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.

What I do know is that if SS are concerned for the baby's health, there should be (and is in other places) the facility for the mother and baby to be placed under 24 hour supervision. This would allow her to keep her baby and maintain the bf'ing BUT would also minimise the (unknown to us) risks.

Therefore I think GM has a good point in bringing this situation up - SS have other options before removing the baby, why aren't they considering them?

this is all conjecture.no one here know full situation.gm has her agenda.we arent privvy to case notes,reports or decisions made.so all this they should/would/could/did is hypothetical speculation

OP: You are not helping anyone (least of all your mates, whether that's the parents in question or some self-appointed breastfeeding cheerleader you happen to know) by posting alarmist, fact-free rantings on the internet. Yes, social services make mistakes, but some very bad parents are good at whipping up support for themselves when they don't deserve it. A bunch of online sprites, however many personal axes they may have to grind re SS, BF or growing up in care, are not in a position to pass judgement on a case they know bugger all about. IF you are involved with this family, concentrate your attentions on finding them legal support etc.

We don't even know in this case if bf is good for the baby - the prem unit where my MIL worked had a high percentage of babies born prem because their mothers were substance abusers... She always said seeing newborns go cold turkey from herion addiction was heartbreaking, but sadly nowhere near as uncommon an occurence as you'd hope.

Thumbwitch, I find your posts sums my feeling really well. I agree that OP had ever right to bring the subject to our attention.

Maybe the wording is alarmist but I think on this type of subject, emotion sometimes takes over. If we take of the emotional bit of and look at the "is there really really no other way possible at all before removing the baby" message I think there is good subject of discussion here.

Maybe the problem with SS is that they get bad press whatever they do. They do not act fast enough when someone is at risk they get blamed (quite rightly so), they act and take away a baby on suspicion rather than hard fact to minimise risks and they are in for it too. SS issues are pretty much the only ones that leave me sitting in the fence because I know that I wish things would be dealt differently but I cannot help thinking that my emotional approach could potentially cause a lot of damage too.

In my ideal world, once SS are involved it would mean that there can only be winners. That the babies/children would be protected (not necessarely by being taken away) and that the parent in difficulty would get enough support to be able to break the cycle. it does not seem to happen often and there is always at least one looser. I assume that the emergency in some situations does not leave room for manouvre nor are the fund sufficient to have actual long running help rather than assessments.

Mother and Baby units are fantastic but few and far between and VERY expensive. As a result SS have to make a decision regarding risk and decide whether the criteria is met to use scarce resources in funding this. The fact that they have decided in this case NOT to do so speaks volumes.

Am hiding this thread now as these types of threads irritate the fuck out of me. A load of people totally unaware of all the facts pontificating about a decision to remove a baby.
Believe me the risks will be deemed to much for the BABY.

tiktok is definitely the voice of reason on this thread

we do not know and we cannot know what has caused SS to make this new decision

sometimes mothers are a danger to their babies

sometimes mothers refuse to stop seeing other people who are a danger to their babies

we do not know what triggered SS's concerns in this particular case because they cannot tell us

so all discussion becomes a little pointless

and I speak as someone who has been unjustly suspected (though not by SS) of harming my child

doesn't give me magical insights into all other cases of concern about children, though

Absolutely stewie
It takes a lot of resources and money to keep mums and babies together.
We do have to think about what our priorities are as a society. Being a mum I can see how vital it is to keep children with their mothers, despite socio economic factors, mild learning difficulties, etc..
I believe they should be together unless there is actual abuse happening.
Maybe more mothers should be social workers.
Or maybe social workers who do REALLY care about every individual case wouldn't be able to cope with the job. I doubt I could

I am a Mother to an adopted son, and my son was removed from birth mother in the hospital when she'd had him. He was taken back to her for BF for supervised periods for 3 days, and then taken into foster care. I'm really thrilled that he had those initial first feeds with birth mum, but having read the history of birth family and her own background, the decision to remove him at birth was not taken lightly. I realise that some of you are speaking from the viewpoint of creating the nurture etc from BF, but if a child is going to be removed and adopted for his/her safety etc, it really is in the best interest of that child to be removed from the bond with birth mother as sensitively as possible. Please don't underestimate the trauma that a baby can be affected by because of removal from birth family. Putting a child into foster care or a unit with the birth mother, only to remove that child permanently at a later date, could do untold damage to the child and the birth mother herself.
My son is now 8 months old, and we are engineering our bond and attachment with him every day - who knows what the future will bring for us, but I do know that the decision to have him removed from the birth family at the earliest possible juncture was absolutely the right one. Without knowing further details of this particular case, it is just conjecture, but I would just like to say that even though this prem baby was being breast fed, that is really not enough of a reason to keep him with birth mum if there are other issues attached. Removing children and putting them into care has lifelong implications, and these will all have been factored in, no doubt. In my opinion, far better to make a judgement call like this, if there is reasonable doubt, and to return the child safely in the future, than to leave the child open to abuse, neglect and who knows what else, by not acting quickly enough.