Social Services - am I naive?

[Autumnwoman]

A FB friend/acquaintance has recently had her children removed by Social Services, pending an X-Ray on a 5-month old baby's rib. She says he was injured by a toy (trying not to be too outing, for her sake).

She seems like a lovely lady - I don't know her well, but she used to do some cleaning at the school where I work. She had a troubled past herself in and out of care, but has always come across to me as trying to make the best for herself and her family. I often see her playing with her children in the park etc.

If she genuinely has had her children removed because of one bruise on a baby (and suspected broken rib), surely this is massively excessive. I understand there are places kids don't often bruise and it can be a cause for concern, but surely removing her children for this is a HUGE step.

Or am I naive, and will there be a massive history, and this is the last straw, as it were? Is this likely to be the tip of an iceberg, or do kids really get removed for one suspicious incident? I want to support her - but want to make sure I'm offering support in good faith.

She is a single parent

Many single parents have partners that don't live with them.

It also depends on what the baby was like. Was she trying to crawl or sitting up - if so falling over onto a toy is a reasonable suggestion or rocking back and forward only to clump off to one side onto a toy is possible
One of mine was very mobile the other almost a slug until 18mths. So they would have to really understand that baby in that context.
Also where there is a bruise in a baby you have to consider if the older child could have contributed - this is also a consideration
Again - any agency involved would have to have considered any of these options carefully before removing the baby.
It really is much harder to remove a child than any mad website tells you

Unexplained injuries are quite problematic, especially in young babies. I remember having a hell of a time in hospital when we had to take DD at 3 months as DSS had been a bit..enthusiastic and had managed to knee her in the head while sitting next to her asking to help with her nappy! She was not injured, but just with where it was we thought it best to get her checked, and we were told that its possible we might be referred to SS. It seems we weren't in the end, but it was understandable really why it might have been an option. I assume the reasons were credible, and the injury was kind of non existant probably helped a lot mind. So glad it was not worse though, as it was right where her soft spot was too and really, we should not have been changing her on the floor on her mat, ideally we would have a table or something (were rather skint though then!)

I would think the explanation given for the broken rib didn't make sense. And that set off an investigation. People can appear nice when they afe anything but though unfortunatly. Would be much easier if you could just tell from speaking to someone if they were a bad person..

It is plausible for this to be the first instance of any concern. A non-mobile baby suffering a broken bone of any kind is a huge concern, and a specially trained doctor would have examined the child and offered their assessment of whether the story of how the injury occurred seemed likely or not. Where a mobile child can climb and fall from height, or fall with force, a baby can do neither.

SS will have been to court to be able remove the baby from her pending further assessment. So a child doesn't get removed forever for one instance but will be removed while the assessment takes place, as if there is even any the injury was non accidental, it's too risky to return the child to the parent's care.

I was party to a case recently where I thought the parents story sounded feasible. There were an enormous amount of complex fact finding hearings and in the end the baby and both siblings were permanently removed. I still feel uncomfortable about it but I have to trust the reams of medical evidence given.

Mistakes can happen, with babies SS so have to err on the side of caution, but be wary of believing everything she tells you. There is likely to be a lot more to it.

So we’ve got a 5 month old removed by social services due to rib bruising and possibly broken ribs and we have could they have fallen off something...could it possibly be another child....it was a man...she’s a single mum...maybe she has a partner we don’t live with 🙄

Do we really think social services didn’t look in to the possibility of it being an older sibling/ some non live in partner before they removed the child? They just turned up with the child catching net and stole the baby.

So we are trying to find every excuse under the sun, rather than admit that it’s very possible mum hurt this child, or are we just in to defending child abuse now as long as it’s a woman doing it

5 month old do not break ribs, well with a little help from mum they apparently do

It’s misleading and wrong to present this as cut and dried.

It is right a child is removed in these circumstances. However it is not the case that SS are infallible and mistakes are never made.

Your friend may well be lovely. Though behind closed doors she might not be. The injury may well be accidental. Or not. And there could also be other people who are in the house regularly who are not lovely, and the injury might be deliberate.

Of course SS could choose to leave the child in the house and wait to see if it gets any more injuries, and then be named , shamed and condemned in every red top if it does.........what would you do OP?

A friend of a friend had her children removed for a few months because her baby (getting on for a year) got a mark on her leg from the cot rails. The hospital doctor notified social services and the 2 children were removed to her parents. The outcome was that the social workers manager ensured the children were given straight back and should never have been removed. So sometimes it can happen.

PP have mentioned that injuries to an immobile baby is one of the few instances where SS might remove a baby at once- if you think about it you will see why! Small babies are very vulnerable and an injury as serious as a broken rib could involve enough violence to cause a serious risk to the baby's life. If her story doesn't match up, then they have to wonder if this might not be the case.

Of course this leaves room for mistakes- some babies do have brittle bone disease or Ehlers Danlos syndrome which leaves huge bruises and scars for very little apparent reason. My ds, who is 20, has a large scar on his elbow for an injury that was so slight we can't actually remember what he did to himself and a bald patch on his head where he thinks he scratched an insect bite as a child: the resulting scar means no hair has grown since. Babies have been removed from after getting covered in bruises crawling on a carpet- that's the kind of thing that can happen with EDS. My dd (thankfully now grown up) keeps dislocating her shoulder. We were suspected of child abuse when she was little though thankfully old enough to be interviewed.

But these disorders are rare and violence against children is, sadly, not that rare. If an adult has hurt a tiny baby enough to break their rib then that child may well be in serious danger. If its safety lay in your hands, would you take the risk?

They will have listened to her carefully and hopefully taken all considerations into account.

You never know what goes on behind closed doors. But then there’s the possibility that it was indeed an accident and now this woman has had her kids taken away over nothing. You’ll never know the truth

The balance of probability is used in family court and social workers don't have to prove that a child is being abused, they just have to present a case that there is 51% probability that the child is at significant harm if they remain at home.

Any other court you have to prove beyond reasonable doubt and are innocent until proven guilty.

Not in a family court

@fantasmasgoria1
Two kids were removed because a one yr old had a mark on its legs from the cot? With no other hugely extensive backstory?
I genuinely find that impossibly hard to believe

@CakeGirl2020

BUT in a non-abusive home, IF her story is kosher, it's also not best for the baby (or her older daughter) to be removed from their mother's care for no good reason They do NOT remove a child for 1 incident and in general even once social service do get involved they give you multiple chances before removing a child. It honestly is the very last straw.

She’s bull shifting you with her story somewhere. Think how many 5 month olds have you heard off that broke a rib? It’s not a common injury for a reason.

Do you know if the woman has a partner, or any men in her life? Well that didn’t take long. Yes because it must be a man right, couldn't be the fucked up Mother could it now.

Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend, of course a lot of women do abuse children, I don’t doubt that. However as OP said the woman has a troubled past so she would be statistically quite likely to also be involved in abusive relationships, plus she has a baby so there must have been a man around at some point in the last year at least. And as OP had not set out any details of who the woman lived with/might have been in contact with, its surely a strong possibility?

The woman would still be responsible for the abuse by not adequately safeguarding, hence why the Ss intervention. Many women in domestic violence situations lose their children. It’s just quite possible for OP to be right about the woman not purposefully hurting her child, but be overlooking other aspects of the woman’s life that puts the child at risk.

I've looked after many babies with non accidental injuries. Babies bones are very bendy. It is very difficult to actually break a babies bones without significant force. 5 month old babies do not break their ribs on toys. I've met some lovely parents who have later admitted causing fractures. Removing the baby is absolutely the right thing to do.

I think that medical professionals are very knowledgeable on this stuff. I had to take my 2 year old to a and e with an injury that turned out to be quite a bad fracture. I read a lot of true crime and alarming things and I was absolutely paranoid that they would think I had something to hide. The doctors however can clearly see when an injury is accidental and there was absolutely no question. There are many factors that are identifiable about injuries and it's honestly really rare that medical professionals are wrong.

Obviously I'm not saying it's never happened, but I'd say it was a small proportion of an already small proportion of incidents.

a 5 month old is very unlikely to break a rib from a toy so yes it was right of SS to remove the baby.

Its pretty easy to stop a 5 month old from hurting themself seeing as they dont get left by themselves and cant crawl properly or stand or walk so can only lie there/sit still

@RonaldMcDonald a bruised rib on a non mobile 5 month old baby, absolutely would raise eyebrows.

Their was a very high profile case of parents being released from prison as it turned out as they had said all along their child had britttle bone disease not been shaken. But baby was already adopted.

Another one where parents were found innocent of salt poisening. turns out docto had a decimal point in the wrong place.

Mistakes do happen. Also they are still looking into the case and earing on side of caution.

Osteogenesis Imperfecta is incredibly rare. And there are usually other signs that the child has it.

With over 10% of deaths in under one year olds in U.K. due to non accidental injury, caution is clearly necessary and the physical welfare of the child must be paramount. The incidence of non accidental injury has risen during the pandemic.

The bone is being x rayed - not has been x rayed and was found to be broken
This is part of why I said that SS were already involved, this family were already known
The threshold would have to be met - a potential break is vastly different than a break

You have to remember, children’s bones bend rather than break which means it takes a lot of force to actually break them

I would think she wasn’t telling the truth tbh.

I mean, when my ds was 9 weeks old, my dh fell off a step whilst holding him. He was holding him upright with his back to his chest so Ds was facing outwards iyswim. He also for the first (and last time) ever took a dummy.

As dh fell, he managed to keep most of his weight off ds, but not enough and the dummy shattered whilst in ds’s mouth.

One side of ds’s face swelled and bruised and his lip was cut.

We went to hospital and he didn’t even need an x-ray. Doctors looked him over, told us to keep an eye on him for concussion but apart from that, he was fine.

Within 24 hours dwelling had gone and within 48 all bruising was gone too.

Now this was a fully grown man accidentally falling whilst holding a newborn baby and nothing was broken.

So a small child falling off a sofa and landing on a toy to break a rib sounds a but far fetched

It’s impossible to know really OP, but I doubt you will do much damage simply by being kind and supportive.

Social services do make mistakes, occasionally - it happened to a friend, was a nightmare (child turned out to have osteogenesis imperfecta.) But generally theres a good reason and the child was on the radar, obviously nobody knows in this case so keep an open mind.

It may well be the only incident. If they presented at A&E it would have triggered temporary removal whilst it is investigated.

I think the x-ray will be significant. In the absence of a medical condition it is extremely unlikely to be caused by a fall off a sofa or similar. Broken ribs are usually caused by serious force like a bike/car accident or giving CPR.

I would support your friend but try not to collude with her. She may be being truthful or she may be minimising. If it's a genuine accident then I feel for her, but the thought of a 5mo, who probably can't even sit up, having a broken rib makes me feel a bit sick.