Mum loves drugs not me - Dispatches. Is anyone else watching this?

[theSuburbanDryad]

I cannot believe that SS seem so uninterested as these people are making them out to be.

[RipMacWinkle]

DH just turned it over - just so sad

[stardazzle]

OMG!

watching it and OMG!

[theSuburbanDryad]

"Lacey in particular doesn't respect me, and I'm partly to blame for that."

Partly?

[runningmonkey]

Yes am watching. So sad.

[Miyazaki]

it is sad sad sad.

[AMamaForObama]

eye opener
A bunch of tragedies
Drugs are evil

[BBBee]

I have seen a baby born to a herion addict adnd the pain of withdrawal the little thing was going through was one of the most heart breaking things I have ever witnessed.

[stardazzle]

its just all so very sad.

poor children

[theSuburbanDryad]

What got me was that the grandparents seemed to be saying that they had begged SS to get involved but they were not interested.

I wonder if SS have guidelines in place whereby if there are GP's who are taking an interest in the welfare of the kids, they are pretty much left to it?

[stardazzle]

it just so sad.

i guess when we all go off on one about celebs not losing their children despite their drug habits it does also apply to meer mortals too.

[PsychoGuyFawkesMum]

what channel is it on???

[Pawslikepaddington]

It has finished psycho-was on 4. So sad-the woman that expected her family to give their address as bail? Her poor daughter

[theSuburbanDryad]

It was on C4 Psycho - you've just missed it.

Star, that's a very valid point. But when I deal directly with SS removing children for extremely spurious reasons (anyone remember Janipher Maseko? Or the teen mum from Essex who had her baby snatched in the street by SS?) it makes me very angry that there are clearly vulnerable children in dire need who are being sidelined.

[PsychoGuyFawkesMum]

ah, tis maybe a better thing then. I am the DD of a drug addict (tis how my mother became schizophrenic), and according the little I do know about my birth I was born addicted too.

I kind of wanted to see it for a way of understanding things about my childhood a little more, but at the same time.......would more than likely have made me hurt more IYGWIM.

[lg08]

it's on now on c4+1

[PsychoGuyFawkesMum]

thanks lg08, but DH has run of skytv tonight (he watches american chopper).

I am upstairs with 'just' normal TV.

[hifi]

it would be impossible to take all the vunerable children into care. for a start theres nowhere to put them. a friend of mine works in child protection and the child has to be in danger of death, its so hard to get them removed.

[theSuburbanDryad]

hifi - i understand that. But I have been involved with cases where SS have removed children who were definitely not in danger of death, and whose parents had to fight really really hard to get their kids back.

I appreciate that SS are hugely understaffed and underfunded, but it does seem that the resources could be better spread, from what I've seen.

[hifi]

i was speaking to a social worker about taking children from drug users, she said if all vulnerable ones were removed there would be around 250,000!
my friend works in camden, maybe different boroughs have different criteria?

[theSuburbanDryad]

It's possible hifi. Oddly enough, just up the road in Hillingdon, Janipher Maseko was forcibly separated from her children while they were put into foster care pending adoption, for extremely spurious reasons. Not to mention Fran and Molly Lyon, who had to flee to Europe to keep her baby from being taken from her the moment it was born.

While I accept fully that SS are doing the best they can under very difficult circumstances, it does make me wonder when I see a program like the one which was on last night, where families are crying out for help from SS being denied the services they need, while ordinary families have their children removed for seemingly contrived reasons.

[NomDePlume]

I watched a bit of it, very sad. I saw about the last 15min. TBH, the woman with Lacey & Tia didn't look all that 'clean' to me. She was so bloody spaced out and disconnected when she was talking to the camera.

[theSuburbanDryad]

Valium, NDP. Or possibly methadone.

Part of the problem with the drugs treatment programs in this country is that once you're off heroin and onto methadone, I think you're classed as "clean". And as soon as people leave drugs treatment programs and go back onto the streets, and start seeing their friends again, they're back on heroin - so they're taking heroin and methadone! Methadone drugs treatments don't work, it's been proven time and again.

[NomDePlume]

Terribly sad, horrendously expensive and, it seems, totally ineffective .

I was shocked by the stats that were read out at the end of the film about the number of people who go through rehab, the % who come out 'clean', the % of those that stay clean after a certain period (low single figures). Just a waste of everything, money, time, emotion, lives

[theSuburbanDryad]

Indeed. And how much better could that money be spent helping those kids who were pretty much sidelined from the start?

But what can we do about it? Sweet FA, that's what.

[sandyballs]

That little boy with glasses . I just wanted to scoop him up and bring him home. So sad.