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AIBU?

Horrific - forced C/Section by SS to take baby into care.

252 replies

BohemianGirl · 01/12/2013 05:32

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/10486452/Woman-has-child-taken-from-her-womb-by-social-services.html

Words fail me.

The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, is an Italian national who come to Britain in July last year to attend a training course with an airline at Stansted Airport in Essex.

She suffered a panic attack, which her relations believe was due to her failure to take regular medication for an existing bipolar condition.

She called the police, who became concerned for her well-being and took her to a hospital, which she then realised was a psychiatric facility.

She has told her lawyers that when she said she wanted to return to her hotel, she was restrained and sectioned under the Mental Health Act.

Meanwhile, Essex social services obtained a High Court order in August 2012 for the birth “to be enforced by way of caesarean section”, according to legal documents seen by this newspaper.

The woman, who says she was kept in the dark about the proceedings, says that after five weeks in the ward she was forcibly sedated. When she woke up she was told that the child had been delivered by C-section and taken into care.

In February, the mother, who had gone back to Italy, returned to Britain to request the return of her daughter at a hearing at Chelmsford Crown Court.
Her lawyers say that she had since resumed taking her medication, and that the judge formed a favourable opinion of her. But he ruled that the child should be placed for adoption because of the risk that she might suffer a relapse.

The cause has also been raised before a judge in the High Court in Rome, which has questioned why British care proceedings had been applied to the child of an Italian citizen “habitually resident” in Italy. The Italian judge accepted, though, that the British courts had jurisdiction over the woman, who was deemed to have had no “capacity” to instruct lawyers.

OP posts:

Report

kreecherlivesupstairs · 01/12/2013 05:53

, I am surprised. Mainly at the CS, surely one needs to be fully appraised of the situation before you can consent to a general anaesthetic. I assume she didn't have an epidural.
Shocking. And worrying.

wellieboots · 01/12/2013 05:58

This is unbelievable - forced surgery, removing the baby, into the care of SS. Can't get the baby back because she might suffer a relapse - of bipolar presumably, rather than just another panic attack. Who says people with bipolar can't be parents?! And what is she supposed to do - move to the UK to fight this even though she was only ever here for a training course! Madness!

MammaTJ · 01/12/2013 06:08

She did not have capacity to give consent, so it wasn't needed.

I think there must be more to this than is being reported.

Sirzy · 01/12/2013 06:10

There is obviously an awful lot more to this story than we are being told. She had been sectioned for 5 weeks before this happened and it's not a decision which would be made lightly.

I am not saying it was the right thing to do but it is impossible to make any sort of judgement based upon the information provided. For them to get permission to do that it must have been felt it was in the best interest of mother/baby

cupcake78 · 01/12/2013 06:16

Got to be more to this! Courts don't rule to do such extreme things without very good reason and being sectioned requires a few people. It's not done lightly!

It's very sad that it happened but it has.

welshnat · 01/12/2013 06:37

The appeal to have the baby placed back with the mother was refused on the grounds that she "may" have a relapse of her bi-polar. That is absolutely disgusting! At what point does this stop? As a child of a mother with bi-polar who actually had a series of relapses throughout my childhood, I can honestly say it never negatively affected me. And in fact, I did not know that she was diagnosed with bi-polar until I was pregnant myself.

scaevola · 01/12/2013 07:08

Wasn't there a thread about this yesterday?

She had been sectioned under the mental health act at the time of the operation: sectioning is not a SS responsibility, nor the decision to keep her in (5 weeks and continuing according to the linked article - pretty rare and serious in itself, and definitely a medics decision).

SS are however responsible for decisions about the care of the infant once born.

It must be difficult to decide whether it is better to foster in UK (near the mother, in hope of reuniting with appropriate support) or whether to permit an international move for the baby, so s/he is no longer even a resident of the same country as their mother, in the chances of reuniting them essentially vanish.

scaevola · 01/12/2013 07:10

Here's the existing thread - quite long, so perhaps worth looking at the (many) views already posted.

Retroformica · 01/12/2013 07:43

I know that SS's must have had a very good reason BUT they should have let the Italian SS deal with it and contacted her family. It seems they didn't try to resolve with consideration that she was only temporarily in the uk. They haven't given the woman's family the opportunity to look after the baby which would have been a practical option.

Retroformica · 01/12/2013 07:44

I can't imagine what it must be like to have a sedated c-section and then never see your baby.

Sirzy · 01/12/2013 07:46

It seems they didn't try to resolve with consideration that she was only temporarily in the uk.

we can't know that, we only have the tiniest of snapshots of one side of the story here.

scaevola · 01/12/2013 07:52

We don't actually know where her primary residence is/was.

sisterelephant · 01/12/2013 07:54

Absolutely awful. Where is her family, the babies father?

That poor poor woman and poor baby.

sparklysilversequins · 01/12/2013 07:55

Why do people always say there MUST be more to it. There have always been injustices of abuse and power, always. How do you know this isn't one of them?

curlew · 01/12/2013 07:56

As usual in such cases- or in similar cases, I can't remember another one like this- there is wild speculation and accusations which the social services can't rebut. There is obviously far, far more to this story.

Sirzy · 01/12/2013 07:57

So sparkly do you really think one short, one sided article paints the full picture?

Nobody who is saying there must be more is saying that it was the right decision to make, because that can't be said any more than it can be said it was the wrong thing to do. We simply don't have enough information (nor do we need it) to know why such a decision was made.

curlew · 01/12/2013 07:58

"Why do people always say there MUST be more to it. There have always been injustices of abuse and power, always. How do you know this isn't one of them?"

Of course there have. But there are so many hoops that must have been jumped through before this happened- it couldn't just be a high handed social worker. The surgeon must have agreed to operate, for example.

Laurel1979 · 01/12/2013 08:08

I don't know enough of the actual details to give an opinion on whether this was right or wrong, however you can hardly trust the Torygraph to give a balanced view of the situation....

RedLondonBus · 01/12/2013 08:10

John hemming is involved..... That makes me

LtEveDallas · 01/12/2013 08:11

I can't imagine what it must be like to have a sedated c-section and then never see your baby

Indeed, and how exactly is doing that to someone actually going to help their Mental Health issues?

Whether there is 'more' to it or not, I cannot imagine any parent without Mental Health issues remaining that way if they had been forcibly sedated and their baby removed.

I was unable to see DD for almost 12 hours following her birth (both of us too ill), after an initial hour in ITU. I knew it was for her own good, but was still irrational and emotional leading up to finally being able to hold her again. Leaving her in SCBU for a month nearly killed me - and that was with being allowed to see her every 4 hours.

This lady must be going out of her mind.

ImagineJL · 01/12/2013 08:25

As a GP I think there must be more to this than is being reported. The NHS and social services simply don't have the resources to do that sort of thing unless there are hugely compelling reasons to do so.

Having spent many hours trying to persuade SS and psychs to get involved in cases of mine, only to be turned down due to limited funds, I find this story hard to believe.

valiumredhead · 01/12/2013 08:30

I'm sure there is a LOT more to this story than had been reported.

sparklysilversequins · 01/12/2013 08:32

Of course there is more to it but its the general idea that it must be more in SS favour, that they had good reason to do this, never that there a real possibility that a series of really dreadful decisions were made resulting in the removal of a mothers child.

This woman was here on a training course, with what appears to be a functioning family back home, she was obviously pretty "together". Yet within weeks she had had her child forcibly removed and her body violated. There can be no ifs ands or buts about this.

Everyone screws up at work sometimes, only if SS screw up people lose their child, which is the highest possible stake.

I would just like to see a more critical approach sometimes. You see it time and time again on here, SS cannot possibly do wrong, must be more to it. Sometimes they CAN do wrong, sometimes there is no more to it. I just would like to see more openness to that idea.

sparklysilversequins · 01/12/2013 08:35

Yes because it doesn't bear thinking about that this might just be an almighty fuck up does it, because that might mean it could happen to YOU.

curlew · 01/12/2013 08:35

The SS do get it wrong. Obviously they do. Sometimes very publicly.

But there must be more to it in this case. What about the obstetric team, for example? Why did they agree?

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