Baby boy taken into care because of father's views on bottle feeding.

[Mlb123]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4231242/Social-workers-took-newborn-baby-parents.html

Yes I know it's the daily mail and it wasn't just about the father's comments, but it has been decided by a judge that it was unfair to remove the baby and the family have been awarded compensation. This is the type of story that is putting people off trusting social workers. I have always thought people have nothing to fear if the cooperate with SS and work with them but this family didn't get the chance as the social workers didn't inform the family of care proceedings and lied to the judge.

This is not the first story and it is becoming worrying that people in positions of trust are sometimes acting in this way. I believe that the people found guilty of abusing their positions of trust should be removed from their role , because of the damage they cause to families and the risk of them offending again would be high. What do others think would be a solution to this small but real risk?

[Trifleorbust]

Shocking story. I agree, this would put me off trusting SS.

[PotteringAlong]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4231242/Social-workers-took-newborn-baby-parents.html

[Trifleorbust]

NavyandWhite: Why do you think that?

[Rosae]

Shocking story without the full details from any party involved. Scary sounding and sensationalized and doesn't explain exactly what any social workers involved did. Could have been a mistake that someone made which caused everything to spin out of control. Very serious and should be investigated and actions taken to try to prevent it happening again which I'm sure will be happening in this case but that boring bit isn't being reported.
My husband is an accountant for a government body. He recently corrected a mistake which could have caused a loss of billions and billions. If that had be reported on people could have been horrified by this. The effect it could have had on people's jobs and therefore families could have been significant. Though saying someone put a 4 instead of an 8 in this bit of a spreadsheet is not as 'fun' to write as this.
The solution would be either for reporters to get all the information and actually write a balanced article so we could make a valid judgement or for us to disregard such stories.

[AvaCrowder]

It can't just be that. A lot of mums don't breastfeed hardly a cause for intervention. Wrong if it is.

[Rosae]

There was clearly alot more going on than a few comments about bottle feeding.

[novemberontrumpwatch]

There is mention in the article of the baby being in special care, and the father having 'certain views' on the need for bottle sterilisation. From this, I assume staff had legitimate concerns about the child's safety.

[Toadinthehole]

Even the article makes clear that it was actually concerns held by the ward staff about the couple that triggered things.

[Italiangreyhound]

There is more to the story.

"The mother, in her 20s, suffered from minor mental health problems and other difficulties and the father had in the past been aggressive to others."

I'd wonder what the other difficulties were. I think the minor mental health problems would not have a significant impact, IMHO.

"But staff at the special care baby unit where he was cared for in the days after his delivery had expressed 'no child protection concerns'."

They only saw the couple over a few days though.

"Maternity ward medics did, however, tell the council they were anxious about the couple's long-term ability to care for their baby."

So there is a discrepancy between the staff and the medics, but they were presumably all people who had only known the couple/family a short time?

"Among other things, they said the father had 'expressed unorthodox views about the need for sterilisation of bottles and the benefits of formula milk.'"

So it was not just about using formula but about sterilizing bottles.

I don't think we have the full story here. I am not saying social workers never make mistakes, I am sure they do sometimes. But I think on the whole taking children into care is quite a major thing and the generally parents are given a lot of opportunities to succeed or fail before the child is taken away.

[toastymarshmallow]

The BBC article said that the court found that the social workers misled the court about the concerns they had and also lied to the court by saying the parents knew about the hearing when they hadn't been told.

I can't link right now, and I am not clicking on DM to see how different it comes across but from the article I read it was pretty apparent that it was deception by social workers that resulted in a week old baby being removed from his parents.

If social services want to be trusted they should be trustworthy, and in any instance where they are found to not be trustworthy corrective action should be taken against those responsible. I doubt anything will happen to the individuals involved here.

[Italiangreyhound]

Sorry I meant Sorry, I meant, There is more to the story, IMHO.

[madein1995]

The article says the hospital staff had doubts over the ability to parent. Clearly there was a mistake of some kind but doubt its this blsck and white. They said dad had violent past? Maybe this combined with what hcps saw/thought made them take action. Im not saying they acted perfectly, clearly cock ups were made. But theres more to this than not breastfeeding, there has to be. I think hcp hsd valid concerns most likely, abd ss went in a bit heavy handed

[madein1995]

Oops, that was meant was meant to say too heavy handed, not a bit!

Ime though removal is always a last resort. I know ss decieved the judge here and acted unprofessionally, at the samr time i doubt theyd have thrown all caution to the wimd - most likely real concerns but went about it in completely wrong way

[Grindelwaldswand]

If you read the actual BBC story not made up sensationalised rubbish the daily fail churns out then you'd know that the baby was taken into care because his parents didn't think washing and sterilising his bottles properly was a priority so it raised alarm bells for the midwives trying to help them and SS was informed.

[Italiangreyhound]

Yikes, they lied too! The social workers.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-38995320

Truly appalling.

This kind of case is bound to be very upsetting for people who have dealing s with social workers.

It is really good the baby was returned. He was with family in the 10 weeks but still it is awful.

I guess one has to trust the judgment that is made finally. Maybe the social workers were attempting to be too quick off the mark/or misled. But the fact they lied is totally wrong. How sad for all concerned

[user1477282676]

I also think there's more to it.

The mother, in her 20s, suffered from minor mental health problems and other difficulties and the father had in the past been aggressive to others

It sounds like the whole thing was badly managed. I bottle fed both of my DC so I'm not a bf advocate but they were probably concerned he was too overbearing or something due to her mental health issues, his past agression and his pushing bottle feeding.

Perhaps they thought he'd try to control her feeding?

[user1477282676]

When I say I'm not a BF advocate...I mean I AM all for it of course...but I'm not someone who is against bottle feeding.

[londonrach]

Theres more to this story. Parents had other issues. Paper wrote title to grape interest. Mind ive been very quiet on the fact ive found ff vvv easy.

[londonrach]

Grab not grape!

[Carollocking]

I should think 10 weeks apart from her baby has caused a lot more mh issues than it's helped for sure.let alone bonding time and so on.
I know we live in a society that is over the top on sterilisation etc since in reality we all need an amount of bacteria to form immunity to things,I guess it's a good job I didn't have the health police sat in my life daily when my girls were babies.
Sadly it's not the first time SS employees have lied and been over the top and for sure won't be the last,the problem is the people in question still have there jobs which dosent exactly look like there lies have been addressed. How could they ever be trusted again to not lie again and cause massive distress again to more families.
I am a big believer in people have a right to bring up there children in there own ways and we shouldn't judge differences just because it's not the so called standard way.
SS have a often high opinion of themselves that dosent allow for any variation from the standard they think any variation from that is a no no and when people don't take there advice (which in reality it's not advice it's them telling you to do it or else) they are very quick to jump up and down and use there power to poke there noses in further and make ludicrous judgements and impose crazy restrictions on parents often enforced by lies in courts that often are held without any notification to the parents so they end up unrepresented and /or often not even there themselves.
Also I had the unhappy experience of been at a hotel with a SS meeting taking part not that long ago,I ended up chatting some of them in the evening in the bar and I found it rather disturbing that out of the 14 I was speaking with only 2 had children.and they were all SS for children not adults.
Not in my opinion the right people for the job.

[NeedsAsockamnesty]

how many of us see/post on threads like these with things like it is the court who make the decisions based on all the information they have and they make sure the removal of a child is the only option and is right, and they have access to far more information than we do - and we fully accept that, it gives us faith in the system.

Why would we then ignore the fact that a court HAVE said this was wrong this shouldn't have happened and yes the SW's lied here have a few quid compensation

Because that is what we are doing with all the "there must be more to it"

There are no circumstamces where it is acceptable for a SW to lie to a court.
There are no circumstamces where it is acceptable for a SW to not follow the law/rules

[Carollocking]

They do so often and the threats they use to stop families pursuing injustices that the SS cause are for sure high.
As my other post they suggest things that in reality mean you do it or they make your life shit.

[NeedsAsockamnesty]

most social workers are fine.
Some are not just like every other type of job.

When we blindly accept wrong doings we are contributing towards a lack of trust in one of the most important services we as a community have.

"Meh, there must be more to it" or "meh we don't have access to all the information" when a court has actually said "wrong doing happened" is accepting the wrong doing.

Just because it may have been perfectly acceptable to bring a court action in the first place (for what ever reason) it doesn't always follow that the outcome should/could/would be the sought after court order.

A lot of applications fail because they do not meet the rather strict criteria needed.

It is not acceptable to attempt to circumvent that diligence by lying.