Social services taking babies away...

[lookattheshorts]

From mother's with previous mental health issues? Is this true?

Lots of my friends and family seem to be sharing the same story, the one of Kerry Blackaller. Has anyone else heard of her story?

I'll do my best to link the appropriate sources.

www.change.org/p/kerry-blackaller-help-get-lyla-blu-home-where-she-belongs-to-her-heart-broken-mommy-kerry/u/23400921

Are people being unreasonable to say social services do sometimes take children away when it isn't actually the right thing?

I would bet my mortgage that there is a lot more to this than meets the eye. Social services just don't whisk kids away. Sorry @lookattheshorts you're being incredibly naive here.

A reporter allegedly asked Donald Trump if it was ok for him to make statements not backed up by facts
He apparently said it was because “a lot of people agreed”with him
Lots of people sharing a post doesn’t make it any more factual.

Well number of shares does not validate a story
And the number of shares doesn't make her version more real.or true than what may be the actual.version.
Maybe she has a case and maybe she doesn't. We cannot know because we don't have access to psych reports (nor should we)
The mum may not be the best source. People can believe their own version it may be missing facts.

If she has a case she needs to speak to a lawyer.

The full story isn't really there though. It's very sad but it's probably the right decision for the baby.

You can't just go on with what the mother is saying. What about the dad's version, the neighbours. The person to alert SS in the first place?

That baby has been taken with good reason and that heartfelt speech won't make any difference.

This is mumsnet and nobody must ever say anything bad about social services and of course they never fuck up do they?

Ridiculous post. No one is claiming social services never screw up but we have absolutely no indication that they screwed up in this case because no facts have been presented.

Social services are massively underfunded but they're also stuck between a rock an a hard place. No one can say with 100% certainty whether a child will be safe - do you errr on the side of removing the child from the home and disrupting their bonding or do you err on the side of leaving the child in an unsafe situation and risk that child being seriously harmed.

I grew up in care.

It takes a lot, way too much IMO, for SS to take a child away.

Some of the kids I was in care with should have been taken away from abusive parents far, far earlier. By the time they were some were horrifically damaged physically and mentally.
It should be about what is best for the child, NOT what is better for the birth parents.

I wish SS would put the children first and take them away earlier.

As other posters have pointed out, we do not know the full circumstances so it cannot be assumed it's just based on the mothers mental health. As it's confidential we'll never know. I think it's a well known myth in society that social services just go round snatching babies for the sake of it. If a child is suffering neglect for any reason then too right it's needs should be put first.

@Orchardgreen

Was going to say the same myself but wasn't brave enough.

I believe that social services try and do what is right by the children. Do I also believe they make mistakes? Of course! Do I also believe that some social workers are shit? Absolutely!

I don't think of social services as the child snatching monsters a lot of people do. People often conveniently overlook all the help and support they can provide as well

A good friend of mine is head of Child protection for our local authority
She is upset most days by the conditions from the Social workers reports which aren’t quite bad enough for her to agree for the child/children to be taken into care.
She says you would be amazed at how low the bar is actually set

In my limited experience (from the NHS side) Children are only removed where very serious concerns have been raised, and only made available for adoption where everything has been tried and the biological parents have failed to even try to make changes.

Certainly SS make mistakes, but the mistakes I have seen have been returning children to negligent or abusive parents who continued to be negligent or abusive.

This case will have gone through full legal care proceedings with lawyers representing the parents and a guardian for the child also represented by a lawyer. A judge will have looked at all the evidence, heard witness testimony and made the decision that the mother can't meet the child's needs.

Social services might 'make mistakes' But to get to the point of an adoption order that would mean that many many people would have had to make the same mistake.

You have no idea what this mum might have done to this child or previous children. Petitions like this are completely pointless.

I also think that the majority of time social services try to do their best for the children.
How many posters on here have had to go NC with parents because their childhood was blighted by a parents mental health problems?

It's hard to tell from that link what the actual details of the case are. Is there more information that I'm missing, or are we just meant to accept the brief note that the child is being removed despite the mother having done nothing wrong? There isn't enough information there.

My partner's job involves working with women who have long-standing mental health problems, to support them through pregnancy and the transition into having a tiny baby. The system isn't perfect, but most LAs and the NHS work hard to make sure that people with mental health problems keep their children with them, where they belong. Previous - or even ongoing, managed - mental illness not a black mark against your name. From what I know from people who work in the system, it is a long and intricate process to get to the point where a child is permanently removed from its parents, and the parents are meant to be given many chances to change things.

I might be being hopelessly naive. But there isn't enough information here for me to know what's true anyway.

I don't know when that woman's baby was taken into care but it would have been some months back, but she's talking about hearing the baby call 'mum' from the cot? A baby who hasn't had her 1st birthday yet?
I'm sorry but that whole post is emotive fiction. I'm sure she misses her baby but that doesn't mean that account bears any relation to reality.

Removing a child is not a light hearted choice to make.

TBH if the general public knew the standards a lot of kids are living in with their parents, and still under SS and not removed, they would be shocked.

A couple of emotional articles and a cute photo are not facts.

actually:

Kerry has previously suffered with mental health, which she now well has under control. Mental health professionals say Kerry doesnt fit under their criteria to seek support from them.

suggests to me that the issues SS flagged up were not linked to her mental health. This is why MHPs are saying she doesn't qualify for their support. The petition makes the link between her previous mental health to the forced adoption; it doesn't seem to me that that's actually the basis of this decision.

The thing is the hard of thinking will always choose to believe these mawkish accounts.

NewGrandad and OrchardGreen - Go and play on the Baby Names threads on Mumsnet. Plenty of snidey comments there!

Adoptive mum here. Removal of babies from their mums and forced adoptions should definitely be a last resort. Our DD1 (now 9), is waiting for therapy for her Attachment Disorder, which is very common in adopted children. (Not always, DD2, her birth sister, doesn't have this.)

DD1 has so many anger issues, she has violent meltdowns, where she flings things around the room, lashes out at us and screams at us. She struggles with forming friendships at school, because she's emotionally much younger than her age. Her capacity to learn is impaired because she struggles to work independently and she often retreats into her own world.

It's a difficult one because SS rightly don't want to keep a child in limbo whilst giving the birth parents chance after chance to get their act together. (Tragically, my DDs' birth mum never has managed this.)

But I do think there's a tendency in some social workers to automatically assume the worst about birth parents. I saw this when I was temporarily on the other side of this due to my own MH issues (PTSD due to childhood SA.) DH and I were able to fight our corner, but for a lot of young mums without support, this would be very hard to do.

You do need to bear in mind that Social Services are unable to give the full story for confidentiality reasons. But that the mother can say anything without fear of retribution or contradiction.

It is not easy to remove a baby, there is a legal process. It's not just down to one person's say-so.

years ago a best friend was a foster carer - she said that the dc that she cared for were over the years coming through "later" & more damaged because ss were taking children into care later & more likely to "support" parents longer. What I witnessed as a community childminder supports this. SS -in general- will support families to keep sc there or try to get "kinship carers" (family) only in last resort will they take dc away - That does not mean that ss always are right or do the right thing they are individual but things are more likely to work in reverse. However, cut backs in all areas may mean that they cant support families & this ongoing support may not be able to be offered - who knows?

Reading some of her social media (which she has been ordered to take down by the judge) she said she has turned her life around since giving birth which in my experience (as a social worker) means the mother has ignored advice and services offered during pregnancy and has done the bare minimum since, whilst continuing to cause harm to the baby.

I agree with hoppinggreen- I have been shocked at how long children are left in horrendous situations, conditions that animals would be removed from. Yes, ss do make mistakes, but there are far more children being damaged every day by their home lives that don't get the help they need, that they would get if it were your family (because you would step in and take the children on).