Unregistered child, home birth, no medical intervention

[LudoBear]

Just Monday morning ponderings.

I wonder how many children/adults out there have been born at home, no medical intervention throughout pregnancy, baby never registered, home schooled, never went to doctors etc. I wonder how long it would be possible to go without a child ever being legally known anywhere

@bluetongue

Not the same thing but there was a very sad case in Australia of a little girl and her mother that were murdered after moving interstate. Their murderer continued to claim their benefits and use the mother’s phone to convince her family she was fine but wanted no contact.

People here in Australia often move states to evade authorities, especially when it come to issues of child protection.

I was so disturbed by that case. I live close to where the child's body was found in a suitcase. She was a very vulnerable young woman...the benefits system has changed since then and it wouldn't be so easy to pull such a crime off now.

People here in Australia often move states to evade authorities, especially when it come to issues of child protection

That happens here in the UK too. I'm sure it is common in all countries.

Isn't the whole point though that Registrars are given a list of children born (who've had HCP intervention), so parents registering them is a case of cross-referencing them and ticking them off the list? The reason why you have to do and get a fine if you don't is because the 'authorities' have a good idea of who is on the list but not yet registered?

I am not however sure what the protocol is if you have a baby without HCP intervention and don't seek out a check over for yourself and baby afterwards?

I think relatively few babies don’t have a birth certificate but after that it’s still scarily easy for the state to lose track of where a child is. We don’t keep a systematic record in England, which is why we don’t actually know how many children are home educated or “home educated” or have emigrated or even died.

I imagine the number is incredibly small.

@misselphaba and @iolaus
thank you. I didn't know that. but they didn't even check i was who i said i was. Surely i could have been anyone

if you want to rent a flat or get a job, you need official photo identification.

I think there are probably a surprising number of people in the country who are undocumented, having been trafficked in or entered illegally. I always remember the little boy whose torso was found in the Thames some years ago. No one claimed him, I think they worked out from his blood type and bone dna that he came from West Africa but that was it.

@Branleuse it IS heard of amongst New Age travellers.
I used to know of kids who weren't registered anywhere, it fitted in with trying to live a life free of state intervention.
I also had a friend who had a mum and dad who actually weren't related to him. His birth parents had left him on a site when he was small, and didn't come back, and his "adoptive" parents took him in. It'd make a great plot for a book actually.
I would've thought there's loads of unregistered babies born to undocumented immigrants too in this country.

Even more common in previous generations when most babies born at home - a few of my aunts have wrong date on their birth certificates because their gps didn't get round to registering them at the right time.

My ggmother even managed to get her own name wrong on her daughter's bc - conversation must have gone ' what's the name of the father?' ( She managed that) And the mother? So she gave her mother in law's name! Also illiterate / Irish speaker so not going to be able to glance at the certificate and instantly spot a mistake.

Lots of 'mistakes' on official documents - wrong ages so gps could marry without parents' permission, ( 'bucket shops' weren't bothered as long as you paid the money), ggfather knocked years off his age (censuses) when married much younger woman, considerable variations of name spellings etc.

@Cakecrumbsinmybra you'd be wrong. I personally know of 3 families in our wider social circle who have hidden their children to certain extents, from not registering a baby (2 families) to going full tinfoil hat. The worst case was a religious fundy family that moved to go under the radar and wouldn't register their children with GPs, dentists, schools, I think even libraries were off limits. Social services weren't interested as I didn't have their exact new address, just city. I worry so much about those kids.

The register office get a list of baby’s born from the hospital so that’s why you didn’t have to show anything x

But there are homebirths that are never registered, and even if you are registered at birth, if your parents decide to go under the radar, there isn't a whole lot anyone can do.

It happened to my Grandma, she was always a SAHM, never had a job or collected benefits of any description (born in 1900.) When she reached pension age, she discovered that she didn't actually exist. I guess when she had my Dad in the 40's there were no checks done, so she just stayed under the radar.

The story goes that she was a traveller's child who was given/sold to my great grandparents as a baby. My grandma's brother had to write a letter to the authorities stating what he remembered about that time. I still have it. In it he says he remembers a baby coming into the house, and he was told it was his new sister. Fascinating stuff!

I am sure it happens and some people can live under the radar but I do think it's harder now than its ever been especially just to live a basic life you need a bank account or some form of ID as a minimum once you reach adulthood. But if you are in a community where you are taken care of it may be possible.
There are people that have been born or raised in the UK but have been in their own community that they cannot even speak English or know anything about the outside aside from their community.

In the early 80s I taught a child who had not been registered and was only discovered when taken to hospital with burns from chip pan oil. Social services immediately became involved. Oddly, he had older siblings who had been registered.

When I was looking for information about registering my baby’s birth, I stumbled on a small forum. Its posters shared the belief that registering your child’s birth gave the state ownership of the child. They had chosen not to register their children for this reason. They also seemed to believe that Social Services couldn’t legally remove an unregistered child.

@olderthanyouthink

Don't know but my cousin only found out he had been using the wrong spelling of his name when he was about 30 and applied for a mortgage. His birth had been registered with basically a misspelling and my aunt just started using the correct one without getting it officially corrected.

Well thats different and fine. A person can use any name they like. It doesn't have to be done by deed poll or anything, just by "usage".

The person I am thinking about went through life using the name of relatives who had raised him - armed forces, work, marriage, setting up own business, banking, children given his 'assumed name'. Only when he applied for a passport was it queried.

They have got it the wrong way round. You dont want to be 'nonexistent' - you want to be dual existent. I had a friend who by accident or as a consquence of a weird mistake at some point is two people in the system. Theirs him, and theirs him with one letter spelling mistake. He says it has come in very handy at various points.

There must be some. Children of new age hippies, travellers and illegal immigrants.
A friend had a young child run out into road, his car wing mirror clipped child’s head. The other children playing scooped child up and shouted no police and ran into nearby house. Friend called police and they came out but household denied any injury to a child and police just shrugged and said it must have been a ghost. No action taken. Yet there was a young child with a potential head injury.

Yes @dottiedaisee - we are hopefully doing an ok job as first time parents but who knows. I got a call from a health visitor at around 7 weeks and asked if I had any concerns, I said I didn’t know as I was a first time parent and she just said ok and to call them if I did!

A relative in the 60s bought a baby - as far as I know the mum gave birth at home (already had multiple children ) handed her over and they just registered her as there’s.
There was a case in London where a girl tuned out to be much older - school raised suspicions as she was acting motherly to other children. She’s entered UK on a dead girls passport. Registered for school etc in that name and it hasn’t flagged up she was dead.

Slightly different, but When I worked in council tax years ago there was a case where a family had had a disabled child, and members of the extended family had registered it multiple times in order to claim disability benefits. I don't know what happened as social services became involved and it was never reported in the press. I would have imagined there would have been prosecutions for benefit fraud, but nothing else was in the public domain.

My grandchild has only seen HV twice and is now 15 months...shocking lack of support.

I've had 2 kids pre-covid and they only saw a health visitor at 6 weeks and never again.

@Dixiechickonhols exactly the same thing happened to me! I had to leave the scene as I was threatened when I called the police and an ambulance. The police said that the little girl was probably an illegal immigrant (she was about 6 years old, on a busy road when she should have been in school.) Thankfully I was only going very slowly when she ran out and clipped my wing mirror, but she had blood coming from her mouth and nose, and seemed very dazed.