Social Services trying to remove 3 day old prem (breastfeeding) baby from mother

[GreenMonkies]

Morgan Gallagher can confirm that yes, she has been asked to prepare an advocacy statement on behalf of a three day old baby, born at 35 weeks gestation. Yes, Birmingham Social Services are planning to remove the baby from mother, and take it to foster care until June. Yes, the baby is breastfeeding.

WTF??

What can be done about this? When will we start to support vulnerable mothers instead of just taking their babies away?

doesn't even begin to cover it.

This is not an ill-advised thread.

I am not claiming to know all the facts.

But I do know Morgan, and a couple of other people who are alarmed by this case, and none of them would be involved if there was no reason for them to doubt the reasoning behind Social Services intention to remove the baby.

Kerry Robertsons case was not known about by the public until after her baby had been taken away. Once it was out in the open action was taken, evidence was looked at properly and the situation resolved. This could easily be another case like this.

I also deal with Social Services, professionally, we are often involved with suspected cases of Non-Accidental Injury in my current job, and I worked with Special Needs children in the past. I also know that Social Services are human, individuals do have agendas of their own, and are just as likely to make assumptions and jump to false conclusions as the rest of us.

To say that Social Services are answerable to us by the "correct channels" is naive. They have to power to make details into secrets, remove children from parents and deny all contact or mention of them ever again, even when the evidence turns out to have been false and the parents were not abusing neglecting the children after all. A lot is swept under the carpet all the time by Social Services. Any one who thinks otherwise is far too trusting.

I am not saying I know all the facts in this case, I am merely drawing it to public attention, as it is one way of making Social Services accountable.

"when will we start to support vulnerable mothers instead of just taking their babies away" is highly emotive, un-factual language based on no facts in this case though GM. If you are 'merely' drawing it to people's attention that language is unecessary and inflammatory.

"Kerry Robertsons case was not known about by the public until after her baby had been taken away." yes it was. There were articles in the press months before and they were interviewed on scottish television. In fact there was a mamouth thread about it on mn at the time, and another one after the baby had been removed following the couple running away to ireland.

GreenMonkies, WannaBe's post just goes to show how easy it is to be mis-informed. With this sort of thing you are simply not in possession of one tenth of the facts, because you can't be. So magnify your comment that WannaBe has picked up on by 1000 times and you get a picture of how NOT informed you are on the case you are posting about.

There are ways to help to ensure the system works and that mistakes are picked up and that SS are accountable, but as I said, threads like this about specific cases are simply not one of them. I applaud your concern for families btw.

Ok, I agree with greenmonkies that the case should be highlighted now regardless of whether the right decision is to remove the baby or leave the baby there.

Birmingham is a Childrens Services Department that is not performing well and was declared unfit for purpose.
Birmingham Childrens Services use a shockingly high number of agengency workers and the case could be passed to a number of different people.
Birmingham Childrens Services have had a significant number of children already known to social services die over the past 3 years.

A 16 year old growing up in care will almost certainly face challenges as a parent. If the early relationship with her baby is ruined by limited contact and court battles they may never get over that bad start.

Birmingham social services need to be under scrutiny to ensure whatever decision they make is the best they can with the information available and not a snap decision. There is no real accountability through the closed family courts - so the only way a family can be sure SS will be accountable is if there is publicity for their case.

Good points ana - it's just a hard situation. Babies ARE sometimes very correctly taken from parents; highlighting every case where this is planned is all very well but can be so counterproductive FOR children; we need good social workers. We need not to make the entire profession and every decision it makes, subject to 'trial by uninformed internet posters' so that the job is just seen as the crappest place to be in the entire world!

But yes, I do take your point that scrutiny is necessary. I just think it needs to be scrutiny with responsibility

GM - How do you reconcile your obvious distrust of Social Services when dealing with them in the course of your job on a professional basis? Given you deal with Social Services within your job surely you would be aware of and distrustful of conspiracy theory whispering campaigns on internet forums? In addition how can you attempt to secure support to prove the misguided approach of Social Services in a case of which you do not possess the full facts?

OP - Get over yourself. The child is clearly at risk. What's better a dead breastfed baby or an alive formula fed baby? Ridiculous thread.

Don't know full facts of the case. However, is this Morgan woman is preparing an advocacy statement, then perhaps there is something in it. Don't know the point of the thread either, but people are getting well worked up - in some cases it seems because of the breastfeeding aspect of it .

What on earth does the fact that she is BF have to do with this? We don't know the facts, it must be a very extreme situation to warrant removing the child at 3 days old - most possibly a threat of harm.

Are you saying a BF baby should be kept with a violent, dysfunctional family? Would you have started the thread is the baby was FF?

This is totally bizarre.

The issue is that SS are supposed to try to keep families together and they are in theory supposed to protect a breastfeeding relationship as well. For a prem baby breast milk is important; wouldn't a supervised environment be most sensible if there are concerns. Eg. mother and baby being placed in a foster home together?

I'm not pretending to know all the facts but the problem seems to be that both the mother (16) and father (17) of the child are 'in care' rather than that they have done something specific to pose a threat. If this is a decision made based on risk factors rather than on actual evidence - while Birmingham SS are clearly not functioning well, that's a fact, not a slur against all social workers everywhere - then shouldn't people be up in arms about it?

And if there is any chance that the baby will be returned to the mother after a court process, would it not be more difficult for her to adjust to being a parent if the beginning of being a mother was crap, than if she got the support that she needs from the beginning? So removing the baby into separate foster care is quite possibly not the best approach to take - especially as contact between parents and the child is usually very limited.

There are loads of examples of SS making the decision to remove young children from families without actual evidence or reasonable concerns of immediate harm so its dangerous to make the assumption that the baby wouldn't have been removed without a good reason. Its just that parents can be jailed for speaking out in public and breaking the gagging rules for the family courts so we don't hear about them.
Forced Adoption
Justice for Families
Parents against injustice
and a good blog post 'Child-Snatching by the State: conspiracy theory or legitimate concern'

zebedee
what means that we know for sure that the baby is at risk

because we just completely beleive and trust in the all powerful ss

they have proved themselves to fuck up before

they have wrongly accused me of things too
they have also completely listend to a hv that doesn't know me and is saying things that aren't true...

As a mum of 3 premature babies, I'm afraid I agree with OP. In any case, what needs to happen for children to be taken away so very early? I know very little about SS but do we really not have the provision to supervise at risk children with their mothers during those crucial early weeks/months? My DS1 was taken into NICU (not the same I know) miles away from me and I was too sick to travel to him. Minute amounts of expressed breastmilk were couriered to him as it was that important for him. There is no doubt at all that it affected our ability to bond.
I'm not an at risk parent and so was able to develop my relationship with DS easily, but the trauma of that separation still haunts me 10 years on. The poor girl (sounds like she is still a child herself) will unlikel ever get overthis. Who the hell are SS to codemn this mother and her baby to years of traumatic relationship building. If she is managing to breastfeed it sounds to me as if already she is proving her desire to do right by this baby?

Why can't the mother go into care with her baby until June or whatever?

I'm sorry but I just don't 'get' this. It is alarming to say the least.

I think the most significant thing here is that if the baby is removed but returned with an apology, it it not just those early days that are lost, it is the whole breastfeeding relationship and the benefits to the mother and baby of that.

I think that is why this issue should be explored/challenged.

To suggest that it is better to be safe than sorry by removing the child is not the full story, and fwiw I have seen first hand the overzealous nature of social workers and the preference to remove children than support families.

Of course social services can make a mistake. This is why enforced removal is decided by the courts (not social workers) and why the court comes to a decision based on all available factors, including any advocacy statements made on behalf of the parents.

The day when internet talkboards become a factor in this decision would be a very bad one.

The option for vulnerable mothers to be cared for as a unit, with their baby, should be available in all areas - I have a friend who specialises in this form of fostering. It is not always suitable for every mother and baby, though. Some mothers need very intense care, round the clock, to protect their babies, and this can't be offered by a foster family.

There are reasons why in extreme cases a baby needs to be fostered from very early in life, why the mother cannot be permitted anything other than closely supervised access, and even why she cannot be permitted to donate expressed breastmilk - we haven't got a clue here whether any of this applies.

However, the court will have a clue. Thankfully, that's where the decision takes place.

From a professional point of view, the amount of cases I've read during the course of my work (solicitor with some experience in family law) where I've thought to myself "surely the child should have been taken away before this" greatly outnumber the ones I've read/dealt with in which I've fought a decision to take a child from her parents.

In my experience, SS do not embark on this for shits and giggles, ESP not in the current clime.

And it will all come down to an experienced judge ultimately - I'm sorry OP, but I know who I would trust with this child's future.

You point re BF is spurious. And this comes from someone who donated litres and litres of millk to NICU when I bf my boy. I know just how important it is for the special little ones.

I really haven't a clue what this case might be all about obviously, but I do think it is wise to keep mothers and babies together as a unit to preserve the breastfeeding relationship. Whatever the mother has done, the baby deserves her breastmilk, unless it is laced with crack of course . And if the mother is willing to sit there day and night and express milk to give the baby the breastmilk, I reckon that says alot.

I also knew a family who 'ruined' three children, they were taken away, and they had three more which weren't, but they were suffering with this crazy alcoholic couple. I suppose it really depends on the details of the case.

They make me utterly sick.
Have they offered that this young mother who is under 18 be homed WITH her baby in fostercare so she can breastfeed and be supported?
I very much doubt it.
I've seen this too many times, teen mums in less than perfect housing conditions, may have had depression etc etc, all things that could be overcome, do they try their best to keep babies with their mums? Absolutely not from the things I've personally seen.

You really do have to go some to have your baby removed at birth, whatever your feeding method! SS must have very extreme worries about the safety of the child. I don't think they remove enough children at birth - leaving the poor little mites with parents who are doomed to fail just on the off chance they might not. They are kids, not bloody experiments to see if they can get it right. I don't know the details of this case but I'd say it is extremely unlikely the baby is safe with the parents if SS want to remove so soon without even going through the usual pointless time wasting rigmarole of an assessment of just what level of child abuse / neglect will be inflicted before removing a damaged child, aged 3 or 4, who no one wants to adopt as they display such offensive behaviour as a result of being so ill treated. If SS spot a problem early, they are good to act on it, not bad.

I'm a mum to two boys now who are my life, social services took my first baby because I wasn't in the right place at that time (needed support) I could still have that child now if they had have helped, but they don't, they judge, if I'd ever done anything terrible to a child I wouldn't be able to keep these two, obviously.
They take babies from vulnerable mothers who need help. - fact.
They first seperate mother a child (even using voluntry care yet failing to tell mother its voluntry, as in my case) for upto a year to ruin the attatchment and make any adoption seem less like they're ripping said child from mothers arms, then convince a judge with various observations about how subject a isn't perfect and adoptive parents are far better, he wacks down his hammer and they all move onto the next case.
The rest of the public go on to tell themselves 'ah there was probably good reason, she is quite immature etc' to make themselves feel better

One day I'll do something to help girls in the situation I was in stay with their kids.
Mother and baby homes do a good job but SS dislike paying for them with all their budgets in mind.

They leave some children with very abusive parents, true.
But they're very quick to take babies from young vulnerable mothers who've done nothing wrong also.

One thing that puzzles me here is if social services had sufficient concern why did they not have the procedures in place to remove the baby at birth (and before an early birth at 35 weeks), but instead waited until after the birth and the beginning of establishing breastfeeding.

None of us knows the circumstances - and how often have we heard that, because there isn't a system of scrutiny - but it just seems so incredibly cruel to allow a situation where a mother has begun breastfeeding only for the baby to then be taken away from her.

There is a system of scrutiny in terms of how arrested people are cared for in police custody; there's a system of scrutiny in terms of how prisoners in HM prisons are cared for. Where is the scrutiny in terms of these kinds of decisions regarding mothers and babies?

We don't know what has happened here....how on earth anyone can comment on the rights and wrongs, I have no idea.

private case notes arent in public domain.no one can confidently comment without access to casenotes,statements,and social circs report