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?

Also something few people are considering (because who wants to) is that few people want to adopt a difficult child who has had problems with neglect or abuse so of course SS are trying hard to keep such children with their families. People want babies. I have known babies be taken at birth from mothers. It happens and it's not always every time going to be right.

^ If SS took them away sooner instead of leaving them in shitty situations then less would be damaged and more adopted.

Quite a few of the kids at the home I was in were desperate to be adopted, but they were 'too old' by that point.

Obviously I can’t comment specifically, but in my job I have come across case files from families who have done campaigns like this and every single one has had a fucking massive backstory that the family won’t reveal because it’s not in their interests and SS can’t reveal because it’s confidential.

Just as an example (this is made up but gives a general impression of the sort of thing:

Family’s story: Ellie, 23, suffered mental health problems as a teenager which resulted in the loss of her first child Lucy to Social Services and put up for adoption against Ellie’s wishes. Ellie is now fully recovered and has given birth to a daughter, Emily, who was removed at birth and is also being adopted. This is so unfair, Ellie is now well and ready to be a mother and deserves a second chance. Ellie is being picked on because social workers have targets to meet and young white children are the easiest to get adopted.

Real story: Ellie’s mental health problems were caused by the massive amounts of Meth she ingested in the last 3 months Lucy lives with her. Lucy (18 months) was admitted to hospital by burns caused by an electric heater left unguarded whilst her mother was incapacitated due to drugs. Ellie had turned away repeated offers of help and support and hidden her problems from authorities who offered help. There were older injuries Ellie said must have been caused by unspecified ‘boyfriends’ who came to her house and supplied her with drugs. We believe these boyfriends were men Ellie did not know who she slept with for cash whilst Lucy was on the premises. Lucy also showed signs of previous sexual abuse and her mother was uncooperative with assisting to identify who had caused these or the injuries and she was subsequently convicted for neglecting and physically assaulting Lucy.

During her second pregnancy Ellie refused to cooperate with authorities regarding assessment of her home, health or parenting abilities, failed several drug tests and was reported by police to be associating with known pimps and dealers. Ellie’s family deny this and her mother, Vera, has requested Ellie be placed with her. All of Vera’s six children spent most of their childhood in care due to her alcohol issues and prioritisation of DV relationships above her children so this has been declined.

But they will never, ever give you a whiff of the second story.

Gingerrogered, that's precisely my experience too.

Social services don't have the time or resources to just go around 'taking babies' from women with mild mental health problems. They have no right to reply to what the families say in the media or on social media. Families don't always even know the story. But even in theoretic debate like this there's only so much professionals can say.

Gingerrogered My experience too. So many kids were Lucys.

I do think SS make errors of judgement more frequently than admitted and I do think children are sometimes removed from mothers who could have coped with support

Any evidence for this or just a hunch??

Tbh I work in a related field and know a lot of circumstances where children are still with parents in shocking circumstances.

Not, it isn’t something that I can give evidence in the form of statistics for as you know.

I can tell you I have encountered five babies removed from their mothers who IMO should not have been.

I was taken into care at a young age and adopted around the age of 3. Had the internet and social media been as big if a thing in those days as it now i believe my birth mother would have written something very similar to what was written in the link OP posted.

Looking through my case notes my mother had always denied any kind of neglect, abuse or situations where I was put at risk. She refused to cooperate, often criticising SS for trying to take her baby, being evil etc etc. and how much she loved me and was heart broken by what was going on and everything else. She was an unwell lady, she had me at a young age and just didn't know how to look after a baby nor cared to make the effort to either. She suffered from BPD, depression and a myriad of other health problems. She would often go on nights out leaving me alone in the flat for 12 hours at a time (as a baby), bought home multiple men: one of who was a known convicted paedophile and another who allegedly was the cause of a non accidental head injury to myself (they both blamed each other).

There were alot of other things which made her an unfit parent but this is already too long and is quite stressful to talk about. SS tried everything to help her better herself as a parent, gave lots of support, saw me in a contact centre but it got to the point where she still wasn't changing. Even at as young of an age as 3 those events in my early years have had a massive impact on my life now. I have grown up with attatchment issues, struggle to form any meaningful relationships and when I do often sabotage them because I feel I am unworthy of the love. I get angry alot of the time, have engaged in risky behaviours in the past and generally just struggled mentally alot through my life.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is people will always say how they were the perfect parent and are so broken up but there are ALWAYS two sides to every story and forced adoption is always a last resort, as in my case, where there were multiple court hearings, foster care placements etc. I don't know what would have happened to me or how my life would have turned out had I stayed in my birth mother care but I don't wish to find out, the length of time it was left had enough of a lasting effect!

TL;DR there are 2 sides to every story and forced adoption is always the last resort, and often left later than should be. Not to say SS don't sometimes make mistakes, because they do, but all the facts should be looked at before accusations and petitions are out foward.

I can tell you I have encountered five babies removed from their mothers who IMO should not have been.

I'm guessing if you knew the real story instead of the no doubt edited stories from the family/mother those 5 babies would be reduced to 0.

From what I've read (memoirs of foster carers who have cared for children in the system) taking children out of the home is always a last resort, and in some cases the children are actually able to be returned to their families. On top of that it is usually several months before a child's ultimate disposition (i.e. return to family, placed for adoption) is decided.

I've seen 2 "unborn baby alerts" in my clinical practice. These were cases where women were known to be pregnant and SS told us to call them as soon as the woman came in to give birth. In both cases these ladies had previous children who were taken into care and there was no indication that they would be able to take care of the new baby (substance use issues, no prenatal care, etc).

I don't know this case but I do have experience of SS becoming involved due to MH in pregnancy.

I am fairly educated, speak with a middle class accent (or so I have been told -whatever that is) and yet was in the care system myself and as such had developed significant MH problems that came to a head during my pregnancy

My experience was I did come across one gun ho SW who was ready to have my baby taken unless I jumped through x number of hoops... (which she discovered I was already jumping through off my own back proactively trying to make sure I did my best for my kid e.g. Therapy, support groups, specialist midwife etc)

Then I gave birth and was fortunate enough to be in an MBU for a time which probably saved me losing my baby

I had a lovely SW then who definitely was never considering removing the child and closed the case quite quickly

What both gun ho and lovely SW and tons of support agencies and midwives missed - was that I was in an abusive relationship with a very clever manipulative man and he was having a huge impact on my MH and has now affected my child badly in the years it took me to wake up and get out. I was very good at hiding the abuse and blaming my own MH, he was very good at blaming my MH too!

Along the way I've met many women who've been through things like me... and honestly I can say I do see a difference in terms of the treatment of those who appear better spoken, those who you can automatically tell have had a difficult childhood themselves from the moment they speak

I'm obviously super glad I haven't lost my child and we're okay now. I do think back though and think if only you had really known everything or I spoke less well... would you still have let me be a mother or taken my kid away?

Ironically the "support" bwahahaha, yeah right! I got from abusive man which was a lovely front to all and sundry was one of their "protective factors" so I was trapped into staying with him for a while even if I had have woken up to the fact it's not normal to have to control your baby's every movement so as not to "stress out" some dick, or other stupidity I now can't believe I ever put up with (like pushing me around in front of my kid as long as he never left a bruise I could ever show to anyone)

No, they don't always get it right.

I can tell you I have encountered five babies removed from their mothers who IMO should not have been.

You've actually encountered the babies have you? Because that seems unlikely. In fact, you've encountered 5 sets of parents whom you have formed an opinion about based on who knows what.
Face it, you're not qualified to make such a judgement, so don't.

partyanime since you didn't disclose this abuse, and there was no external evidence, how would you expect social services to have known about it? You were the one who concealed his abuse from social services yet they are at fault for not knowing about it?

I didn't disclose it no. But I desperately wished someone would click and ask a few more questions, and then prayed they didn't on the other hand in case that meant baby being taken away

A lot of women hide abuse. I would expect trained social workers to be alert to people they work with hiding things from them.

My ex even got in there first on one visit to say he'd slapped me and why before I could say anything. They just bought his story ffs as a valid reason to "gently slap" (his words) your pregnant wife across the face.

But then we seemed the middle class couple on the outside.

I watched a programme a few years ago about similar in my area, where social services removed babies from birth from 2 couples because of various issues. One couple had already had several children removed & were hoping to keep this one. The other was a young girl in a very abusive relationship & they removed her child because she wouldn’t leave the baby’s father.

It was incredibly sad, but I remember the young girl had many opportunities to spend time with the baby and make changes (social services were adamant she couldn’t keep the baby if she remained with its father), but she wasn’t willing to do so, and they put the baby up for adoption after a few months (the girl knew when D-Day was going to be). It was so, so sad but the baby’s needs had to come first.

I do know the real story kelly; I was there in a professional rather than personal capacity.

Social services don't remove children, courts do. Given the confidentiality surrounding this kind of situation you will never know the reasons the assessment of risk was made and why the court made the decision to remove. I agree with PPs the threshold to remove is incredibly high, too high in some circumstances and the legal process is lengthy. If this decision has been made it's been made with reason, based on facts and more assessments from all kinds of professionals than you can imagine. But sure believe an online petition.

I've seen another side of SS, helping, where 2 families the children were removed, stayed with family.

the SS case was shocking, lies, assumptions, factually incorrect information. The sw'ers seemed to be on a mission to try to get both sets of children removed.

When we saw the case files we were all shocked. My parents are both retired sw'ers and they were unimpressed.

immortalmarble Sorry, I don't believe that. I just don't. It's incredibly difficult for a child to be removed. 5 removed with no fault to the parents? No way.

I didn’t say ‘five removed with no fault to the parents’

I said five removed who IMO should not have been.

You can disbelieve all you like but I’m not going to be told that my experiences and knowledge are not true.

Sometimes, SS get it right. Other times they make the wrong call.

I suspect my DDs' birth mum would have given a similar account about losing their children to the care system as well. She refused to cooperate with SS or go for any ante natal care, and her baby (DD1) had a traumatic birth, born in their bathroom, she very nearly died. (Birth mum has had 2 still births as well as 4 children taken off her.)

There was alcohol and drug misuse involved as well, and also DV. Birth mum has learning difficulties as well, and her partner (my DDs' birth dad) had a chaotic upbringing as well.)

It's very sad, as there's no doubt that she loves her DC. But there was no way that she and her DP could have looked after them.

SS are not guiltless in this. She grew up in the care system herself and was in at least 10 different homes as a teenager. But this doesn't mean that the decision to remove her DC wasn't the correct one.

your professional opinion is fine - but to remove those 5 babies there would have needed to be evidence that stood up in court

Parents can be lovely, and kind and really love and care for their kids - but they are NOT the focus - the fundamental needs and safety of the child IS - so how lovely/reformed/trying hard/off drug for now etc the parents are will mean jack if you can't be sure the child is safe from significant harm.

Sadly even taking babies into care at birth wont undo the damage we now know starts in the womb

and making the wrong call be removing them is still better than the other wrong call!

live children can be returned

Actually no, they can't be returned if adopted.

And the care system whilst it is definitely preferable to children being killed or severely neglected by birth parents causes a lot of issues itself and often significant harm to a child. Sometimes it's a difficult call to make as to which is the best for a child. I've worked with kids in care myself and been in it and met many who possibly would have been better off staying in the original shit situation with a birth family