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?

In any situation where you have to make decisions based on unknown information (in this case, what the child's life would be like with their mother), you will have false positives and false negatives.

I.e., sometimes children will be taken away who should have been left with their mum. And sometimes children will be left with their mum who should have been taken away (most famously Baby P.)

When you're designing protocols, you have to decide which way you'd rather err. Would you rather take no chances and risk putting some children into care who might have done all right at home? Or would you rather take more chances and risk more children ending up victims of neglect and abuse?

In this country we have the Children's Act, which means that the best interests of the child come before the interests of the parent. We have also decided as a nation that we don't want any more children to end up like Baby P. That means that, yes, social services take more children into care than they used to (care proceedings are up by 130% in the last ten years). But that's because we think false negatives (Baby Ps) are more important than false positives (borderline parents who might well have ended up doing okay.)

I don't know. But I do know one social worker personally and she used to come home from work crying all the time because of the bullies she worked with. Her manager told her "the nice ones never stay".

We often come across children who went through care proceedings as babies and stayed only to be seriously harmed and taken into care later too late for adoption or to avoid long term harm

From personal experience I would agree that the bar is set extremely low. Children have to be experiencing extreme neglect or very serious abuse for SS to even consider removing them from the family home. The child will always be at the centre of the decision making, but trying to maintain and support family relationships will be an integral part of this. If a child is removed this is generally only temporary, there are many cases where children are fostered by other family members or close family friends whilst the parent(s) are given help and support to provide suitable care for their children going forward.

I know many people with significant MH issues who are parents and who are offered support when required, but there is never a suggestion that the children should not remain in the family home.

Of course there are always situations where mistakes are made, and who knows, this may be these case here. However none of us know the details of the situation, and whilst I feel for her deeply, as whatever the circumstances I cannot imagine the pain of having a child taken away, I would not want to support the campaign if the actions of SS are absolutely in the best interests of the child.

I fostered quite a lot of babies and young children in the 80s, and unless things have changed, I'd say it's very difficult to get a child taken away from you. Sometimes I felt that it seemed as if a child had to be hurt before that happened because social services and the courts felt that mothers should be given a chance despite having ill treated previous children. There is usually more to these cases than is presented by these petitions. There will have been more than one psychiatric evaluation, for a start.

I haven't read anything about the case

The thing is though that even if Kerry is now completely well, and there are no concerns now about her parenting her child has been brought up by someone lose and formed bonds with that family. After experiencing one traumatic separation from her main carer already in her short life it would be very very wrong to remove her again from a presumably secure and happy environment.

It's sad all round but ultimately children aren't possessions.

When i worjed in acute psychiatry there were lots od parents with serious mental healrh problems who still had their children some very young children too wether that was always in rhe best interests of the child is another matter .

The problem with things like this is you only ever hear one side of the story because SS are not allowed to comment.

My experience is after leaving a seriously domestic abuse relationship I had one phone call with a social worker who questioned me about how I felt about the relationship ending and what I am doing to safeguard my children that was it. I had half a dozen malicious ss reports made which were followed up with a phone call.

I know my children have a far from ideal childhood but social services deem me "good enough" so arent interested. It seems hard to actually get them involved

The problem with things like this is you only ever hear one side of the story because SS are not allowed to comment

Also family court hearings, where the decisions are actually taken, are confidential so we don't know what evidence was presented or on what basis the decision was taken. Unfortunately some people accept anything the mother (or parents if the father is involved) say uncritically.

Social Services make mistakes. So do the courts. But there is no way of knowing whether or not they were right in this case.

A family court judge commented about a year ago IIRC that he had found that the bar of what was considered acceptable before a child is removed had gone down over the years. So children are now removed sooner, in circumstances where previously they would have been left. But, he said, at the same time the bar of how bad things have to be before SS provide support has gone up. Due to lack of money and staff, families do not get SS support until things are really, really bad.

He said that in some areas, the two bars had now crossed over. The conditions for a child to be removed will be met before a family will meet the threshold to get support.

That, this judge found thoroughly shocking, and I agree.

In my limited experience SS are very reluctant to remove children even in the most horrendous circumstances. I used to live next door to neighbours-from-hell, the two adults of which regularly had violent and noisy fights in the night, with the kids screaming and crying. I never had any evidence that the kids were subjected to violence but the atmosphere must have been terrible and two of the three children did indeed have serious mental issues, as did the parents. Because the adults were disruptive, aggressive addicts, and horrible to live next door to, I regularly complained to the Council and Social Services, but while there was intervention, the kids never got taken away. SS told me that doing that was a last resort and they needed evidence that the children were actually in physical danger, which was lacking here. So I imagine that there will be a back story in the Kerry Blackaller case, which we don't know. Things like petitions and newspaper articles are seriously inadequate to judge such cases.

I think people mean well but are being credulous. People who's children have been taken away for bad reasons (eg claims of Satanic Abuse) use the appeal process and the courts, not online petitions.

It takes a lot to have kids removed, takes a long time as the court process is very slow and parents are given a lot of chances. Kids tend to be kept in limbo for a while in a lot of cases.

She mentions herself she was told to not have any more children for a period of ten years... there must have been a lot of issues for this to happen.

She then got pregnant, and they did what they said they would.

There a numerous other children in this situation already being cared for by the state.

This is a complex case and so much more than writing a paragraph for a just giving page.

Yes I too as a Mother can hear the paid in the poor woman's words, but it's not words that are needed here is it, it's actions.... every single day turning up and being a Mum, providing security and care - every day....

Babies taken at birth are usually in cases where previous children were taken first.

These links are from January so this is a pretty old case?

I had PND after the birth of DS1. I’ve been on medication ever since. I’ve seen health visitors and doctors who know my situation. I’ve since had another baby so I’ve seen midwives who know. None of them have ever made a referral to SS. So it’s not the case that every parent with MH issues will have SS involved. It is case dependent.

Social services don’t take babies away, the court system - or Children’s Hearing System in Scotland - make the decision based on a body of evidence that shows the child cannot be cared for safely and consistently. It’s incredibly difficult to get enough evidence to remove a child from their parents permanently. If anything children are left for too long in very poor situations rather than being removed too quickly.

I agree with the above. As a kinship carer I sat in on Children's panel hearings and LAC meetings, I saw how SW went above and beyond to try and keep a family member's child with their parent, before coming to the conclusion that it wasn't in the child's best interests. This wasn't even the first child involved. Of course if you were to blindly believe what the parent says, then they were against her from the start. It's not the case in our family, and I doubt it is for many others. I feel sorry for the parents who are in this situation, but it's never as simple as they make out.

He said that in some areas, the two bars had now crossed over. The conditions for a child to be removed will be met before a family will meet the threshold to get support

Sorry, that's just not true. Every area has child in need and child protection cases which by definition have not met the threshold for legal proceedings. That judge was talking out of his butt.

Also when removed the SS normally look in the family and close friends for someone to take the children first too.

Ss last resort is to remove a child from their parents. They do everything they came to keep children with parents but in some cases its safer for the child to be removed. Sad but true. No idea about this case but remember the ss cant say anything and mum can say whatever she wants.

Max I agree my links aren't great but that's because I've googled and can't find a more non bias report

That's your idea of a "report"?? That's your idea of "non bias"?

Posters on this thread are saying, "oh, that's her side to the story", but she hasn't even given her side! All I can see is are her (understandably) distressed ramblings about her baby having been taken away.

From what I can see, she doesn't state what her version of events actually is. Even a completely unbalanced, partial account of what actually happened would be an improvement on what you've linked to.

I feel for her, but I feel much more for her children, based on my experience of working with children in care.

She said she used to have mental health and now she doesn't.

Well we all have mental health.

This brings to mind the "Missing, please find Sharon" social media posts which "lots of family and friends share" with no idea it's been started by Sharon's abusive parents or ex-boyfriend trying to track her down.