unstable. Finally he secluded himself in a small hamlet in the Pyrenees. In 1991, after burning thousands of pages of manuscript in the garden of his then girlfriend, he vanished altogether.

Alexander Grothendieck was born to Jewish parents in Berlin on March 28 1928. His father, Shapiro, was a Russian-born anarchist who had taken an active part in the Revolution and, after falling out with Lenin, in various Leftist movements in Germany, where he married the equally radical Johanna (“Hanka”). In 1933 Alexander’s parents moved to Paris to escape the Nazis, leaving their five-year-old son with a family in Hamburg, where he went to school. During this time his father fought in the Spanish Civil War.

In 1939 Alexander came to France, and in 1940 was interned with his mother as an “undesirable” (German, then after the German invasion, as a Jew) in the Rieucros camp near Mende. Shapiro, meanwhile, was interned in the camp of Le Vernet, from where he was deported to Auschwitz and died in 1942. Though Alexander never really knew his father, he held him in great esteem. His office at the IHES had no decoration except a portrait of his father.

Life in Vichy France was not easy. But in 1942, after the Grothendiecks had been moved to a detention camp at Gurs, Alexander was able to attend the Collège Cévénol, a school run by Protestant resisters at the village of Chambon-sur-Lignon, where he obtained his baccalauréat.

After the war Alexander and his mother moved to a small village near Montpellier, where he found part-time work on a farm while studying Mathematics at the university. In 1948 he went to Paris, carrying a letter of introduction from his former school to the mathematician Henri Cartan. Cartan advised him to go to Nancy, where he studied for a doctorate under Jean Dieudonné.

Grothendieck then spent several years travelling and teaching in Brazil and America . In 1956 he returned to France and, in 1959, he and Dieudonné accepted appointments as professors at the newly-established IHES in Bures-sur-Yvette, where, over the next 12 years, Grothendieck completely revolutionised the theory of algebraic geometry.

After leaving the IHES, Grothendieck tried but failed to get a post at the Collège de France in Paris. Instead, in 1973, he accepted a professorship at Montpellier University, where he mainly taught elementary subjects such as linear algebra and calculus. He became estranged from the high-level mathematical community.

During the 1980s Grothendieck wrote thousands of pages of mathematical and non-mathematical meditations, much of it mixing philosophical invective, paranoid attacks on rivals and, here and there, insights of pure genius. These included his autobiographical Récoltes et Semailles (1983-85), a paranoid 1,000-page treatise in which he set out his dissatisfactions with the mathematical world but also laid the groundwork for a new field known as anabelian geometry; La clef des songes (1986), in which he explained how the reality of dreams convinced him of God’s existence; and Esquisse d’un programme (1984), a proposal for a position at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, in which he described new ideas for studying the “moduli space” of complex curves. Although Grothendieck never published work in this area, the idea became the inspiration for other mathematicians and the source of the new theory of dessins d’enfants (children’s drawings).

In May 1988 the Swedish Academy awarded him the Crafoord Prize, a belated attempt to repair the neglect of Alfred Nobel in not creating a prize in mathematics, which came with a cash award of $160,000. But Grothendieck astonished the mathematics world by rejecting it, and in a rambling letter to Le Monde explained his decision as motivated by disgust at the dishonesty and corruption of the scientific and political establishment .

In August 1991, Grothendieck left his home in the Pyrenees, suddenly and without warning, for an unknown location. Severing contacts with friends, family and colleagues, he refused practically all human contact.Over the next few years various rumours circulated. Some suggested that he had remained in the Pyrenees and become a Buddhist. Others maintained that he was living in the Ardèche, herding goats and entertaining radical ecological theories. According to another rumour he was working on a 50-volume manuscript addressing, among other things, the physics of free will.

One of the members of the mathematical establishment to come into contact with him was Leila Schneps who, with her future husband, Pierre Loschak, tracked him down and found him “obsessed by the devil which he sees at work everywhere in the world” . In a subsequent letter to Leila Schneps, Grothendieck said he would be prepared to share his research into physics with her if she could answer one question: “What is a metre?”

In 2010 he tried to eradicate all trace of his past life, writing a letter to one of his students demanding that his entire back catalogue be removed from libraries and refusing to allow republications.

Alexander Grothendieck, who was twice married and had four children, died in hospital at Saint-Girons in south-west France.

Alexander Grothendieck, born March 28 1928, died November 13 2014

Reading Polly Toynbee (Behind this door live 160 families, 11 November) and Aditya Chakrabortty (The story of the millionaire Tory MP and the tenants facing homelessness, 11 November), it seems to me there are three key actions that could address the iniquities of the housing “market”. They are, first, stop regarding housing as a market and begin regarding it as a human necessity. Second, reintroduce rent controls, requiring all landlords to be licensed, paying for the inspections and processes by charging for the licence. Third, only allow council houses to be sold at full market value, with all money raised from the sales used to build more council housing. If the Labour party were to espouse these policies, it could demonstrate understanding of the average person’s difficulties, as well as dramatically reducing the housing benefit bill.
Sally Plumb
Smethwick, West Midlands

• Neither of these articles proposes the obvious solution: rent control. It should be illegal to evict tenants who are not in arrears for at least a year (two years? five years?) to eradicate revenge eviction. The same rule should apply in cases where landlords default on their loans. In this case, the tenant should simply pay rent to the lender, with the option of converting the tenancy to a mortgage.

Rent could be based on the council tax. For example, a maximum of five times the council tax, so a property with an annual council tax bill of £1,000 could be let for a maximum rent of £5,000 a year (about £416 a month). Rents could increase in line with council tax. If this means that buy-to-let landlords default on their loans, so much the better; it would allow those first-time buyers jostled off the housing ladder to buy such properties cheaply. Don’t forget buy-to-let landlords get tax relief on the interest on their loans. Rent control would also reduce the £9bn that the taxpayer is handing over to landlords each year, another result of the buy-to-let boom, and would relieve the misery of tenants such as in your articles. Come on Labour, rent control could win you the next election.
Roy Saberton
Sale, Cheshire

• My mum and dad in Cardiff bought their council house in the 1980s, as did most of my aunts and uncles, and at the time it was a wonderful thing, driving aspiration, social mobility and great DIY. Thirty years later with our social housing stock dwindling, Labour needs to make an election pledge to end right-to-buy and stop the vulture-like property speculation shockingly reported on by Polly Toynbee. Prompted by this article to check the main parties’ websites, I found the Green party’s policy slate on housing to be thoughtful, broad in scope and highly detailed, with a strong commitment to keep social housing in the public realm.
Mark Garland
New Malden, Surrey

• I lived until the age of seven with my older sister and parents in a Glasgow single-end (one room) on the third floor of a tenement with an outside toilet (not even containing a wash hand basin) on the stair. We then got a new two-bedroom council house, and two years later, a new house in a new town (East Kilbride). I was born in 1946. I have always been puzzled as to why, following six years of war, the country could afford to build tens of thousands of council houses, but will not do so now, preferring to pour billions of pounds into the pockets of private landlords.
Anne Buchanan
Hamilton, South Lanarkshire

• It isn’t just private landlords who are causing the housing crisis in London. My landlord, the supposedly philanthropic Peabody Charitable Trust, is at it as well. A family flat has three bedrooms. One for mum and dad, and one each for teenage children coping with homework and puberty. Peabody is charging such high and fast-rising rents for these homes that two key workers with kids can’t afford them. They are being let to three single working people who have to revert to the student life of shared bathrooms and kitchens. This deprives working families of homes and disrupts the balance of old and young in our communities.

As a concession to the campaigning efforts of our tenants’ associations (Letters, 9 October), Peabody has agreed to limit rent rises to 5% a year for this year only. But wages are not going up at anything like that rate and Peabody’s costs have been held down in line with the inflation indexes. The result is a declared surplus of £281m last year and ever growing hardship among exactly the sort of people George Peabody set up his charity to help. Concerted action by tenants to get landlords and politicians to respond is essential if we are to see any resolution of this shambles.
Nik Wood
London

• Your article and opinion piece made me feel very angry about the greed of the already wealthy; the “we’re all in it together” hypocrisy of the chancellor; and the sheer apparent inability of councils and the London mayor to do anything meaningful about low-cost housing. The New Era estate that Aditya Chackrabortty writes about was built by a charitable trust apparently; one has to ask what were the trustees up to – were they fulfilling their obligations by selling out to a private firm, resulting in tenants being evicted?
Peter Hartley
West Hoathly, West Sussex

• Polly Toynbee’s reference to slum landlords who evict tenants complaining about the condition of their homes reminded me that my own great-grandfather Alfred Valentine was a Labour councillor in Stepney in the 1920s when he and the mayor, Clement Attlee, fought the slum landlords who failed to repair their properties. Plus ça change.
Dudley Turner
Westerham, Kent

• Affordable housing is needed in many rural areas for those who work or have family ties in our villages and hamlets (Paying the price, 12 November). Without it, these areas will no longer support vibrant communities. Wednesday was also #Housing Day, dedicated to celebrating “the positive impact of social housing on thousands of people across the UK”. Yet government statistics show that only 10,840 social rented properties have been built this year, a quarter of the number built in 2010-11 at the height of the recession.

A further irony is that the government is working on changes to the planning system that will cripple the amount of affordable homes built in the countryside. The proposals will exempt sites with under 10 housing units from the requirement to include a proportion of affordable housing. In 2012-13, 66% of rural affordable housing was delivered via this requirement. This is why CPRE is urging the government not to give rural sites this proposed exemption and to increase investment in truly affordable homes. It is possible, and should be a priority, to ensure that the beauty and tranquillity of our countryside is preserved, while allowing the communities within it to thrive.
John Rowley
Campaign to Protect Rural England

The director of the Landmark Trust (Gormley commemorates Landmark Trust on a human scale, 7 November) is probably mistaken in thinking that the trust’s founder Sir John Smith was the only Conservative MP who was also a member of the union of fairground showmen. As far as I am aware he was never a member of the Showmen’s Guild of Great Britain in any capacity. However, he had an active interest in the world of the travelling showmen, and in 1964 – the year before he launched the trust – he played host to the Great Steam Fair in Shottesbrooke Park, his Berkshire home. This one-off event brought together several fairground rides that had survived from the age of steam. It was a great success, and through the similar events that it inspired in the following years, such as the Great Dorset Steam Fair, it prolonged the active life of a whole generation of veteran rides that were then on the verge of being consigned to the scrapheap. Significantly, all the rides that appeared at the great steam fair half a century ago are still in existence today. For the record, the only member of the Showmen’s Guild to be an MP was the legendary showman Pat Collins, who served as Walsall’s Liberal member from 1922 to 1924.
Graham Downie
Chairman, the Fairground Association of Great Britain

I helped promote abused children’s entitlement to criminal injuries compensation and a local authority’s duty to make application on behalf of children in their care. Both your editorial (6 November) and Simon Jenkins (Opinion, 7 November) assert that any compensation received would alleviate the burden on the council and be to their benefit. The implication is that councils are pursuing these applications in their self-interest. Upon what evidence are these statements based? My understanding is that any award would be directly to the child concerned. While it may be put in trust until the child achieves majority, it could not simply be used by the council to offset any costs of its statutory duty of care.

In raising the matter as far back as 1988, I sought to highlight the parlous situation of many children leaving care with little support, financial or otherwise. Would your writers not wish to pursue any avenue that might benefit a child who has suffered harm at the hands of another person? The issues of whether a foetus can have a legal identity and whether a crime has been committed are difficult, but it’s wrong to criticise a council for seeking to further the interests of a child in its care if there is an arguable case. For them to do otherwise would truly be a proper cause for concern.
Peter Ferguson
Castle Heather, Inverness

• As a lawyer working in care proceedings, I frequently represent children who have been damaged by their mother’s abuse of alcohol while pregnant. In other cases I act for the for mothers and can see both sides of the problem. The use of inverted commas around the phrase “foetal alcohol syndrome” almost implies Simon Jenkins is sceptical about this condition, perhaps implying an invention of fee-hungry lawyers? Foetal alcohol damage is seen on a spectrum – foetal alcohol spectrum disorder – and is one of the largest undiagnosed causes of mental health problems and behavioural issues in this country. For a child to be diagnosed with full foetal alcohol syndrome, rather than foetal alcohol spectrum disorder, indicates a high-level of permanent brain damage and must be taken more seriously.
 David Jockelson
Solicitor, Miles & Partners LLP

• Contrary to your editorial and Joanna Moorhead (Don’t turn these mothers into criminals, 6 November), this matter is not about criminalising the birth mother. It is about supporting the child born from that situation throughout their often very challenging life as a result of the injury received in the womb, and who indeed should be liable for compensation from the criminal injuries compensation scheme. These children often come through the care system and are brushed off to unsuspecting adoptive parents, who have little or no idea of how this will impact upon their family lives. These parents become people who can no longer work because their child cannot attend mainstream schools, for whom no specialist schools exist, and who struggle with their hampered development, their constant rages and their damaging behaviour.

Invariably all these parents want to do is get their child through to adulthood in one piece – a challenging task. I am one such parent. I sit in roomfuls of parents exposed to similar difficulties. It is not rare. We struggle alone, turned away by child and adolescent mental health services and with local authorities telling us there is no funding to support us beyond a few kind words and a couple of “parenting” courses. If the only route is criminalisation, so be it. At least this will put the plight of many families up and down the country in the limelight and these children might finally get the help they need.
Name and address supplied

Your report (After the storm, 7 November) highlights that despite intensive relief efforts, including £95m raised from the British public in response to typhoon Haiyan, 2.5 million Filipino people affected by the hurricane remain without proper homes. This situation can be better understood in the light of the crippling external debts that the Philippines inherited from the days of the Marcos regime (1965-86), when western governments and institutions financed the dictator with loans to secure his loyalty during the cold war. In the year since central Philippines was devastated by Haiyan, the country has spent $5.6bn on foreign debt payments. This amounts to 14% of the government’s annual revenue and 25 times more than was given by EU member states in aid in response to the disaster.

In 2000, world leaders committed to “deal comprehensively with the debt problems of developing countries” to help meet the millennium development goals. Yet, the Philippines was considered too rich to qualify for debt cancellation. This despite the fact that 42% of the population – 41 million people – live on less than £1.25 a day. If the international community is truly committed to supporting the Haiyan recovery efforts, and the Philippines’ adaptation to the worsening impacts of extreme weather caused by runaway climate change, then the calls of Philippines movements and peoples’ organisations for the urgent cancellation of the country’s unjust debts, and for grants not loans for relief and reconstruction, must be heard.
Sarah-Jayne Clifton
Director, Jubilee Debt Campaign

• If Bob Geldof and co want to make an impact on the Ebola crisis then they should write a protest song about transnational agri-business’ culpability in the outbreak of the disease, instead of droning on about Christmas. The destruction of West African forests and the takeover of small farmers’ land to grow cash crops for export has forced large numbers of people to migrate to overcrowded cities or seek alternative sources of food such as bush meat. Some have found badly paid work in the explosion of plantations growing African palm for the production of an oil that is used in products from toothpaste to hamburgers. Moreover, the dislocation from their forest homes of animals that carry ebola and their subsequent contact with humans, via bats urine in oil palms for example, has been a key factor in the spread of the illness. African Ebola sufferers are the victims of an unsustainable neocolonial economic order that prioritises western company profits over everything else and no amount of charity from ageing rock stars will change that.
Bert Schouwenburg
International officer, GMB

As Grimm stories become more gruesome (Grimmer Grimms, 13 November) parents might like to turn to his contemporary Johann Peter Hebel. None of the stories in Hebel’s Treasure Chest (Penguin Classic)is unsuitable for children, and some are probably best appreciated by them. Like the Grimms, Hebel, who also collected his stories from popular sources, was admired by Goethe – and by Tolstoy, Kafka and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Hebel’s stories often imply or express a moral, but are less specifically Christian than the Grimms.
Nicholas Jacobs
London

• The deification of Alan Johnson in your pages continues apace (Letters, 13 November). I suppose the poverty-to-parliament story is irresistible to some, but I find the transition from trade unionist to ultra-smooth Blairite deeply questionable. Enough already.
Tom McFadyen
Glasgow

• It is incorrect to say that only the residents of Manchester, rather than the other areas of Greater Manchester, were consulted about the election of a mayor (Letters, 12 November). We in Salford now bitterly regret we had that opportunity, which resulted in not just an elected mayor but a deputy and 13 assistant mayors, now cut to a mere 10. The rest of Greater Manchester should not follow our example but learn from it.
Terence Hall
Salford, Greater Manchester

• Now that the longest-running radio serial is emulating its TV counterparts, why not go for broke (Letters, 13 November)? It happened to Bobby Ewing, Dirty Den. and Nick Cotton. Surely it is time for Phil Archer to be brought back from the dead to sort out the projected move from Brookfield.
Edward Thomas
Eastbourne

• Seen on a T-shirt in Broken Hill, New South Wales (Letters, 12 November): “My anger management course pisses me off.”
Nikki Knewstub
Liskeard, Cornwall

• If no one was bribed to let Qatar have the World Cup (Sport, 13 November), Fifa are more stupid than we thought.
Richard Head
Melksham, Wiltshire

Sir, As joint editors preparing the 5th Edition of Clinical Negligence we join the concern voiced about the usefulness of the Medical Innovation Bill (report, leader and letter, Nov 13). Exposure to civil liability has limited effect on medical innovation as most clinical negligence claims concern poor rather than innovative practice. Moreover, the safety of medicines and the performance of doctors are regulated by law. We are not aware of negligence cases founded on medical innovation alone. Existing common law is robust and flexible enough to address innovation and in its present iteration the bill adds nothing to it. There are better ways of promoting medical innovation such as the recently failed Off-patent Drugs Bill, which had little media attention.

While we sympathise with Lord Saatchi and share his aims, this bill addresses an emotional need to provide hope rather than a deficit in current law.
Dr Michael J Powers QC
Dr Anthony Barton
Solicitor and medical practitioner, Lincoln’s Inn, London

Sir, Lord Saatchi’s bill would not enable doctors to give any treatments they can’t already give — it simply puts their treatment decisions beyond questioning by anybody else, beyond the reach of the law. This bill would apply to “innovative” treatment for any condition, serious or trivial, even when there is an existing effective treatment available. The majority of paediatric prescribing, for example, is for “unlicensed” medication, an area about which Saatchi’s campaign has made particular mention. Do we want such patients to be unprotected by the law? Far from simplifying the law, this bill will make the area more complex and unclear.
David Hills
Stop the Saatchi Bill Campaign
Bridgend, Mid Glamorgan

Sir, As your leading article observed, Lord Saatchi is sincere but misguided. There is a lot that needs to be done to speed up medical research and to reduce the burden of litigation against the NHS but his bill tackles neither. It does not provide anything new that would encourage better science. It does not propose ways to cut the legal claims which cost the health service over £1 billion a year. Instead it removes protection from patients and, as you rightly point out, it opens the door to improper experimentation and downright quackery.
Dr James May
Chair of HealthWatch-UK

Sir, Most cancer patients with a terminal prognosis are able to understand their situation and when all other options have been exhausted, given a choice, some will undoubtedly be happy to try untested treatments. They should be free to do so with the proviso that proper safeguards are in place, not only for the patient but also for the medical practitioners. Hope is important even if it is only the hope of a life extension or of a possible addition to our medical knowledge, thus improving someone else’s chances of survival.
Karen Gabony
Cobham, Surrey

Sir, Lord Saatchi’s bill would prevent some patients who have been harmed by what today would be defined as negligence from having any redress. Worse than that, it would make it easier for a small number of maverick doctors to try out experimental treatment on vulnerable patients. No one wants patients to receive treatment which will genuinely help them more than ourselves but we see this bill as both dangerous and unnecessary. Peter Walsh
Chief executive, Action against Medical Accidents

Sir, It is absurd that Saatchi portrays oncologists as being too timid to innovate. Eleven years ago I had an aggressive cancer — like the one that killed Jackie Kennedy Onassis. It didn’t respond to chemotherapy, so my NHS specialist, not being timid, suggested high-dose chemo and a stem cell transplant, which had a modest success rate of 2-3 per cent. I am still working at 73. I go back to see my specialist once a year to thank him.
Caroline Richmond
London N12

Sir, The best way of dealing with litter that I have seen (“Fast food litter on rise”, Nov 13) was a few years ago in the Dutch theme park, Efteling. Talking litter bins in the shape of a nursery rhyme character called out “Papier hier!” (litter here!) and growled “Dank u wel” when litter was thrown into their mouths. Every so often, instead of a thank you, a donation was met with a belch. Giggling children were pouncing on scraps of litter in order to feed the bins. The park was spotless.
Jane Courtier
Dorchester

Sir, Jenni Russell believes that the fall in the number of children put forward for adoption is “bleak news.” (Opinion, Nov 13) Rather, it should be seen as good news and evidence of better standards being required. Whereas other professionals are trained to back up their assertions with facts, social workers often put forward views supported by minimal evidence. Also, a child’s security is based in its sense of identity, which is best developed if a child is placed in the extended family. Organisations such as Grandparents Plus are pressing for a legal obligation to be placed on local authorities to do this.

Social workers cannot be accused of tardiness: a mother can be sent to court only two days after giving birth. Her human rights can be ignored because she will not necessarily have the chance to consult a solicitor. Women who have been mentally ill during pregnancy are likely to fare the worst of all. The judiciary are society’s defence against indifferent and “sloppy” social workers, some of whom seem more concerned to protect their backs than strive to do what is best for the child.
Diane Packham
Newcastle upon Tyne

Sir, Jenni Russell believes that the fall in the number of children put forward for adoption is “bleak news.” (Opinion, Nov 13) Rather, it should be seen as good news and evidence of better standards being required. Whereas other professionals are trained to back up their assertions with facts, social workers often put forward views supported by minimal evidence. Also, a child’s security is based in its sense of identity, which is best developed if a child is placed in the extended family. Organisations such as Grandparents Plus are pressing for a legal obligation to be placed on local authorities to do this.

Social workers cannot be accused of tardiness: a mother can be sent to court only two days after giving birth. Her human rights can be ignored because she will not necessarily have the chance to consult a solicitor. Women who have been mentally ill during pregnancy are likely to fare the worst of all. The judiciary are society’s defence against indifferent and “sloppy” social workers, some of whom seem more concerned to protect their backs than strive to do what is best for the child.
Diane Packham
Newcastle upon Tyne

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