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?

Frank Bruno,On North East Lincolnshire's mental health facilities which he later said were "the best I have ever seen"

link

scottishmummy, I don't know if he has been appalling treated by print media, but I have seen him interviewed on TV and heard him speak on radio about it, and I don't remember him thinking it was carried out correctly

The key word there mrsJ is temporary.

It happens a lot whilst things are being investigated.

I won't repeat what sun printed,about mr Bruno it was v offensive
He's a campaigner fir better mental health,he doesn't wholly malign the services
Far from it,he works collaboratively with services,and meets staff and those using services

Why on earth have the Telegraph chosen to illustrate this sensational and badly written feature ("A pregnant woman has had her baby forcibly removed by caesarean section by social workers." if so SS are acting way beyond their skill set and job description....) with a misty-eyed idyllic picture of a lovely peaceful pg woman strolling on a seashore?

The reality, presumably, was a woman in imminent danger of taking self harming action that would be catastrophic and fatal to her and her unborn child, or that she was experiencing some illness or condition that threatened hers and the baby's life but she was not in a fit state to give consent, or she desperately needed powerful drugs to save her life that would have been catastrophic for her baby.

And who knows how they could have contacted her family in time?

It is really ignorant to view this from the pov of a happy, healthy idyllic expectant mothers pov and get all uppity about the state's intervention in the goddess like condition of pregnancy, over which only a a pg woman, a NCT volunteer and a doula should ever have any say.

Why?because they can and it taps into conspiracy theories and distrust of services

Saragossa - From your comments, I hugely doubt you have any real life experience of child protection procedures. Kinship adoption (where a member of family looks after the child) is nearly always sought as a first and preferred option.

But guess what, sometimes no member of the family wants to take the child, or as I've also seen, a grandparent, for example, has already adopted several of her daughter's children and doesn't want anymore. So what then, when the child's own parent doesn't want the child either?

Poor outcomes in Looked After children, mean that the system needs to be improved, not that more children should languish in abusive circumstances.

There is a difference between families who can be supported to care for their children and families where the child is being actively abused. To fail to see that, is to fail the child badly, as happened in those cases listed above, where the parents were listened to, but no one focused directly (enough) on the child.

nd you know this by accessing case records or the parents told you?

of course parents didnt tell me I was answering another poster about non physical abuse not that children were taken away for nothing children can be abused and neglected in many ways and parents do not hit them

Good God, this case is horrific. Forcibly sedated, a forced caesarian, her baby taken from her and held forcibly in the UK...

Whatever the initial crisis - and only the most extreme immediately life-threatening (to the mother) situation could possibly justify any of this - the determination of the UK authorities to hold on to an Italian child is frightening. This is a child who has a mother, siblings and grandmother, as well as presumably other family, in Italy. Who is only in this country because her mother was on brief work trip here. This woman is clearly not incapable of making decisions all the time - she may have had a crisis but she was holding down a job, a job complicated enough to involve international travel.

Sadly it is not always the case that MH and SS professionals are at the top of their game. Or act only entirely within their legal powers. There are plenty of court judgements that show extremely worrying abuse of power, where judges have felt moved to condemn SS and doctors.

There does seem to be a common theme in miscarriages of justice that come before the family courts and then later courts that once SS and MH professionals start going down a certain route, they will not backtrack. Even if they were mistaken, there is a marked reluctance to admit it.

It is vital that cases like this, that go to the heart of human rights, are reported and discussed. We do not live in a police state, where the authorities are free to do with us what they will. Including snatching babies from the womb.

Sadly, edam we do.

I have a lot of experience with mental health services on behalf of a very close family member, and social services through another, and I find both 'services' very frightening.

Frank Bruno is a not a good example, because he is a celebrity, and people would be queuing up to help him. Ask the schizophrenic on the park bench what his local mental health services do for him.

Don't let emotive language stop you from handwringing
The baby wasn't snatched from womb by bloodied hand medic.
It was a cs,sanctioned by judge,and as you say we don't live in a police state

Yes,do ask an individual what their mh trust do for them,answers won't all be disparaging
You'll get a range of responses,that mirror subjective pov and lived experience
And as much as some of you cannot acknowledge,not all people are unhappy with services or staff

no-one said all people are unhappy, that's a straw man.

But the police, SS, MH and child protection professionals wield huge power and that is sometimes misused.

To take a comparable example, look at all the hideous scandals in NHS hospitals - mid-Staffordshire, for instance. Or care homes like Winterbourne View. I doubt anyone working in those places applied for the job gleefully thinking 'great, an opportunity to abuse the vulnerable'. Yet it happened. Even good people - and some of the doctors and nurses in mid-Staff were good people, who struggled to raise the alarm - sometimes do bad things. And not always deliberately - they can believe they are doing the right thing, and get it wrong.

Most of us, if we make a wrong call at work, nobody dies. Go into social work or medicine or nursing and if you screw up, it can be devastating for your clients and patients and their families.

It's a harrowing story for all involved. Those poor children in Italy they must be so confused their mum goes away for 2 weeks pregnant and then comes back considerabley later with no baby. I hope they have help coming to terms with what's happend.

I really feel for the medical staff involved they did what was believed to be best for mother and child but the circumstances must play on their minds.

Sorry to be ignorant but I am slightly confused to the john hemming campaign and why it receives such animosity on here

scottishmummy I think I have some excuse for 'handwringing'. My mother was suffering from mild mental illness, she could have made a complete recovery. Mental health services were only interested in helping her when she was totally beyond help.

And in the decade since, while witnessing my mother stuck in a living hell, with the local authorities doing stupid shit like giving her a flat and leaving her to it, leading to my family having to search the grimmest parts of town for the best part of a week trying to find her, I have spent a lot of time in mental illness units and seen how the patients are treated. More importantly, I've seen how they are treated when they don't know outsiders are there. I know exactly how shit mental health services are in this country, appallingly so.

Would you not restrain someone to stop them harming themselves? Presumably they did that anyway so why would the CS be so urgent? and why would they want to keep the child here?

I can't imagine any scenario that justifies what was done and how it was done.

I didn't think that her bi-polar condition was that unusual. Are there not people on here living normal lives with it? Presumably not allowed to get pregnant though is that how it works?

A mental illness will impact differently upon each individual.
there will be commonality of symptoms but the severity and impact will vary
So yes whilst someone may lead active life with their diagnosis for someone else it will impede and limit their daily activities

The nature and degree of the illness will vary from person to person

Back - how on earth can you make a statement about her condition not being that unusual, no one here knows exactly what state she was in. A diagnosis does not mean everyone with that condition is affected in exactly the same way.

People are scaremongering on this thread and the seem to be doing so on the basis of extremely limited facts. Scottish mummy is spot on.

scottishmummy That sounds reasonable. However I understand that this woman was functioning well enough to travel abroad to work until recently. One might think she would get better again on regular medication. But the judge has ruled she can never be trusted with the child?

We normally go to some lengths to support parents with mental or physical problems. If the chances of a relapse are that dangerous in their opinion why would you allow anyone suffering from that condition to keep their children?

Well I genuinely don't understand how you can go from presumably holding down a job and travelling to another country and attending a training course (all of which suggest that she was in a good mental state) to overnight being sectioned

Just because you don't understand it, doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

My mother has done exactly this, repeatedly. If you met her when she was well, never in a million years would you think she had a MH issue. 24 hrs later, she can be on a psych ward, sectioned.

You DO NOT get sectioned for 5 weeks as the result of a panic attack

The section, by law, will have had to have been in the best interests of the mother. The child isn't a legal entity until it's born,I don't believe.

People saying that children should remain with parents if they haven't come to any physical harm should take a look at the various forms of abuse, and how damaging they are. Emotional abuse can be one of the hardest for children to get over.

A acute psychiatric crisis can affect person in matter hours/days.affecting judgement,behaviour,mood
Again this varies individually,some will know their triggers and manage the impact
For others it can be a debilitating impact upon mood,behaviour,judgement

Whats to say the trained professionals were given factually correct information, the basis for the section may be wrong, human error, egos and all that.

The trained professionals,2doctors, one amhp/sw they undertake the assessment
Assessment On the basis of what's observable, the person presentation,their risk
Are you suggesting a false mh presentation is manufactured?thats v conspiratorial

The people making decisions often don't even meet the family they are making decisions on, all words on bits of paper, often omitting relevant info, human error, whatever. How many people sat in a consultant app were told verbally info that wasn't written in gp letter?

Scottishmummy

I agree with most of what your saying but are you also saying that it never happens that groups of professionals never totally fuck up then not want to back down?