Disabled mums having children taken away by Childrens Services

[beachhouse]

Are there any mums out there who have or are still going through the process of having thier children legally abducted by childrens services? I have a brain tumour and suffer numerous seizures because of that. I moved to Brighton 18 months ago and asked for a care plan to be put in place just in case I became seriously ill over time and was declined on several occasions. I lost my speech and had the left side of my body paralysed by one of these horrendous seizures in March this year and during that time childrens services were roped in by hospital staff and my 'cariing' father to remove my 3yr old and put him in foster care until I had fully recovered. I recovered from it but still haven't got my child back as promised! I had an EPO slapped on me while still unable to move or speak and have spent countless times attending court hearings and medical assessments. Weight loss is 4 stone since March! Now childrens services are trying to get me on Mental Health reasons because of the brain damage! I go to a group called PROUD on a Weds to talk to other mums who are disabled or thier children are and I dont 'feel tared with the same brush' by these parents which is great. People are very quick to assume that because my child has been legally abducted - I must have hurt him but thats not the case! No visits over Chirstmas to see my baby and the next hearing not until March!!! Please tell me if this seems like discrimination to you.

Just awful.
Sorry I've nothing useful to offer you. But a bit of a bump and suggest that you could maybe post this again somewhere else on the site, 'legal advice' maybe? Or I'm sure there's a section for disabled parents, maybe someone else has had a similar fight.
You should be entitled to help (direct payments, whatever) with your DC - not have to fight to get him home with you after such an unfortunate thing to happen to you.
Good luck.

I'm very sorry to hear that. I'm afraid some SWs can be just as prejudiced towards people with disabilities as the general population. Have you contacted the British Epilepsy Assocation, or found any other charities that might help?

Please get in touch with the Disabled Parents Network, they are incredibly helpful and supportive in these kind of situations. So sorry this is happening to you, SS should know better.

I have no useful advice for you, I just want to bump your thread and say that as a foster carer I would be very uncomfortable about taking a child under these circumstances.
You say you wont see your LO over Christmas. I realise SS can't arrange this because they are closed. What sort of relationship do you have with the carer?. Maybe they would they be willing to arrange a contact between the two of you. I have done this before at Christmas with parents who are no threat to me or my family. Maybe they would let you pop round to see your LO on Christmas morning, I would but I understand this is not an option many carers would take.

That is terrifying, I am so sorry. Surely that is discrimination of the most extreme kind? I hope you get your child home soon, there are a few journos around, would you think of doing a story. I know all this faustian pact with the devil stuff but maybe they could help, just take care how you do anything like that.
Keep us updated! Good luck and stay brave.

get yourself the best laywer you can, check how many child processings they have dealt with.
Ask SS in writing, what their concerns of risk are? Ask them to back it up with evidence. Give them a time to reply by.
Note down everything.
What are their reasons?

I have heard of this happening with a mum with acquired brain injury.

Get a lawyer and fight them.

Please phone 0808 801 0366 - Family Rights Group helpline.
And go to: [http://frg.org.uk/need-help-or-advice/our-advice-service]]

Their advice sheets are free to download and I can see that one or two might be of great help to you.

Their trained advisors are great - really practical. Monday - Friday 9.30am - 3.30pm.

I agree with another post - get a lawyer - you should qualify for legal aid/assistance and fight this. You might also consider contacting your MP. You probably need help and support but the SS are going about this in entirely the wrong way it would seem. Don't despair.

sorry - frg.org.uk/

It sounds to me as though you need to prove to them that there is nothing wrong with your mental health, and if there is, it is nothing that will impact on your son. How is he - have you been able to see him at all?

Has your child moved from CP to a LAC plan?

You are waiting to long between hearings, the average is 12 weeks.

However, if your father was unwilling to care for your child then he had to go into foster care. See it from that POV. Oncre a child has needed foster care, for whatever reason, SS has to investigate to see if that risk, still exsists.

What should have happened is that you should have now been given a parenting assessment. You should have been sign posted to other agencies for outside support. You should (on average) be given at least 4 hours contact per week, is that happening?

You have to understand from an SS POV, they cannot put the child at risk. Funds are not in place to support disabled mothers (and believe you me most SW's would love them to be). So the assessments should be going ahead, as long as they are not dextramental to your health.

Have you spoke to your doctors? What is there take as they will be being asked for their input?

You do need good legal advice and go to all of your appointments with SS.

So SW's would rather pay to keep a dc in foster care than to support a disabled parent? Why?

How is it possible to understand that from an SS POV? That is disgusting, discriminatory behaviour. As is only allowing 'at least 4 hrs contact per week'. In this situation I would be 1) Expecting my dc to be released home to me as soon as I was physically able (IMO, not in SS opinion) to cope with looking after them, and 2) If it was not possible to get a hearing quickly enough, I would be expecting at leat 4 hrs contact A DAY.

This parent has not been neglectful, she happened to develop an unaviodable disability due to a brain tumour. Having a brain tumour does NOT mean you are an unfit parent, and neither does having epilepsy. Just because the parent needed some support when she was ILL IN HOSPITAL AND LET DOWN BY HER FAMILY it does not mean that there should be any issue with her having her dc resident with her.

It is an utterly disgusting, discriminatory travesty that SS would rather pay a Foster Carer to look after a disabled parent's dc than to put into place the supportive measures needed to help this woman care for her dc, purely for financial reasons.

And of course the risk still exists that this mother may need future respite care if she needs to go to hospital again, due to the fact that her family is obviously unsupportive. Does that mean the OP is an abusive or neglectful parent that should have their dc taken away from them permanantly?

yy wibbly disabledparentsnetwork.co.uk you have a legal right to help with parenting as a disabled person.

Hunty- i necer said SW's didn't want to support disabled parents, i said that the funding isn't given to do so.

I have read your previous posts and you have a very blinked view.

The decision to return a child has to be after an investigation which includes doctors reports, or would you have every seriously/dangerously Mentally Ill person being able to dictate that they should be looking after their child, for example?

That is what residency should be decided on. It isn't SS fault that the OP doesn't have family or a partner to take the child, this is why there has to be a level of safeguarding.

Children need stability and need to feel secure, foster care can be the best option whilst a parent recovers.

Less contact can be better for the child.

Get off your soapbox once in a while and consider the welfare of the child, not just the parents here and now wants.

The child, in this case from what I have read (obviously I am not party to the OP's case notes), IS better off with the mother, though the mother may need some support if she is hospitalised. That support would have to take the form of Respite Care, granted - but that should not be a barrier to the child being ordinarily resident with the OP.

It isn't the OP's fault that she doesn't have anyone to take in the child either, you know.

And HOW can less contact be better for the child if they are in FC for a reason that is NOT neglect or abuse? It is better for SS pocket, in as much as they would have to spend time and money supervising longer contact - but SS NEED to remember that this child ISN'T in FC due to neglect or abuse, but parental illness.

So, the child should be taken from it's disabled parent because there isn't funding to support that parent to keep the family together? Because I'm sure every SW I have heard has said that they do everything they can to keep the family together - but if they aren't providing adequate support for a disabled parent, then they AREN'T doing everything they can to keep that family together.

And the reason I am 'on my soapbox' as you put it - is because I have been on the receiving end of SS as a disabled Lone parent, when I asked them for some help. They basically said to me that I either went away quietly and didn't ask for any help in writing, and got on with things on my own, or they would start care proceedings as that was their only 'financial' option.

So the reason I am 'on my soapbox' is because I have personal, first hand experience of a situation similar to this. I am just lucky because I have a good circle of friends who stepped in to help me.

Finances should NOT be the deciding factor in whether to keep a child in FC if they are not being neglected or abused. It should be down to need, and a disabled lone parent is going to NEED more support to cope in times of illness. It DOES NOT mean that they are an abusive or neglectful parent.

And I have experienced VERY outdated, antiquated attitudes towards lone parents with epilepsy in SS. Some people still think that seizures are a MH issue, and some of THOSE people still work for SS. Not all SW's, but some. And it only takes it being the ONE that is allocated your case. Just saying.

Unfortunately, disabled people have rights these days. Inconvenient, but we do expect to lead more or less 'normal' lives; have relationships, sex lives, children, even jobs! Some of us are quite aspirational. And we are often very good parents; our children get very well educated because we're more available and less active

no advice but keeping this in active convos and i hope you get some help, ihave a 3 yr old boy myself and reading this has brought tears to my eyes :( i am so sorry you are going through this and i hope you get some good support and help.

imo it is awful that they have done this, no contact over xmas and no more hearings till next march?!!!

i think you need a specialist solicitor in disabled rights/child issues to help you out, there must be something like that somehwere?

disabledparentsnetwork.co.uk will get you accurate legal advice. I had experience of Soc Services Children & Families getting all foster care on me before DPN informed me that I needed Disability unit instead. Good luck!

The scary thing is, is that I am under the impression that Birdsgottafly is a SW. . .

Attitudes like hers are the reason disabled Lone parents are frightened to ask for help, even when they are hospitalised.

To have an attitude like that as an active SW, in the 21st Century, IMO, is against the equality act 2010, and the DDA. Surely unless the dc is at risk of NEGLECT OR ABUSE, it shouldn't matter WHAT disability the parent has, or how much help they need in order to effectively parent their dc, it should be provided regardless of financial implications. And I am including MH problems there, unless there is a PROVEN risk of neglect or abuse as a result of that MH problem.

There should be NO disability that prevents someone from being a good parent if provided with the correct, tailored support in this day and age.

Until an investigation is done, no-one knows if the child is at risk of neglect, because of the parents disability.

The OP could be in the situation where she is unable to care for the child, yet, but unable to see that.

She could just as easily be fighting the childs GP's or it's father.

If you look at my original post, i asked the OP if a parenting assessment has been done yet, as it should have been and i advised on timescales.

Btw i am widowed as well as being a SW, my husband was complexly disabled and i have two children with SN, what i was giving was practical timescaled advice based on best practice, not personal opinion.

There should be tailored support, but there isn't, if the parent hasn't got family to help, then they lose residency, no SW agrees with this, but you cannot leave a child to suffer and the funding isn't there, so removal is the only option.

I stick to unpersonalised constructive practical advise. Had the OP come back i would have told her what avenues to go down and how to word things.

Agreeing with the OP that it is awfull will not solve her problems, telling her what to do may.

I work with all diferent types of families daily and what i quote is evidence based. I see children who are secure in foster care, it isn't the fault of the SW that they have to be there, if there isn't family available then there is no choice, unless you want dead and disabled children (i deal with alot of permanatly disabled children through neglect, sometimes not intentoinal), because no-one thinks that their needs are important.

Just to add, situations such as these are the 'moral dilemmas' that SW's face daily, what needs to be put in place is often very different to what can be put in place, because the services needed are not there.

Most of us feel that it makes a mockery of some of SW values.

I didn't strike on Wednesday, if i had of done, three 'contacts' wouldn't have happened, but then the turn out against 'cuts' isn't as strong, we struggle with these sorts of choices.

I also have a voluntary job and it is clear that the whole 'system' is weighted against the vulnerable, but then i try to not go on about it or i tend to come across as more than a bit Marxist.

Just awful.
I have no faith in social services any more. I've given them the benefit of the doubt, had numerous discussions with social workers on mumsnet and they just do not have a clue.
Yes it's true that the hands of the indiviudal social workers are tied, but lets be honest here, the system is crap and nobody is doing anything to change it.
I have heard heart-wrenching after heart-wrenching story by mothers who needed support and instead got threats. A sane society would not take children away from their mothers like this. In fact, it's a sign of how disrespected mothers are.
So sad. I hope things work out for you.

yes, SWs often talk about "funding" or "department A handles that not department B, so out of my hands" etc.
No sense of perspective, no sense of the heartache that mothers go through.
Being a mother is not a one-person job and so it's utter madness that women are expected to take on 99% of their child's care. Is it surprising so many women "Can't cope"? (ghastly term )
ANd the only reason many women cope is money . If you have money you can pull it off, if you don't have money, or if you're disabled, you begin to sink and the cracks in this ridiculous society start to show.

Disabled people have a right to be assisted in our everyday lives, including parenting.