Can social services place a baby with family against the mother's wishes?

[BreezyBrie]

My cousin is pregnant and there’s a possibility baby may be removed at birth. She has been NC with her family for a few years. As a teen she had involvement so they are already aware of immediate family details etc.

She is very concerned that if this happens SS will first look to family to care for baby. Is she allowed to specify for this not to happen and she would only want professional foster carers not family?

She did ask me but it’s not something I would be able to do although I’m trying to support in other ways . She is just worried about her mother or one of her sisters getting the baby.

Do you have any experience working in this area or with a family member? Otherwise your opinion is competent meaningless. It’s the equivalent of saying nobody gets arrested without a good reason and they must be guilty.

No. The child in this case hasn’t been removed yet, so you can’t even say a judge has agreed with the SW position.

I haven’t read other replies- I used to be a child protection social worker- have done these assessments- we have to legally look at family first before outside care - it’s not a case of being cheaper - we look to keeping family together where possible and have to prove that to the court why we have to look at fostering or adoption outside of the family. If there’s concerns she needs to voice them but the sw will do their own assessments of potential carers

Clearly you're coming at this from an -emotional perspective (not a criticism!) Unfortunately, the thoughts, feelings and opinions of various laypeople won't make a blind bit of difference to what happens.

The OP asked if it could happen. In theory, yes it could. That doesn't mean it will. People's personal opinions are irrelevant.

The law follows a process. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

The best thing the woman concerned can do is speak to her SW to find out from her the process of kinship assessment and get an advocate (as is her right under the Autism Act) and a solicitor so that her interests are best represented.

Yes, it’s a well known syndrome; women who have children removed continue to have babies in the hope that they will be able to keep one. They are normally society’s most vulnerable women, who may have been abused themselves, have undiagnosed neurodivergences, been born with FASD or NAS and experienced multigenerational trauma, violence, poverty and abuse. I know that there is an excellent charity called PAUSE doing brilliant work in this field. The thing is, if we took a maternalistic view of social care and properly supported mothers to keep their babies, and grow them healthily through their childhood, social care, in my opinion, would be in a less parlous state. Middle class mothers have mental health issues too. The removal of children is statistically weighted towards those who are born into poverty.

How do you know SS are considering removing the baby at birth? Where has this idea come from? Pre birth assessments can simply be done to find out if she as a new mum will benifit from SS/mental health suport. If it's offered to her, she should engage with it to show that she's willing to work with services to keep her child safe and that she's putting her child's interests first

I think its reasonable to imagine that she does suffer with some level of EUPD given the adverse childhood she suffered. I would further suggest that the hightened drama around the narrative of her baby being removed at birth is a symptom of this.

The bar to remove a child from its mother is incredibly high. And each child that mother has is seen as an individual with its own unique circumstances. The fact a previous child of hers is not living with her is not in itself a reason for removing this baby. And a diagnosis of EUPD is not a reason for removing a baby either. Everyone needs to breathe here and work with the social worker for the best interests of the baby

I dont think people's personal opinions are irrelevant

The op asked whether it could happen, yes, but that doesnt mean people cant share opinions, like I did. I didnt state that I was sharing facts, I offered sympathy and a comment on my opinion of the process

Thank you for explaining the process of handing a baby to the woman's parents to me - i already knew this and shared that i wasn't impressed by this possibility

If the baby can't stay with family and the court decide at the end of proceedings it can't go back to parents, it will be placed for adoption. If I was on your cousins position, I would need to have serious safeguarding concerns about family to fight against them looking after the child. The alternative could be never seeing that child again and having no involvement in their life, not knowing if they have been sent to abusive adoptive parents, which does happen.

But some parents (regardless of vulnerabilities or social class) are not able to care for their children, despite careful support.
For some parents it isn't possible and the child will not be safe or adequetly cared for.
I have known some parents who will not even engage in support in order to keep their child.
I am not saying that this is the case here.

Honestly, I’m not sure that careful support exists. Social care budgets are bust, most child protection SWs are incredibly risk averse because - and who would blame them - they don’t want a child to die on their watch. Because they will be vilified. As an adopter, I do know - in theory - that some parents are not able to care for their children. In practice, with two very different experiences of child removal from two different birth families, and having ongoing and sustained direct contact with one birth mother, who is functioning well in society but who is a victim herself, I just feel like in this stage of my journey (20 years in) that I want point out that there are very many shades of grey. I’m an adopter x 2, so put through two separate lots of assessments and approval processes. I flew through these. I was considered so successful by my LA, that I was asked to mentor other adopters and feature at training sessions. Two years ago, my teen adoptee made a false allegation against me, I was arrested, detained in custody for 21 hours and bailed to live away from my own home. Within 24 hours, the police decided no further action - because my teen admitted she’d lied. I was still put through child protection proceedings by children’s social care. I felt like Alice falling through the looking glass. I know know how it feels to be on the receiving end of lies, judgment, lack of support, parent blaming and shaming and the ultimate threat of court proceedings.

Wow, i'm really sorry you went through that. It must have been awful!
Thank god there are people like you that are kind enough to do what you do x

Mother and baby might potentially be admitted to a mother and baby centre. Where she will be monitored on how well she can care for her newborn. If she fails to adequately care then baby will be removed from her. Mother and baby centre is a likely option before removal after birth.

Thank you. But I wasn’t trying to garner sympathy. I think I’m always trying to point out that if it can happen to me, then it can happen to anyone. I’m a very well-educated, comfortably off, middle-class parent. When the SS machine came for me, the effects were devastating. I see now why the birth mother of my youngest child lost her children. And how the cards were stacked against her from the start. I am happy to leave my youngest daughter with her birth mother unsupervised for a few hours every meet-up session we have. She is not a bad person. She has mental health challenges that are managed appropriately. Her issue in life was not to be able to rise above the multigenerational abuse and neglect that she had experienced as a child. How can you do this if you only have a social worker who wants to write reports about you rather than getting alongside you and showing you the right way to be a parent?

The overriding principle is the best interests of the child, not the parent’s wishes though their views must be sought. It’s often in children’s best interests to live with extended family if their biological parents can’t look after them. She should tell the social worker why she feels concerned about family caring for her child.

You do make some very good points.
Thank you for showing me this from a different perspective. It's a very interesting read and you are coming from a place with a lot of experience in this field.

I think dad and his family would also be offered

I think there are an awful lot of parents who, if they had access to good mental health care, parenting support, financial help, and proper support to leave abusive partners, could have kept their children and both they and their kids would have been much better off. Taking a child away from their parents should only ever happen when there is absolutely no other possible way to keep them safe.
I had a friend recently go through child protection proceedings, and the behaviour of social services was jaw dropping. It really shocked me.It was outright lies, bigotry, and incompetence from start to finish. My friend had her baby taken away for months, and she was very lucky to get her back. It could very easily have gone the other way and led to adoption.

The social worker assigned to her seemed to have no interest in supporting her, and blatantly lied to her and about her on multiple occasions. It's interesting what you said about potential future risks of harm. That's exactly what they said about her to justify taking her baby away, and it really shocked me. How on earth can they justify removing a child on that basis? Any person on earth could potentially harm a child in the future. My friend did nothing wrong during her pregnancy, but they removed her baby at birth for months because she had a history of mental health problems, and was a young single mum without money or family support.

Since she eventually got her little girl back she's been a wonderful mum. But she really struggles to enjoy any part of motherhood because she's terrified it could all happen again.
She's told me if her mental health ever gets bad she wouldn't dare tell her GP or seek help in case it was used against her again. And if that ever happened and she struggled to parent, no doubt social services would be quick to jump in blame her for not seeking treatment with zero self awareness.

Conversely I have another friend who had a horrifically abusive childhood, social services were called by the school on multiple occasions due to serious injuries, but because her parents were wealthy and well educated and had a lovely house and good jobs, they did a single cursory visit, had a brief friendly chat with the parents and admired the beautiful house and gardens, and absolutely nothing was done.