Baby taken away by social services whilst in A&E

[napol]

Hi

I'm new to Mumsnet but am in desperate need of help/advice or better still has anyone out there been in the same situation as me.

I dropped my 10 month old boy at nursery one morning at 8am. He was his normal self - happy chappy with no injuries. I got a call from the nursery at 4.30pm from the manager saying despite no accident happening at nursery throughout the day he had developed a lump on the side of his head but not to worry as he was in no pain or discomfort but best I get it checked out.

we picked him up and took him to a&e immediately where to our horror he was diagnosed with a fractured skull. because the injury was unexplained social services and police were called and the decision was made not to let us take our baby boy home. We are now under investigation and cannot see him unless supervised. it looks like it will go to court months down the line.

We are innocent of any neglect or wrong doing and it seems to us the nursery are obviously to blame. Understandably we are devastated and heartbroken and just want our boy home

A baby from a loving family who fell off their changing mat and this ensues. And yet other children who are suffering horrific abuse slip through the cracks despite numerous interactions with SS. Why the inconsistency?

because the people who work at social services are humans, and as much as they have guidelines to follow, its based on their opinion and often, I imagine, their prejudices. I would also assume that a minority of them are just not very good at their job.

Also, abusers are very good at hiding abuse, often very good liars, manipulators, whereas a lot of the time, genuinely innocent parents will get angry about the situation, or break down or give up entirely.

I do hope you get this sorted OP. I would request to see if they actually recorded giving your son calpol. Also I would be interested in how up to date the accident book is or is it very empty i.e meaning no one can be bothered to fill it in. Questions to other parents at the nursery maybe ?

I would also be tracking down an expert on head injuries.

survivingsafeguarding.co.uk/2015/06/07/how-to-get-the-best-out-of-your-family-lawyer-guest-post-by-sarah-phillimore/

Hi OP, first of all I'm so sorry that you're
Going through this. I have been through something similar and to be honest I'm still
Not over it 7 years later.

Get a decent solicitor, one that cares! You don't want to be just another case.

Get writing a timeline of events, you'll need to submit your report via your solicitor so do it whilst it's fresh in your mind.

If he does go into foster care, aim to get as much access to him as possible.

You can not choose to have the best professional barrister specialising in family law for thirty years on legal aid.

Yes, you bloody can, because how else do you think they get to do care work often enough to be specialists if they don't do legal aid?!

What is your actual professional experience of this?

You will find no group of lawyers more committed and experienced than a solicitor doing care work. They are generally on the Children Panel, which requires a rigorous exam and interview.

Absolutely.

And I’m sorry to keep labouring the point on this thread, but I think it’s important as I would hate parents to be filled with unnecessary doubt about the quality of their legal representation in care proceedings, based only on how it is funded.

I have worked alongside - and instructed - many solicitors and barristers who carry out legal aid (and private) work, they treat publicly funded work no differently, and they are overwhelmingly hard working, committed and knowledgeable experts.

I’m sorry to read this and can see you’ve had a lot of good advice that I shan’t repeat.

What I will say is that SS as harsh as they can be, are usually focused on keeping families together unless very strong evidence is provided that the child is in danger. In this circumstance you’re being treated as guilty until proven innocent and that’s so awful to go through, I hope it gets resolved quickly and baby is back home soon.

When SS were involved with my family after DS had come home from NICU and DD was still in, they were trying to prevent my DD coming home because they thought I was st risk of PND and were questioning how I was coping with one Baby let alone two... I was livid but I made sure to do the following:

Timeline of daily activities with DS, including keeping with schedule of meds and feeding (in your case I’d write a timeline of the day in question with the pertinent points you’ve raised such as the telephone call request for Calpol, get a printed call history to include as evidence of their call to you.)

Always keep calm when under fire, it’s hard when the route of questioning takes a judgmental route, but keep calm, don’t feel the need to rush your answers, be passionate but try not to go in the defensive outwardly.

Have a third party witness to any and all meetings with the SS. My FIL would come suited and booted, was polite and rarely spoke during the meetings, but his presence was useful.

Take notes, have the SS sign off on any and all actions they have advised you take (if applicable).

Get any third party evidence you can, CCTV at the nursery if there is any, staffing levels on the day of the accident/event.

If you feel it will help, take it above your assigned Caseworker and contact either the manager of your Local Authority’s SS Department or your local MP.

Contact www.familylives.org.uk/advice/your-family/social-services-and-your-family/social-services-and-your-family/

Sorry if it’s not clicky, good luck @napol I’m so sorry you’re going through this

This is awful OP and I really feel for you (I’m sure we all do). Based on all you have said it definitely seems like the accident happened at nursery. Otherwise why did they give calpol but not ask you to pick him up.

When my DD was at nursery she knocked her head slightly one day trying to use a table to support herself and they rang me straight away so I knew and that it was all logged. Then they said they would contact me again if any signs of her being unwell. Thankfully she was fine so I just picked her up as normal and the got me to sign the log book to confirm that I had been made aware of the accident.

So the worry is that your little boy has had an accident and a staff member hasn’t reported it and is now too scared to speak up because the situation has escalated with social services being involved.

So sorry this is happening to you, I just can't get my head around this so god knows how you're holding up. When I worked at a nursery they were very big on officially recording any time a child came in with an injury, to cover their backs if the parents came to pick them up and denied knowing about it and nursery got the blame, assuming all nurseries do this then it should be them having to do the explaining, not you, no staff noticed the bump until what time? 4.30? Surly if they're saying he was injured at home, even if he did it just before you dropped him off and the bump hadn't come out straight away it must have still been there for most of the day and they failed to notice it?
What ever happened they're now trying to cover their backs, of course they need to investigate but surly there's more chance that it happened at nursery considering there would be more than one child there so he won't have been getting one to one attention all day and the timeline just doesn't make sense. Good luck OP

OP have you and your family been interviewed yet by police? If you have they may give you an indication as to who/what they are looking at. You may get an idea regarding the kind of questions they ask you. They nursery should be interviewed too.

@keeyoh "OP I'm a family lawyer" who has never heard of a question mark presumably?

And then goes on to say, "I only ask as I don't know a single person this has happened to."

Hmmmmm

I’m not a lawyer, and I don’t have experience of family court etc. Got a cursory Google would make me pay for the best legal team we could afford. Under legal aid, there seem to be restricting on what will be paid for regarding outside agencies and expert witnesses etc.

I’d rather pay privately and ensure I got my child back

*But, not Got

Why the inconsistency?

Also, abusers are very good at hiding abuse, often very good liars, manipulators, whereas a lot of the time, genuinely innocent parents will get angry about the situation, or break down or give up entirely.

Also, money is always a factor and social services have differing amounts of the stuff dependant on their area.

And just to add my point in - the rates of children being harmed in education settings was my thesis. To the poster who stated earlier that it must be the father - it is almost the same amount of women who hurt children as men didn’t accuse the OP, I see Glacé? nurseries are also one of the more dangerous places for a child and 100s are taken to hospital every year with undeclared injuries from nurseries. Created by other children, themselves, accidentally or through the incompetence of staff.

🤞🏻 OP.

*I’m not a lawyer, and I don’t have experience of family court etc. Got a cursory Google would make me pay for the best legal team we could afford. Under legal aid, there seem to be restricting on what will be paid for regarding outside agencies and expert witnesses etc.

I’d rather pay privately and ensure I got my child back*

Have you not read the posts by a family law solicitor above, plus my posts (I’m not a solicitor but work within the family court system and regularly work alongside and instruct)?

Paying privately will get you the same people and a massive, pointless hole in your bank account.

If expert witnesses were needed (as in medical experts), your solicitor would make an application to the Court for one, and costs shared between any parties (including the Local Authority) and met by legal aid if it is a necessary cost directed by the court, and should the cost exceed legal aid only then would you potentially have to pay, though it’s equally if not more likely that the Local Authority would be ordered to pay any excess.

Absolutely no point paying for legal representation at all, if you can get legal aid. It would just be a sorry waste.

I have worked in nurseries - I can well imagine a baby falling off a changing table onto a tiled floor and a young staff member keeping quiet because she knew she would get in trouble if caught!

Nursery staff are often teenagers and at that age they don't have a great ability to forsee consequences etc. I have personally known of a situation where a teenage nursery assistant fed a child a potential allergen and decided to keep quiet so she didn't get told off and just hoped for the best.

It wouldn't mean some institutional cover-up at the nursery, just one person making a mistake and keeping quiet.

Oh god OP, this is my worst nightmare. I hope your get this sorted quickly, you must be going through hell. I know of people this happened to, their girl is back with them now. x

In the area of the country where I was a CP SW there wasn't an endless pool of family law solicitors or even barristers so paying privately didn't make any difference,
You still got the same individuals.
OP needs people experienced in CP and they are accessed perfectly successfully through legal aid.
Legal aid is the norm in this area.

I have read the post from a family lawyer. But I wouldn’t put my faith in one anonymous post compared to what I’ve read on various websites. I just suspect that a lot of the time you get what you pay for.

If you have an operation privately, even if you’re entitled to NHS care, you’ll generally get a big benefit. It may well be the same surgeon, but your appointments will be less rushed, you’ll have a private room, you’ll have more timely and frequent follow ups etc. Sometimes (as my DP recently) there will be different technology available privately, with better outcomes.

When the stakes are so high, my instinct would always be to pay for what I can afford, rather than the lowest common denominator.

If expert witnesses were needed (as in medical experts), your solicitor would make an application to the Court for one

In your experience, would the court always approve any expert witnesses that the parent of the child wanted?

the lowest common denominator.

That’s just an appalling way to refer to dedicated, professional family law solicitors and barristers who do the absolute vast majority if not all of their public law (care proceedings) work funded by legal aid. Because that is how public law children work is funded. You will be getting nothing different by paying for it - it makes zero sense to do so - and you are happy to believe random Google results and websites over posts on here. MrsBertBibby is well known on this site as an experienced family law expert. She doesn’t have to post here to help people, but she does, and she has no ulterior motive in doing so.

If there are gaps in the evidence or if there are challenges being made to the evidence, and an expert report is needed to clarify this, the court will direct it.

If not, they won’t.

It won’t matter how the report is funded, whether it’s legal aid or private. If the court deems it necessary, it’s done. If not, it isn’t. You can’t just throw money at the courts and get everything you want, unless it’s deemed necessary.

And, as I and others have already said, the solicitor or barrister making the application will be the same whether you pay privately or fund through legal aid. And I’ve never known any solicitor to behave differently towards private paying clients (in private law - never known anyone to pay privately in public law).

So you are literally no better off paying privately, you may as well burn your money.

The Court will order expert evidence if it is necessary. If the court doesn't order it, you can't file it. It doesn't matter if you can pay for it, the test is whether it is necessary.

The identity of the expert is agreed (or chosen by the court) on the basis of suitable expertise and ability to report in the court's timeframe. The cost is generally shared and therefore even if one party has deep pockets, other parties will have to pay at legal aid rates.

Happily, most experts depend on legal aid instructions for their work and continuing status and therefore charge the approved legal aid rates.

It is also important to try and not fall into a them against us mindset, which is understandably easy to do, particularly if it gets to court.
You have the best interests of your dc as the center of this and so do social care. You aren't in opposition to each other.

Well Derbee, if you are in that position, I'm sure any of the local care specialist solicitors will happily charge you their private rates of £250 -£300 plus vat in stead of £60 an hour legal aid. Barristers will charge their private rates in stead of what the legal aid might pay. You'll have all the same experts, all the same people, but at twice the cost.

As they say, a fool and his money are soon parted.

Poor you, poor DS :(

@napol please ignore those unhelpful comments and distressing ones (I am sure) accusing your Fiance

Please know there are a lot of people on here who have seen loved ones go through this process and are rooting for you.