To be horrified by what I just saw on tv

[Mammajay]

I just watched Panorama I Want My Baby back on 8 London live. I know how vital it is that endangered children are taken into care but these poor parents have been the victims of gross injustice. Mums with vitamin d deficiency have given birth to children with vitamin d deficiency. The babies then suffered rickets and bone fractures. Doctors thought the babies had been abused and the children were taken into care. There were four families and only one got their child back. When a child died ( not one of the 4 families) the parents were charged with causing the death due to the fractures. The pathologist who did the post mortem found the babies bones broke as she handled the body and concluded the child had rickets and vitamin d deficiency so the charges were dropped. Watching the couple and the grandparents whose child had been taken into care going for the final visit before their much loved son / grandson was to be adopted was heart breaking. So, aibu, to think there should be some sort of official inquiry into such cases.

YANBU. Where were they when baby Peter needed them. However they are in a no win situation I suppose. If they take kids too quickly they're a shower of cunts. If they leave a child in an abusive household they're a shower of cunts.
I don't know if it's it the same case but I've heard about the family where in transpired after them being adopted out that the kids had brittle bones.
However by then it was sadly too late as No one could over turn the ruling because a child cannot be unadopted.

The thing is SS don't operate in a vacuum. Someone needs to inform them first. Then there is an investigation, medical report, court hearings etc. They don't remove children by themselves or make decisions by themselves. Ofc some make mistakes,ofc some are twats, however if everyone else involved did their job properly, cases like these would be much much rarer.

So when a child is removed wrongly, everyone else involved is equally to blame, particularly the judge as they make the final decision. SS don't remove children, court judgements do.

All that being said, YANBU to think that there should be more transparency in family court and serious case reviews/enquires when a child is wrongly removed,or not removed soon enough/returned to people that are a danger to them.

Interesting how the discussion immediately turns to social workers when by the sound of the OP, it was the doctors/medical evidence which led to the children being removed in these cases...

Children’s social care and the Police are damned if they do and damned if they don’t act. Having spent years dealing with child abuse, it’s not easy to tell when a child has been deliberately injured. You are very much reliant on the advice of medical consultants. Children’s social care don’t randomly remove children for no reason. There is a rigorous process for them to go through. Yes sometimes they get it wrong but more often than not they do a good job.

It’s an incredibly difficult situation.

We are, I think, the only European country with enforced adoption. It might be helpful to consider what other countries do.

A social worker doesn't choose to remove a child. The court does.

They're damned if they do and damned if they don't.

The thing I find hardest to swallow in those cases is that the adoptive family are happy to deny parents of their children, once it has been proven they were innocent of harming them. I wouldn't be able to.

I understand that adoption can't be undone, but presumably they could be adopted by the birth parents from the adoptive parents?

The court does listen to the social worker though Stackhead, it’s disingenuous to claim otherwise.

Iirc the social worker in the Baby P case went to court to request he was removed, but the court said no. But it was the SW's face splashed across the front page of the tabloids.

We are, I think, the only European country with enforced adoption. It might be helpful to consider what other countries do.

I don’t know if we are, but if adoption required parental consent then children could be left in children’s homes, or foster homes for their entire lives.

@Duckyneedsaclean Adoption is about what’s best for the child/ren, not the adults wishes. Contact with birth families is very traumatic for children in care and for those who have been adopted. Why would you want to subject children to additional trauma?

We are, I think, the only European country with enforced adoption

When done right, that is not a bad thing. It is actually the ideal, rather than have thousands of kids stuck in the foster system because the parents refuse to sign the adoption papers.

Just one story from one of those countries... woman has had 8 children so far. They are all in foster care and she won't let them be adopted or go on contraception because she likes having babies and visiting them from time to time.

What needs to be looked into here is the NHS, why are pregnant women suffering vit d deficiency undetected. Ricketts has been on the rise recently, these cases could have easily be avoided with proper screening of mother and child.

The medics got it wrong, very sad. But an adoption is a legal process. SS cannot overrule the law.

Yes it’s clearly not ideal to have children in the care system, I quite see that. On the other hand, I do think that adoption should only be in absolute extreme cases and yes sometimes it is, but sometimes it isn’t.

The court does listen to the social worker though Stackhead

If the court listens only to a social worker and doesn't do enough fact finding, enquires, ask for medical evidence from experts etc then that is the judge's fault. Just as it is when a child is not removed or returned and ends up being harmed further or worse.

And the dangers of a lack of vitamin D needs to be highlighted. When I was young this was seen as a disease of the past.

But if a baby has multiple fractures and medics are saying there is no medical reason for that except abuse, then that is an extreme case where adoption is appropriate. I know it was an illness, but anyone who could break a babies bones would never be a safe parent.

@Sunflowerdaisysummer Why do you want to prevent children growing up with a loving family? Have you seen the outcomes of children in foster care and care homes? Why would you wish that outcome on any child?

@SimonJT discovering when older that you were forcibly adopted because of a misunderstanding, your adoptive parents knew, and did nothing about it - definitely traumatic.

Being removed from your parents - definitely traumatic.

Being returned to your parents, who never harmed you. Maybe traumatic, maybe not. If only in the early stages of adoption (as one of the families mentioned above) - most likely in child's best interest.

Pregnant women should be informed about taking vitamin d in pregnancy, they are where I work.

Because simon I am hard pushed to think of a crueller act than removing a child from its birth parents, and it should only be done in extreme circumstances, no matter how ‘loving’ the adoptive family may be.

My two youngest were put up for adoption by SS (and adopted by us).

The alternative would’ve been that they spent their childhood in the care system, as their birth parents had shown that they could not put their needs first.

Whilst it’s horrendous when they get it wrong (and that definitely needs scrutiny) ,I think many more children would suffer under a system where it wasn’t allowed.

@Sunflowerdaisysummer define extreme circumstances.

@Sunflowerdaisysummer Would you consider a parent deliberate;y breaking a babies bones extreme?
Because that is what the judge thought was happening here.