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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Horrific - forced C/Section by SS to take baby into care.

252 replies

BohemianGirl · 01/12/2013 05:32

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/10486452/Woman-has-child-taken-from-her-womb-by-social-services.html

Words fail me.

The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, is an Italian national who come to Britain in July last year to attend a training course with an airline at Stansted Airport in Essex.

She suffered a panic attack, which her relations believe was due to her failure to take regular medication for an existing bipolar condition.

She called the police, who became concerned for her well-being and took her to a hospital, which she then realised was a psychiatric facility.

She has told her lawyers that when she said she wanted to return to her hotel, she was restrained and sectioned under the Mental Health Act.

Meanwhile, Essex social services obtained a High Court order in August 2012 for the birth “to be enforced by way of caesarean section”, according to legal documents seen by this newspaper.

The woman, who says she was kept in the dark about the proceedings, says that after five weeks in the ward she was forcibly sedated. When she woke up she was told that the child had been delivered by C-section and taken into care.

In February, the mother, who had gone back to Italy, returned to Britain to request the return of her daughter at a hearing at Chelmsford Crown Court.
Her lawyers say that she had since resumed taking her medication, and that the judge formed a favourable opinion of her. But he ruled that the child should be placed for adoption because of the risk that she might suffer a relapse.

The cause has also been raised before a judge in the High Court in Rome, which has questioned why British care proceedings had been applied to the child of an Italian citizen “habitually resident” in Italy. The Italian judge accepted, though, that the British courts had jurisdiction over the woman, who was deemed to have had no “capacity” to instruct lawyers.

OP posts:
HarryStottle · 01/12/2013 18:28

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Bonsoir · 01/12/2013 18:30

The strangest thing about this story is why she wasn't repatriated as soon as she fell ill.

deepfriedsage · 01/12/2013 18:42

What if all involved making decisions were not given full or factually correct information?

Thymeout · 01/12/2013 18:48

I don't find it strange Bonsoir. If she was ill enough to be sectioned, she'd have been in quite an extreme state. The pregnancy would have limited the drugs they could use to stabilise her and in itself might have made it difficult to find an airline to fly her - we don't know how advanced the pregnancy was.

Bonsoir · 01/12/2013 18:50

Even if she were too ill to travel, her next of kin should have been consulted.

DirtyDancingCleanLiving · 01/12/2013 18:56

I don't for one minute believe that she would have been restrained, sectioned and had a forced c section over just one panic attack.

There is nothing 'horriffic' at all in what I've read.

Just a few random facts about a case where most of the information is not available.

How can you possibly form a conclusion?

Thymeout · 01/12/2013 18:59

I don't think 'next of kin' carries the legal weight people assume it does. (At least from reading the Elderly relatives board.) And should their opinion carry more weight than the surgical team if her life, in their view, was in danger? Wasn't that why they had to go to a judge and the court of protection?

Bonsoir · 01/12/2013 18:59

I also have very little faith in the ability of the MH services of the UK to accurately diagnose an Italian, habitually resident in Italy.

MH is exceedingly culturally dependent.

ImagineJL · 01/12/2013 20:04

Perhaps she said her family in Italy abused her hence her coming to the UK. Perhaps she said they were plotting to kill her. People who are bilpolar can become paranoid and delusional. Or perhaps they really were abusing her. Who knows? Yes that may sound ridiculous, but that's my point - there are numerous possibilities in this case, and it's impossible therefore to form a sound view of it.

babynamechange · 01/12/2013 20:14

Everything sparklysilversequins has said.
It is quite possible that a mistake/misjudgement was made and concurred with at the time and which then simply snowballed giving each subsequent 'expert' limited and possibly scewed information. Once a decision has been made, other proffessionals are reluctant to go against it.

I have first hand experience of the court system and judges will be in exactly the same chain as the rest and very reluctant to be seen to go against the decisions of other judges or experts regardless of the evidence.

deepfriedsage · 01/12/2013 20:29

I think your right, baby.

Anyway thought you would like to know, John Hemming MP is posting on the other thread.

drudgetrudy · 01/12/2013 20:57

Yes babynamechange, agree that could have happened

Whistleblower0 · 01/12/2013 21:00

SS fuck up all the time. Their imcompantce knows no bounds. No reason to belive any different this time!

deepfriedsage · 01/12/2013 21:17

ALL professionals mess up, SS rely on other agencies to make decisions, imagine the type of decisions SS will have come to, using informatiin from plebgate police?

Whistleblower0 · 01/12/2013 21:20

All professionals mess up occassionally. SS do it all the time.

Worried3 · 01/12/2013 21:28

As an obstetrician, I cannot believe that there is not a LOT more to this story than is being described.

For a start, there has to be a clinical indication, whether for maternal health or the baby's, to perform a caesarean section. To do so without maternal consent for no reason other than a panic attack is vanishingly unlikely.

Secondly, this required a court order- so a judge was convinced this was necessary.

As ImaginedJL said, the NHS is unlikely to waste the considerable resources required to go down this route unless there was a compelling reason.

Of course it is possible that the doctors (obstetricians and psychiatrists), the nursing staff, social services and the judge are all morally corrupt and on a power trip- but is that really the most likely story? I don't think so.

deepfriedsage · 01/12/2013 21:32

Worried, say mh services and SS came to you with information you would trust them to give you the correct information? You would base your view for court on the information they gave you? What then if along the way, they misinformed you and in turn you misinformed a judge and undertook a needless c section?

Whistleblower0 · 01/12/2013 21:47

Very good post sage. I"m astonished that a professional such as an obsterician would not have thought of that, and would presumably take information given to her by SS at face value and not question it.

Worried3 · 01/12/2013 21:57

deepfriedsage,

Of course I would trust them to provide me with accurate information. Would I act on that without question? No, I would not.

I would need to assess a patient from an obstetric perspective before performing a caesarean section- if this patient did not present as expected (I may not be an expert in psychiatry, but I can perform a basic mental state examination), then I would be asking questions.

I would be asking plenty of questions about a case like this anyway- performing a procedure without consent (even with a court order) is not undertaken lightly.

In this case, I would be surprised if there were not 2nd and 3rd psychiatric opinion sought.

It is always possible that all the professionals involved have made a huge error. Then again, it is perfectly possible that they haven't. On the evidence presented it is impossible to say.

It is clear from your posts that you feel let down by MH services, I'm sorry you've had a bad experience, but not every professional is incompetent and not every decision made by a professional is wrong.

deepfriedsage · 01/12/2013 21:59

In my experience, from viewing our files, so called intelligent professionals trust each other to share factually correct information, in my experience they are incapable of passing on factually incorrect information. I even found some paperwork where a ht got carried away and created a who fantasy of our lie and presented it as fact to others, one small example, apparently my dc was on fb all day long at home, he just fantasies that happened he had no evidence to back it up, as it wasn't true.

sparklysilversequins · 01/12/2013 22:04

Me losing my phone was evidence of disorganised and lax parenting according to ds's Ed Psych. I lost it at a swimming pool on one of the four nights a week I used to take my 2 dc with ASD swimming. That was the only example she had Confused.

Worried3 · 01/12/2013 22:04

Whistleblower. I would never act blindly on information given by MH or SS in a case such as this. This is not something that is done on a whim.

As I said, I would be surprised if this was done on the opinion of a single psychiatrist or SW.

There would have to be very compelling reasons for a court to allow this.

As I said, it is possible every single person here has made a huge mistake. It is also possible they haven't.

deepfriedsage · 01/12/2013 22:06

We were labelled as primary mentally ill when we were not by mh and hospital, turned we were not primarily mentally ill and I nearly died, we are all ill as a result of the cockups, they missed very serious physical health conditions, I have no respect at all now for any professional in any field, a bunch of idiots able to pass exams with no common sense. One Pratt of an obstrician in my complaint response about why they missed it in me over a decade ago was a joke they wereso obviously cluesless. I am effing brain damaged due to negligence and am poorley educated yet I worked out what was wrong and got us to the right drs, not so called professionals.

Worried3 · 01/12/2013 22:12

Yes sage, in your experience. You clearly have had a bad experience, and if your case is as you have presented, then the professionals involved had not acted appropriately.

However, to then extrapolate that to essentially calling all professionals incapable of doing their jobs, is nonsense. And slightly offensive.

Some of my patients are utterly irresponsible and some of them are totally unreasonable. Most are perfectly rational, reasonable and sensible people. By your reasoning, I would decide all patients are irresponsible and unreasonable and act accordingl- which would be ridiculous, wouldn't it?

Of course professionals will make mistakes, and where they do they must be held accountable for them. Most people do a good job within the resources they are given.

edamsavestheday · 01/12/2013 22:16

The court of protection is not perfect and has been criticized for some unhappy decisions.

The fact that lots of professionals are involved should be a safeguard against mistakes but it can be the reverse - making it harder for anyone to question the established path of decisions.

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