Will birth Dad get to keep new baby,?

[Pumpkinallspice]

If one of the birth parents goes onto have more children with a new partner after having 5 removed (at different times), would they be able to keep the new child woth the new partner? They are 2.5 years on from the last adoption order being granted.

I don't know for sure, but I'd guess that if that person was deemed to be a risk to the children (hence their removal) then the new baby would also be at risk. If we're talking about the man here, then his new partner may be advised to break all contact with him or risk losing her child.

Possibly, it will depend on why the children were removed, what work the birth parent has done to change and if the new partner is considered fit and responsible to safely care and safeguard the child.

Often social services don't have the same tabs on birth fathers as they do with birth mothers. He may not be on their radar - if there are no concerns with the birth mother, there is no reason they would connect him.

My girls' birth father went on to have more children with another partner and nothing happened. It was in a different local authority too.

I suspected it could go either way.

It would depend why he couldn't care for his birth children before and whether this partner can protect from any continued risks from him. There would be assessments and there is no guarantee over the outcome

Social services won't necessarily know about him and his past though.

I’m a birth parent and during my maternity appointments there was no questions asked about whether dad had previous children removed or whether he isn’t permitted contact etc so unless the mother to the new baby has concerns raised they may not even be a referral to social services.

If social services were involved it would be dependent upon firstly the changes the birth dad has made and the capability of the mum to be and whether she is able to protect the child.

Interesting. It seems he may well keep the baby.

I guess the parents of the older half siblings wont be being contacted for adoption.

I just hope baby's Mum keeps her safe.

My girls' birth father had 2 children with another partner after leaving birth mum. I knew about them from his letterbox letters. I asked social services what we should do regarding contact - we already had letterbox contact with two half siblings (birth mother's older kids), expecting them to set something up.

But they weren't remotely interested.

I think this was partly because he had moved to a different local authority and the placing LA, which was my contact for birth family/letterbox wasn't interested.

Sw said to me it wasn't worth progressing as the mother wasn't interested and I didn't pursue it.

But anyway they take a very different approach to the birth dads.

I genuinely didn't realise how differently they treated birth fathers.

I guess it makes sense in that the birth mother will probably have most contact with services who might flag the need for further support, but the idea that BFs get 50% credit, responsibility, parental responsibility, whatever, with what seems from the posts above to be virtually none of the scrutiny seems bizarre, no?

I guess there is a focus on the practicalities of mothers usually being the ones who do the caring, but it just seems unfair that they get to potentially be a complete wildcard in the equation and the mother is left to shoulder the main responsibility of showing she has changed, whereas he kind of potentially gets to swan off and crack on having more kids with little to no oversight because the new partner is considered to be the safety factor- I bet if the BM ended up with another bloke, they wouldn't be half as quick at saying oh it's ok, we don't need to worry too much, he will be the safety factor for the child!

I know, I know, statistics about DV mean that the BMs new bloke is probably (statistically) still possibly a danger, but surely that means that a BD who gets into a new relationship definitely needs more support- right? It cuts both ways?

I dunno, just feels like somewhere along the line it always turns out to be the woman's responsibility more than a mans, ya know?

The thing is, most birth parents are not charged with a crime, so there isn't a formal trail. In metropolitan areas like London and Birmingham, it is very easy to move local authority area - this is what our girls' birth father did, and any connection he had with social services was lost.

A lot of pregnant women are not on social services radar - it is just when the baby is born that concerns start to be raised.

And of course often the birth father isn't even on the birth certificate so would never have officially had a child removed anyway.

It's a real issue, which is one of the reasons we have Clare's law, so women can check to see if there is anything on their new partner.

My DD's birth mother had 6 children all together. She was a drug addict.

Baby 1 adopted
Baby 2 adopted

Then came my DD - adopted by us after being abandoned in a hospital far from her usual area ( she was homeless at the time ) but thankfully SS were able to confirm her relationship to Babies 1 and 2 so we could maintain some contact.

Baby 4 - mystery baby that no one in social services seems able to tell is what happened to and we only know about as birth mother's sister has since confirmed the babies existence but hadn't told us anymore.

Baby 5 - birth mum manage to conceal her history in a new borough and was able to keep him.

Baby 5 - as above

Babies 5 and 6 were eventually taken into care when birth mum's drug habit spiralled out of control again

So it is possible that they can keep new babies if they move around and hide their past as social services do not seem to speak to each other.

Right now I'm 6 months into trying to find out why my DD was not told about the existence of new siblings despite our local authority being advised by email that they had been born. This email was not picked up and was only unearthed when I started an enquiry. The local authority are no longer responding to my calls.

Usually the nhs number would stay the same though and so medical records would show previous pregnancies, which might ring alarm bells. But if you don't engage with services, no one would know.

@Arran2024 what we've discovered is that BM did originally try to not engage with any maternity services until much later. She hid her past from her new partner and his extended family ( who we are now in touch with )

Eventually it all came out and the borough she was in did a pre birth assessment and contacted the local authority that had taken the previous babies into care but nothing was picked up by that authority so she was able to keep her baby and my poor DD and her older siblings were kept completely in the dark about the existence of three other siblings.

My DD was also not informed of her birth mother's death which occurred a year or two after the last baby was born.

The lack of joined up work between different local authorities is all quite shocking.

I agree. My girls came from a local authority in the West Midlands. The birth parents were both from the next door local authority where both were known to social services. Birth mum had two children already and they were both on the radar of social services.

When birth parents got together they moved just a few streets away but that was enough to put them into a new LA. So no one knew of them.

Later, after the children were removed, the birth parents split up and both went back to the old LA. We had letterbox agreed with the placing LA and social services were supposed to help bps write to us. But they weren't living in that LA any more and the LA where they now lived just wasn't interested.

Utterly ridiculous.

It’s not at all unusual for parents to frequent move across local authorities to actively avoid social work. Each local authority uses a different computer system for keeping records and these systems don’t talk to each other. Any proposal that would allow one consistent records is challenged under privacy laws on the basis that’s it’s a disproportionate response to keep records on all families to keep track of the relatively few that need statutory intervention.

What generally happens is the new baby gets flagged when mum has her booking in appointment (and mums who have lost children to the care system often book in very late in the pregnancy) or there’s soft intelligence (ie someone in the community mentions mum is pregnant again or another professional says something) and that starts the ball rolling. With high turnover rates in social work we simply don’t have the same relationships in the community that we used to, so we don’t know until quite late on.

The reality is that most birth fathers take themselves off when social work become involved - the level of scrutiny and officialdom is too much, and they leave. So there’s often less known about them and when social work are involved they’re the child’s social worker, so they focus on the child and their carer, which is usually the mum. Birth fathers do get picked up, usually through processes like MARAC but again if he chooses not to engage, and doesn’t have care of the child it’s very difficult legally to do anything. The mum often won’t say who the father is, or doesn’t believe he’s a risk (cos his previous ex was crazy, he’s totally changed etc etc) so while we can deal with the obvious risks, if she’s saying he’s not around, or the baby isn’t his it’s a hard road to prove otherwise.

While social work practice isn’t always what it could be, never underestimate the lengths men and women will go to in concealing a pregnancy or their connection to a pregnancy to avoid service involvement.

Hmm it is all very complicated. My main concern is that this new little girl has a happy and safe life and I fear after having so many other children removed, this may not be the case. Perhaps the new partner is a wonderful woman but I can't help but question who he would attract. However, perhaps she's vulnerable and believes his bullshit.

Maybe you need to raise a safeguarding concern

Remember, social services will simply tell a birth mother to drop an abusive boyfriend if she wants to keep her baby. Some do, some don't. But the fact is, there is a remedy available to birth mothers, which rarely works the other way round ie birth dads being told to drop an abusive girlfriend/mother of their baby to then keep the baby.

Mind you, sometimes birth dads do take the baby, though often with the support of their parents, who are often the ones who raise the child. I know cases like this.