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?

[scottishmummy]

Well no what?op bias is clearly driving her posts and pov
Contrary to what's been posted one doesn't get sectioned and have kidney removed

[NiceTabard]

Acrylic the woman called the police herself, I guess she dialled 999 as she was worried, and took an option.

And TBH when a woman who is visibly pregnant is involved, services (and people and society) do tend to swing into action in their fullest capacity in often an unprecidented way, yes.

Woman in the street having a panic attack - OK - have a chat - move on.
Woman in the street heavily pregnant having a panic attack - ring 999.

[NiceTabard]

Well no she didn't get sectioned and have a kidney removed, she got sectioned and had a baby removed.

Point is that articles are from Independent and telegraph, whether or not OP has bias (like many on this thread in both directions) people are reacting to articles. You can't negate thread by saying "oh op is talking bollocks" when she is reacting to what she has read in papers as are we all.

And the reaction is, bizarrely:

1/2 Well that sounds absolutely fine
1/2 Oh my god that's horrendous

I'd be interesting to know how people reading those pieces can come to such different / incompatible conclusions but that's probably another thread.

[MadameDefarge]

tbh honest. tabelard, no, I think you have a very poor understanding of what it takes to get someone sectioned in the UK.

Being heavily pregnant? How pregnant was she? we all know most international airlines will not let women who are pregnant fly over 30 weeks. Especially those who are employing them.

I was certainly not looking heavily pregnant at 30 weeks but by god I was at 35 weeks.

If I had had a panic attack, and needed medical assistance, I am sure they would have treated me appropriately and counselled me on taking it easy and not doing any more foreign training sessions.

I would have been surprised to have been sectioned under the Mental Health Act.

[MadameDefarge]

OK. say she gets sectioned upon seeking medical help while pregnant in another country.

She is then sectioned for the foreseening future (including the 28 day end of intitial section). She is then nearing birth.

Under what circumstances would you think it reasonable for a UK court to sanction a c section?

[scottishmummy]

Actually no.what you're describing,isn't that clear cut
You. See MH is what is observable,what's risk to person,others,assessment if individual

Despite what you say There is no manual says,
Woman in the street having a panic attack - OK - have a chat - move on.
Woman in the street heavily pregnant having a panic attack - ring 999.

An MHA relates to the individual,the situation, and safest most appropriate way to access treatment. Treatment canbe delivered in community or in hospital. The aim is least restrictive safe environment

[MadameDefarge]

Yes SM.

I do think there is a certain amount of people who believe SS and MH services are at the command of the devil.

Its just silly really.

[OutragedFromLeeds]

It should be 100% 'we don't know enough to form an opinion about this specific case'.

I think we all feel empathy for her btw.

[FairPhyllis]

Outraged, the reason I am so concerned about this is that I have depression and severe anxiety with panic attacks. What's to say this kind of (admittedly extreme) thing couldn't happen to anyone with any kind of MH problems in the wrong circumstances? The problem is we just don't know enough about what happened one way or the other.

If you are so all-understanding, please take that as a genuine question from me and educate me. It's pretty rude to presume that I don't have any experience of or know anything about mental illness.

It's very easy for anyone who works in this field to tell people to blindly trust the professionals. But having a caesarian by judicial decision is a pretty big fucking deal -we'd all agree on that, right? - and it's only right that there should be some oversight of that decision and the circumstances leading up to it. I am less concerned about the decisions made concerning the baby once it was born because I do understand why they were made.

[NiceTabard]

Why is everyone focussing on the CS?

I have said time and time again that I am concerned about what happened afterwards.

No-one has addressed why SS in UK did not engage with Italian SS.

No-one has addressed why if she is not an adequate parent why UK SS did not contact relevant authorities about her other children. That is BIZARRE. And if they are removed as well clearly the baby should be with siblings.

No-one has engaged with the fact that the child is Italian and should be placed in care in it's home country on the basis that at this stage adoption is not definite and presumably in fostering the siblings and grand-parents etc could potentially meet the child.

Have the Italian family been damned by Essex SS without ever meeting them? Did they even think about this stuff?

Yes it sounds and feels wrong. We don't have the whole story. Maybe the woman's whole family in Italy are awful and Italian SS off their own bats said hey they're a bunch of shits we're shipping these kids out and you keep that one. Nah don't bother trying to home them together.

That's not likely though, is it.

The more I think about it this sounds like a fail on the part of Essex to engage with their counterparts in Italy.

If her 2 kids in Italy had been removed, I think it would be in the articles.

[NiceTabard]

Hah excellent x-posts between me & fairphyllis

I think we both make great points

[confuddledDOTcom]

People have mentioned John Hemming and Christopher Brooker but no one mentioned her solicitor is Brendan Flemming. Poor woman has no hope.

You need to remember that as the family court is closed everything we read will be from one of them and you can't trust it. Someone needs to tell her to drop her team PDQ.

[scottishmummy]

I agree Phyllis The problem is we just don't know enough about what happened one way or the other
Yes,but despite that folk are supposing sinister or poorly executed practice by LA
Yes it's legit to query what going on,but that requires objectivity and suspension of prejudice

[NiceTabard]

Who would you recommend?

[AcrylicPlexiglass]

Sorry to hear that you have depression and anxiety, FairPhyllis. Have you ever been detained under the mental health act? Please don't answer that if you don't want to, obviously, as it's a very personal question. But I guess what I am driving at is that the vast majority of people with depression and anxiety never have a hospital admission of any kind, let alone one under section of the mental health act.

[NiceTabard]

If she was freaking out / unresponsive and not speaking english and got no-one to come and speak for her (partner, family member, family doctor etc) then I can see how it would go that way.

Honest, I can.

[confuddledDOTcom]

Is that question to me NiceTabard? There are plenty of solicitors out there who aren't dodgy or on John Hemming's mission. I don't know solicitors in Essex, but I do know that Brendan isn't based there, he's in Birmingham. Like John Hemming. There's a shock.

[OutragedFromLeeds]

'No-one has addressed why SS in UK did not engage with Italian SS.'

'No-one has addressed why if she is not an adequate parent why UK SS did not contact relevant authorities about her other children'

'No-one has engaged with the fact that the child is Italian and should be placed in care in it's home country'

BECAUSE WE DON'T KNOW .

and clearly neither do you.

We don't even know that they haven't been in contact with the Italian authorities. Presumably when she didn't return after two weeks her family tried to find her? The company she was working for? There must have been contact between her family/people in Italy and the authorities here.

You don't understand why the SS have made the decisions they made because you don't know the facts of the case in sufficient detail. Neither do any of us so we can't tell you.

[confuddledDOTcom]

Well said Outraged! We only know what JH, BF and CB are telling us and it's not going to be the SW have done as much as they can version!

[GoshAnneGorilla]

To quote Fair Phyllis "Everything that happen afterwards is more or less intelligible to me"

• you don't know everything that happened afterwards. None of us here do. Likewise, we don't know what went on between Italian and UK SS. We don't know.

But people insisting she must have only had a mild panic attack and was then gobbled up by the system are dangerous scaremongers.

For this to happen would have involved a huge amount of legal work to get all the permissions in place because it is a hugely, hugely rare event. They almost certainly did not snatch her out of A&E and rip her baby out of her the next day, which is what some people seem to be implying.

[NiceTabard]

I find it peculiar how so many people are so invested in the idea that nothing has gone wrong with this case.

I find it interesting that people are focussing on the Mh / CS aspects rather than then nationality / other children aspects.

The woman is free to talk, and is doing so. If her other children had been subject to scrutiny I'm sure she would have spoken about it.

The articles are in the Indy and Torygraph, not anti-SW pamphlets distributed by oddballs.

[ThingsThatGoBumpInTheNight]

Hmm as much as I despise ss
There is a right under the HRA not to undergo medical blah blah (couldn't be assed to google it) so something is definitely not right about this story..

-withholds judgement-

[FairPhyllis]

Well when I say I am less concerned about the decisions about the baby that doesn't mean I don't think it would potentially be a better result to have the baby with its birth family. But I assume the issue is that the baby's habitual residence is the UK because it was born here (albeit very unplanned) and there is a certain procedure SS have to follow when that is the case.

I have not been detained under the MHA. But these kinds of cases are honestly - no scaremongering - very scary for people who may need to seek MH care, because it is not always transparent what may happen to you if you make yourself known to HCPs or your symptoms worsen. This is how I actually feel as someone who was scared stiff I was going to be locked up if I went to see a doctor and told them how I actually felt. As it happened, I wasn't. But with no previous experience of MH care and no MI in family that I knew of, how was I to know what would happen to me?

[nooka]

I had a friend who had a psychotic episode and was sectioned and it was very scary, he completely lost touch with reality. When they released him it was with a diagnosis of bipolar and a lot of monitoring. During the episode he was very violent (ended up punching a policeman that he thought was threatening him) and when he was sectioned he was heavily medicated.

I would imagine that medication options are very limited in the last trimester due to the risk to the baby. I can't imagine that the decision to operate without consent was taken lightly and the court must have been satisfied that it was the best option. Not terribly surprising that she was sedated, as she cannot have been in her right mind, better surely to be sedated than to be strapped down somehow? I can't see that there was any choice about that.

Putting the baby into emergency foster care in the UK would then have been relatively routine. The question is really what happened afterward to make SS determine that it wasn't safe for the baby to return to her mother. There isn't very much information about what happened between the baby being born and her application to have the child returned so I can't see how it is possible to judge that.

The headlines in both papers are sensationalist nonsense. All babies born by c-section are in effect forcibly removed. The decision to perform the c-section would have been made by doctors not SS.

[NiceTabard]

FairPhyllis

Surely not.

If I go abroad when pregnant and unexpectedly give birth, my child is still English surely. Not eg Latvian and they can say no it can't leave the country as it's a Latvian citizen that's that.

If it's lucky it might get some dual thing going on I guess. But no, they can't say that children born eg on holiday are not citizens of the countries their parents live in