Child taken by from womb by forced C/S for social services!

[StarlightMcKenzie]

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/10486452/Woman-has-child-taken-from-her-womb-by-social-services.html

Could there ever be a justifiable reason for this?

[johnhemming]

I have posted a letter written in english on my blog.
johnhemming.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/italian-mother-letter-from-italian.html

[wannaBe]

isn't that just what mp's do though? it's how you get into politics innit? by avoiding giving telling answers...

Incidentally, I met a colleague of JH's on a train recently,. Most uncomplimentary he was...

[nennypops]

claig: exexpat, from the article you linked to

"The Independent Commission on Mental Health and Policing highlighted the need for appropriate care for vulnerable people who are held in custody and for no one to be transferred to hospital in a police van."

We don't know what happened. My strong suspicion is that they would have called in a mental health nurse or doctor in order to section her immediately.

[exexpat]

Judging by the letter on John Hemming's site from the Italian human rights organisation, which mentions 'the woman who had a panic attack and was sectioned', and asks for further information, it looks to me like they are only going on the deeply misleading and inaccurate Telegraph article and subsequent media outrage, rather than on anything more concrete. I wonder if they will condemn the UK courts quite so vociferously once they have access to all the facts and background.

[nennypops]

JH: Essex have clearly not followed international law in respect of this case and as is often the case the system has ignored the option of care within the wider family

But the wider family already looking after the child's half siblings said they could not and would not take her. The only other person who offered to have her was the sister of the mother's ex husband, who was not the father of the child - therefore his sister is not "wider family". I must say I fail to see on what basis it would be responsible to send the baby off to a stranger in America.

But of course those are the sort of facts you seem to gloss over again and again, aren't they?

[exexpat]

It's a scan of the letter, ie an image rather than text, so I can't copy and paste, but would a link to the letter on flickr do instead?

[JaquelineHyde]

The police in my experience are fabulous when dealing with someone at crisis point.

I suspect they would have dealt with this as professionally as we could hope they would. The fact that they chose to take her straight to a hospital for assessment is a good indicator of how they have handled things, as they could have quite easily have just taken her to the cells for an assessment.

In an ideal world we would have a crisis response unit in every large town, but we don't and that isn't the fault of anyone involved in this case.

[JaquelineHyde]

Ha!

That letter is a joke, someone has jumped to an outraged conclusion based on the inaccurate ramblings of a not very good journalist and the twisted political point scoring rantings of JH.

Slow hand clap all round.

[Spero]

Thanks for the link to the letter. I can now see why this issue has dominated the news all day and will be front page news again tomorrow no doubt. Sarcasm alert.

Unless another sports personality has some news about his sexuality.

If this didn't involve desperate and sad people it would be an extremely amusing farce.

[ChristmasCareeristBitchNigel]

From the judgement in relation to the care order:

7.There had been proceedings in Italy and they were continuing in 2012, the documents show, and the situation when the mother has not taken her medication is that she has had a number of very intrusive paranoid delusions.

People with paranoid delusions can be extremely dangerous. I had some dealings with a young woman who stabbed her mother and after being released into the community stabbed another woman at a busstop.

I have been involved with 5 women whose children were removed that I can think off just off the top of my head. They all thought it was a miscarriage of justice.

One was found guilty, with her boyfriend, of fracturing her 1 year old son's skull, amongst a series of other horrific injuries. Had it not been for a vigilant social worker, the profession you revile, he would most likely have been another baby P

Another got her 9 year old son to shoplift for her and gave him cocaine and heroin, lived in a filthy hovel. She tried to blame him for all of it and wouldn't admit she had done anything wrong

Another had tried to stab her baby in the head, convinced he was the devil. She would spend night after night in custody restrained by two officers all night as she would try to smash her own her own head open against the floor. According to the psychiatrists there was nothing wrong with her.

Another was a total junkie, street prostitute and petty criminal. She'd been neglecting the baby badly.

The final one was totally incapable of looking after her daughter. It took a concerted police effort to remove the 8 year old who was neglected, not fed and had to act as carer to a mother that was seriously bipolar and would not take medication.

They all thought that social workers were evil baby stealers with an agenda. So I'm afraid I take the "SS failure" stories with the recollection of those stories and that people that have had their children forcibly removed are not likely to be enthusiastic in their opinion of the authorities that have done so.

There is NO SS baby adoption agenda. They are desperately short of adopters and fosterers as it is. They hardly need to fill an order book

[claw2]

I don't understand if the woman was sectioned/detained for 5 weeks and I assume forced to take her medication for 5 weeks, why didn't it work?

[Spero]

Medication doesn't always work. Sometimes you have to experiment to find the right dose or some people react badly to certain types. A lot of prescribing is trial and error.

Maryz - campaigning for the system to be properly resourced just isn't 'sexy'. It won't allow JH and his ilk to prance around on the internet and the Daily Mail as self proclaimed crusaders.

He really does not care about this woman. She is just a pawn in his dangerous and stupid game. If he had read the judgment before sending that letter then his behaviour is utterly appalling because he KNEW he was lying.

Not just misguided. A liar.

The Italian authorities were involved. The agreed the English courts had jurisdiction. The family were involved.

[badtime]

It seems that it did work, eventually, which is why she was taken off section some weeks later.

My guess (yes, guess!) would be that as she had not been known to the treating team prior to the episode at the airport, it took them some time to work out what the best treatment might be; in addition, the medication which eventually worked may only have been given to her after the CS, as some psychiatric medications are unsuitable for pregnant women.

Some people respond very quickly to medication, some do not.

[claw2]

That is what I was reading Spero, often suffers have to find the medication or cocktail of medication which is right for them. By all accounts this woman was a long term sufferer and surely if given her usual medication, which would have been previously tried and tested, it should work?

Surely sufferers do not need a different medication or cocktail of medication every time they have a relapse due to not taking medication?

[candycoatedwaterdrops]

claw

"Spero, the treating dr's are who sectioned her in the first place, which resulted in her being legally incapable of making decisions and resulted in the 'unusual' order and c/s. re you not a little sceptical, that the treating dr's report that she regained legal capacity so she can attend Court without assistance shortly after deeming her incapable where c/s was concerned? (when according to the Judge and Italian dr's she clearly wasn't capable)"

I know this was not to me directly but your point is ridiculous and wrong. These threads pee me off because you get people who have no idea passing comments such as this. Mental capacity is deemed decision specific. here is no such thing as "legally incapable" in general. You may be assessed to lack capacity for one decision and not another.

So much scaremongering shit on this thread. I would love to have a healthy debate about this and I have, not on boards like this thought where some lay people just serve to frighten the crap out of vulnerable people.