Tania Clarence, who killed her 3 disabled children, sentenced to hospital order

[Spero]

This is such a horrible and sad case.

I have just been reading this www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-30096820

and what struck me was what her solicitor said:

"Tania's depression was certainly not assisted by the constant pressure placed on the family by some individuals within the medical profession and social services who could not agree with Tania and Gary Clarence's stance of prioritising quality of life for their children and who were not readily willing to submit the children to operations and other interventions that they felt were not appropriate in the circumstance," he added.

He said Mr Clarence was assisting Kingston Borough Council in their serious case review of the case but wanted to make clear that allegations of neglect had been "wholly unfounded".

This seems to have uncomfortable echoes of the Aysha King case and professionals using the threat of care proceedings to get parents to comply with certain treatment regimes.

Interested to know what others think.

Agree Panda - I have had a lot of experience of doctors and hospitals which has left me with a pretty strong aversion to both, which is sad as they were only doing what they thought would help me but it was clear to me even as a fairly young child that me as a 'person' just did not compute for the vast majority. I was a problem to be fixed, regardless of the impact on my life. I remember very clearly and with bitterness even 30 years later how doctors would talk over me as if I wasn't there. I had no voice, and it doesn't seem that much has changed.

The advantages of continued medical intervention have to be weighed against the negative impacts of that treatment as well. It shouldnt just be about keeping someone alive at all costs. I am so glad my mum died this year, quickly and in her own bed, the week before the proposed biopsy to lead to utterly futile chemotherapy.

Thanks for good wishes. We are all ok, and our situation is not nearly as desperate as TC. I am eternally grateful for dd1's general good health.

But it shouldn't be as hard as it is. We shouldn't feel,like outsiders for wanting to do the best for our dc. We should be able to rely on professionals for help, even if we then choose not to follow their advice. We should be able to count on support, when we need it, and we can't.

Above all, we shouldn't be left to cope (or not) by ourselves.

"being with strangers away from home and parents... these things create misery." this isnt true...
I know plenty people who use children's hospices for respite care and they are certainly not miserable places...

the children look forward to going and are very well cared for there.
I also know excellent foster carers who care for v severely disabled children. "strangers" and "others" doesn't have to mean misery...

the hospitals and what procedures they were rejecting - we don't obviously know what they were.

A Doctor does not know everything, a Doctor has an ego and reputation to uphold, a Doctor is a human and can make mistakes. A social worker will not question a Doctor.

castle - that may be true (and I am heartened to think so). But it doesn't sound like TC's experience with the professionals involved to date would have given her much confidence that it would be the case for her children.

Panda - I am sorry you are having to live with no support simply for choosing the best intervention for your DC. That is appalling.

there are places out there who can care and provide respite eg www.rainbows.co.uk/wp-content/cache/page_enhanced/www.rainbows.co.uk/the-hospice/family-stories/_index.html_gzip

and a hospice would likely not do any kind of medical intervention the family rejected.

cestlavielife
There is no point in expecting someone with severe mental illness to be logical or consider sensible options. Extreme paranoida might have made it impossible to trust anyone.

We have to trust the judge who is in possession of the facts.

Yes, and children enjoy holiday camps as well. And enjoy coming home from them, too.

Not quite the same thing as being forcibly taken away from parents with no end date, is it?

There may have been a very different judgement had the Father not stood by the Mother. I am sure he must have put in a LOT of work to help her case.

I am sure it was no accident that this tragedy happened when the Father and daughter were aborad, she clearly wanted to restrict hurt to them.

I hope once she is better their little girl gets to have her Mummy back.

It seems that no-one is offering these helpful solutions to Panda, either. I think there are a LOT of parents out there with severely ill or disabled children who are not being offered help. When a dreadful occurrence like this happens, people are quick to say that this or that could have been done.

But in fact, it seems that the one source of help that TC did have (her social worker that she trusted) was withdrawn for being too close (i.e. too helpful). I really don't think it sounds like anyone was at hand offering her children respite stays in pleasant, happy, non-interventionist hospices.

So often do we hear of parents having to fight the system for their disabled child, and so often like Panda they say the child ended up doing better than anyone imagined. But that is much easier for a parent when there is some hope, at least that the child will live and have relatively good quality of life, even if they need a lot of help. If you know the child is going to suffer and die then it is easy to see how you could lose hope.

Mental health provision for families without disablites is weak. Fiona Anderson killed her children before commiting suicide.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-30130651

It is hard if someone is too ill to cooperate with a mental health assessment.

Both TC and FA were women who lack the support to cope.

Hindsight has 20 20 vision.

It is not always "mental health" sometimes symptoms of other things that are physical at source, can have amongst other symptoms have mental health symptoms. There seems a trend to blame everything on mental health and not look holistically at people, this often happens with a lazy Doctor too.

Antidepressants can't cure thyroid issues, low vitamins and loads of other physical conditions misdiagnosed as "mental health".

I didn't see anything saying the children were being forcibly taken away - just something talking about discrepancy between parents and medical views.

nor was I comparing being taken away into care "for ever" with respite services.... some people talked about "lack of support" for them.. I wondered if they had used hospice care for respite? was it offered and they rejected it? not all respite care is misery. foster carers providing shared care respite are not all evil either.

probably a children's hospice set up with wheelchair access etc would have ben appropriate... they don't always need SS referral. did she have access and decided to not send them there? we don't know.

taking away a social worker they liked was evil for sure.

I do think the judge made the right call, it sounds appropriate. it means yes it was recognized she had MH issues (has, still).

and yes parents kill their children when their children don't have disabilities.

All this talk of respite and medical intervention etc is (in my opinion) pointless. There is no real respite.

My little girl couldn't be hugged, she could barely move, her bones were so brittle due to her condition that everything was painful for her. Her life was filled with pain and tests and procedures and fear, even the times she was happiest were filled with pain.

I could have had respite care, but I would have felt terrible knowing she was still in pain while I was resting, I would have also felt terrible because I was missing out on her already very shortened life.

Her death was horrific, she couldn't cry, she couldn't get more medication than she had already, it was terrifying for me, goodness knows what it was like for my darling girl.

Had I known what it would be like for her then I would have given very serious consideration to ending her life, for her sake.

There is no 'good' way out of this condition, its cruel and brutal and only gets worse with time.

I can only imagine what it must have been like for Tania having three children with this condition, no support and being told how wrong she was by median all professionals the whole time.

I don't condone her actions but I understand them, she could have easily been me.

Oh, furious, I am so so sorry. I don't think anyone who has not been in your situation can possibly understand how terrible it must be. for you and your beautiful girl.

I am sorry, furious.

Such a horrible case.

What I don't understand is why the social worker pushed for the twins to also get gastronomies immediately after coaxing a decision from them regarding their older daughter. Surely that was obviously pushing them too far.

After facing such opposition it would have been clear that they wouldn't have been ready for that surely. No wonder Tania felt desperate with the constant pushing going on.

Such a tragic case. Just the enormity of the whole situation obviously consumed her.

This is an horrendous story, and my heart goes out to the mother and her family. But I'm afraid it's part of a bigger problem which is about the distortions caused by professionals' anxieties about managing risk and dealing with uncertainty. In a highly risk averse environment, a situation like this - a mother with depression, children with profound disabilities and apparent differences of opinion about how to treat the children - causes terrible anxieties for professionals. I think at one time, this would have primarily affected social workers, who are the usual targets of the 'politics of outrage', but extreme risk aversion now seems to affect all professional groups (possibly a consequence of the extension of the child safeguarding gaze) and HCPs now routinely threaten CP procedures if patients fail to comply (given the difference between social care and health care thresholds, these threats usually amount to nothing). For an ante-natal example, take a look at p. 3 of this document: www.basildonandthurrock.nhs.uk/index.php?option=com_phocadownload&view=category&download=207:1572-maternity-pack&id=15:maternity&Itemid=173. Note the idea that social care can be a 'resource' when, in fact, this statement is clearly meant as a threat to appointment defaulters.

Another consequence of extreme risk aversion is that parents are often held in suspicion by professionals; there is a tendency to think they are not always acting in their children's best interests (which, of course, in some cases they may not be). These factors, and a child-centred focus - as well as having to work under severe economic constraints - contributes to a 'them and us' scenario, which means that the very people that need well-resourced and respectful services don't get them. It really is a terrible situation that most of us never face because we don't raise so many red flags for professionals. It's also disheartening for health and social care professionals, who don't imagine when they begin their training that risk aversion will be so significant in their careers.

Here's the statement you refer to in that Basildon & Thurrock document. I agree, it encapsulates both a threat and the practice of couching threats in the language of "support".

"If you do not attend your antenatal appointments, even after other appointments have been arranged, then it may become necessary to inform Children’s Social Care. This is intended as a further resource to help establish whether you are experiencing any problems during your pregnancy and provides an opportunity for Social Care to assess whether further support may be necessary."

I would imagine the family were bombarded with this sort of gaslighting, because it's certainly the norm in other areas of healthcare. All intervention is described as "help" and "support", regardless of the experience of the person on the receiving end.

Yes pausing, the word 'support' is quite significant, isn't it? All kinds of things are done in the name of 'support' which are anything but. This poor family did not (apparently) agree with the kind of support they were offered which is a big red 'non-compliance' flag to a HCP and, on its own, likely to constitute evidence that the family are not working in the best interests of their children. I think this is a very dangerous situation. HCPs do not know everything (I know, I am involved in their education) and challenges to treatment/care/support are healthy (I welcome them from my students).

From slightly different angle I live with a teen with severe mental health issues. I have tried to find every which way around it where I could live with the difficulties but there are no solutions, there is no adequate support and it's intolerable. Intolerable. I don't mean that lightly.

I have an end point, I know it's there and I've skimmed past it many times but haven't hit the button yet, but I will, because it's INTOLERABLE.

I suspect that's how Tania Clarence felt.

I am sorry Huge. I don't know what to say. It is sobering to think just how many people out there can understand and sympathise with the situation she found herself in.