Heart says this is fundamentally wrong, head says maybe not...

[Inflames]

Obese Children to be Put Up For Adoption

What a sad story. And only place I can find more info is Daily Fail, which makes me doubt the accuracy to be honest....

AIBU to feel that it is not OK to remove children permenantly and with no contact, in this manner - but to think that actually there may be good reasons to save these children from a lifetime of health problems? Seems like there was quite draconian input to try to help but not the right kind of input if that makes sense? And the floodgates it could open for reasons to remove children....

FWIW I think Social Services and social workers generally do a good job in bloody hard circumstances while being universally slammed for doing too much or too little. But this story makes me feel very very uncomfortable.

Help me get down off the fence - there are splinters in my bum.

surely a obese teenager can also make the same choice to not eat what is offered like the anorexic/bulemic???

Neither anorexia or obesity are a choice in children - they are both indicative of disordered eating and sometimes (maybe in this case) the parents are responsible for the disordered eating.

2009 STV coverage. Their eldest must be 16 now, doesn't sound like in a hurry to move back in with them.

Ah... news coverage is confused. Some articles say that it's only the 4 youngest children being taken away; the older 3 would stay in contact. Daily Record story.

So many foods are laden with fat, salt and sugar and these tend to be at the 'affordable' end of the market. It might be better to stop manufacturers from selling, or at least advertising such highly processed 'food' and teach people how to cook, on a budget, from scratch.

It was suggested on the Wright Stuff (I know) that the dc be sent to an american style fat camp to help get their weight under control and the parents be sent to something similar. Then the family would be reunited.

It is cruel and inhuman to rip a child away from its parents. This will cause great distress to the children removed and those who remain. Can you imagine having your siblings taken from you and put up for adoption? Children who grow up in care (and I use that term loosely) tend to have far more problems as adults than those who grow up within their own families but with continued support.

And parents don't have the freedom to say what they want and SS not. The family courts regularly stop people from speaking openly about their own children.

Personally, I think SS needs to get its house in order and focus on removing those kids who are being tortured at the hands of their parents, rather than stupid people who love their children but need lots of long term support to raise them well.

The child has a right to his or her family life. The parents and children all have rights to respect for their private and family lives under the human rights act. Being separated from your family and handed over to the 'care' system is a draconian measure that should only be used where absolutely necessary to protect a child from real harm. Being fat isn't illegal, and neither is having a fat child. And while being very overweight may raise your risks of various diseases in the long term, it isn't an immediate threat to the child's wellbeing. (Being too thin is bad too - in fact, your best bet is to be slightly overweight, especially for women over 40.)

The care system is very, very bad for children, especially older children who are less likely to be adopted or find stable placements. Children in care are often moved with no notice - imagine how scary that must be? They are far, far more likely than other children to end up with no qualifications, as teenage mothers, in prison, or with serious mental health issues.

So it's extraordinary that social workers are proposing to remove children because they are fat. I do hope that there is far, far more to this story than has been reported - if there are no other concerns then it's extraordinary and an abuse of power.

This story makes me very uncomfortable, not least because I am a parent of an overweight child (and I should add, another who is if anything underweight).

Whilst there may be MUCH more to it than has been reported, it does seem to be setting a potentially unpleasant precedent.

This makes me feel very very sad. I was brought up in the care system and I wonder sometimes if the staff in it have any idea what their decisions will bring in later years.

I worked on a child protection case with a family where the child was close to being removed into care due to neglect by virtue of his weight and health.

He had poorly controlled asthma exacerbated by his parents smoking around him, and weighed over 8 stone at 5 years old.

It was very difficult.

I find it incredible that the family lived in the (presumably expensive) council-supervised "Big Brother House" where they were spied on and everything was recorded - but they were given no help or education regarding healthy eating and exercise!!

They were just being set up to fail in that case. However, one of the "low level bad parenting concerns" that was recorded was that their baby/toddler "crawled through the contents of a spilled ashtray". That is just vile IMO.

I wish I could really vent my spleen honestly comment on this thread...but stuck in the middle of 'damned if I do, damned if I don't'.

Home from another day at the hard end of Social Work...and thinking of a child (not in my care) who was NOT removed from parents who are alcoholics, morbidly obese, emotionally damaging their child through domestic violence...so WHAT do we have to do to help this child?

Children's Hearing (Scotland) decided to give the parents another chance...and they say the welfare of the child is paramount

Believe when I say that removing a child is a last resort, even when it shouldn't be...Social Workers have to fight against the LAW, and parent's rights to do what they think is best.

Residential care et al does need a kick up the arse, as do the systems that hamstring the best intentions of those that want to actually have a positive effect on a childs life.

Poorly controlled asthma is quite significant though - I can quite see why there would be concerns in that case, although you'd hope the doctors would be able to work with the family to show them how to help their child rather than take punitive measures.

Really, you don't know anything about this family other than what they and their representatives have chosen to tell the press. They lived in a council funded home for two years but nobody told them how to prepare healthy food? yeah right. They would have had an incredibly detailed and intensive care plan with targets and goals and assessment at every stage. If they failed to make changes to their behaviour it won't be because they weren't shown how.

The weight is one issue doubtless amongst many. Honestly - children being overweight is not criteria, on its own, for CP proceedings. All parents worrying because their DC are overweight - please stop. And please take the details of this story with a pinch of salt. Of course the parents want people to sympathise. That doesn't mean they are telling the whole story. Does anyone know the case of Vicky Haigh? A cautionary tale if ever there was one.

edam yes it was a significant factor. The family had had enormous amounts of input and support for 3 years but nothing changed. Hence the child protection proceedings.

Sidge, that's terribly sad. But any public health specialist will say it's incredibly hard to help people to change their behaviour at all and even harder to support them to make permanent changes. The methodology for behaviour change is fascinating but not yet anywhere near a stage where the evidence says simply 'do this and it will work'. (I mean, where professionals know what kind of health intervention with a family might work, much less the family understanding.) And of course professionals, however well intentioned, come with their own individual and group agendas, informed by their personal and professional experience.

If you read the SN threads on here, you'll see how even the most caring, informed, educated parents feel worn down, mis-judged and just plain knackered after dealing with a battery of health, education and social care professionals - just getting to all the different appointments can be completely draining. From the parents' point of view, what the professionals think is 'helpful' may actually be profoundly unhelpful. None of this may apply to the families you are thinking about, and I'm sure all the professionals involved were doing their very best to help the family and the children. But...

That sounds like a counsel of despair, and of course I don't mean 'it's all so complicated there's no point even trying'. Much less to denigrate the very hard work that good health, social care and educational professionals do. But sometimes in amongst all the policies and procedures and professional responsibility, it's easy not to see how it looks the other way round - how something actually affects the people receiving the service.

I know, I know - I see both sides of the coin as a HCP and a parent of a child with complex needs. Both are exhausting and challenging.

But it's real banging-your-head-on-the-wall stuff sometimes - the total lack of engagement despite all best efforts to help, support, understand, facilitate change, provide home visits, offer medication, listen, review and plan.

karmabeliever - I believe there was another case a while back about a girl who got sent to american fat camp funded by her local council - she did amazingly well, lost a stack of weight, learned how to cook healthy foods and what she should be eating and really enjoyed lots of the activities they offered. She came back to her mums, and guess what? The weight piled back on because her mother refused to change what she bought and she was holding the purse strings, so the poor child had no option but to eat rubbish again. The council iin order to help had given her a free gym pass, but it was completely inaccessible other than by car for the girl, and guess what? Her mother couldn't be bothered taking her!

If the parents won't change, the children stand no chance.

Fair point northerngirl, but I think it's worth giving this a shot, and sending the parents to an adult equivalent, before removing the children from their care. I think the siblings deserve this, because they deserve to remain together.