Elsie Scully-Hicks

[Elephantgrey]

How can you understand how someone can harm such a tiny baby. My husband knew Matthew Scully-Hicks and said you would never imagine he would be the sort of person to do something like this. When we first heard about it we imagined that he had just snapped but seeing the news report he inflicted so many injuries on her since the day she arrived. It's just heartbreaking.

Information sharing is still dire IME.
Health and social care use totally different databases as do schools, charities and other welfare agencies.
Health and social care may share information but they won't be aware that a particular outside agency is working with a family unless that agency makes a conscious effort to inform them.
Their input is rarely valued because family workers have such a low status.

I have worked with families in a particular capacity. I would see them in their homes on a weekly basis for years at a time but wouldn't be included in reviews etc unless I and the parents absolutely insisted.
It was like getting blood from a stone.

The need for better information sharing has been recommended in just about every serious case review (specially the high profile ones) since Victoria Climbe yet I can't see that things have improved.

This is not pc and could well be complete rubbish... But has common sense left the building? There must be many excellent male SW but I'm thinking a woman, with the professional training and both feet on the ground and having raised a family might be ideal to sense when things aren't right. I dunno. Really I don't. It's all wrong.

Margaret of course you are supposed to use gates at the top of the stairs!
Actually in our baby-proofing visit, we were told you're supposed to use gates on room doors not at the top of stairs.
The logic being that if you put them on the top of the stairs and the baby/toddler tries to climb over then they are going to fall from the height of the gate then down all the stairs.

I'd be more surprised if a LAC didn't have at least one violent parent, TBH.

Violence in itself is not a reason to change a name. The risk comes from family members being thought likely to try to track the child down AND the name being unusual enough to facilitate that.

Unborn - Is the form not just a standard thing if you attend A&E with a child now?

I've also had to fill in that form on two separate occasions in the last year when I took DC to A&E - once when DS2 had a really high temp and wouldn't eat/drink anything at all and once when DS1 injured his arm playing football. On both occasions I was quizzed in detail about who lives in my house, where DH was, whether we have pets etc.

FWIW, I'm in the Midlands, live in a relatively affluent area and on both occasions was asked my occupation and DH's as well. So I assumed it was just a standard thing?

Of course common sense has left building. Never mind a female social worker .....what about a female parent? Before I am torn apart ask yourself how many men you know who have walked away from their kids. Men you would have thought were really close, ideal dads. Now ask yourself how many women ( there will be some but a lot less) Be honest do you think it's worse for a child to lose a mum or a dad young?......Think princess di and yes there are exceptions. As women why must there be a consensus that men are just as good at "mothering" as women? The stats say they are not. Just like stats say men are physicaly stronger than most women. Not always but mostly. So as women why do we have to play ourselves down in the name of equality and pay lip service to a concept. And before anyone states homophobia I am astounded by the fact that male privilege has trumped homophobia.... two women would (rightly) have been ripped to shreds for this. They would not still have the murdered child's sibling in the other woman's care . And how dare that absent husband have denied the child's grandmother the right to go the funeral( the murderer was probably there though!) Why also has he kept the murderers name in his joined second name? So I await the onslaught.

Can you reference the stats that show that children raised by men alone are worse off than children raised either by women alone or a male and female carer, please? Or did you just make that up? Because I really believe that there are plenty of children out there being raised by good fathers. Unfortunately Elsie wasn’t one of them.

I said that more men abandon their children than women do. That was the stat I was referring to. Read the relationship thread if you need evidence of that. Also of those many good fathers you refer to .... I think a lot would sacrifice themselves rather than leave their kids without a mum. Is a good father the same thing as a good mother?

Be honest do you think it's worse for a child to lose a mum or a dad young?

My mother died when I was 2 months older than Shayla was and it has damaged me so much and cast a complete shadow over my whole life. That was behind my earlier stated view that a little baby should if possible have a Mum. This whole case is so heartbreaking and I feel so sad for the grandmother.

So sorry to hear that stitch. My heart goes out to you.

How far away are children usually adopted. I’m local to the case and realised that the adopted family live 20 mins away from the birth family. I suppose in that case there is a risk that they could quite easily end up in the same place at the same time and calling “Shayla” in that instance would have drawn attention to them.

Bochdew - it really varies from case to case, there is no hard and fast rule.

And remember it's not jsut running into someone in the local supermarket and hearing them call out for "Shayla", it's a friend talking about their daughter's new best friend at school called Shayla, or a colleague mentioning that their sister has just adopted a little girl called Shayla and umpteen routine interactions that become potentially "outing" (and that's without getting into social media searches and the like - I've just checked, and at present Facebook can only suggest three people called Shayla when I search it)

Are there any guidelines on keeping names if they reflect an adopted child's heritage? Just wondered because Shayla O'Brien suggests a specific heritage.

Great post Queenofwands I agree with every word.

Stitch - the starting point is to keep their name. If that's not possible, a small change is preferable (using a more usual spelling for example, or turning Kaycee into Katie type change). Ideally a new name would reflect their heritage, not least because ideally the adoptive family would also reflect their heritage.

What heritage? Irish?

Queen- there was a case last year which reached the papers of a lesbian couple where one had killed their child. The mother (BM) was living the house whilst the abuse and neglect took place and did nothing

Queen of wands. That is the sort of thing I was thinking but didn't have the guts to say. No point saying "lesbians have killed their children" I am not for a second condoning what that man did to that child but a little one can drive you to places you didn't know existed.

Millie that makes sense, at the time I presumed it was with it being physical injuries.

I'm sorry about your mum stitched.

Well there is a point in saying lesbians killed there children becauSe there was a very similar case last year (albeit not an adoption) of a 2 parent family where one was abusing the child

I am not sure of your point bubble but I do know that terrible and very disturbing case. They were both rightly vilified. I don't remember seeing eulogies of the murderer in the press or there being any sympathy for the enabling mother though. As I said I think the press coverage is different because men are not held to the same standards. Fwiw I also expect more of women and think Hindley is worse than Brady etc but my problem is it seems to work both ways - Men are just as good mothers as women and they are also held to a lower standard than women. Perhaps I am wrong and based on the views of a website called Mumsnet which has a high percentage of women who are Mothers, I should concede that the roles of Mother and Father are entirely interchangable and that as a group Men are just as good as women at Mothering. Is this what people believe?

It’s fairly easy to get adoption services to believe what you want them to believe.

I know a single woman who adopted a small girl. The woman is widely known to be a malicious fantasist and the people who gave her character references only did so for fear of what she’d do if they didn’t.

Luckily for the child in question, problems appeared from the day she moved in so it never actually got to the stage of becoming official and back she went.

I dread to think what the poor kids life would have been like otherwise.

I think some men, sometimes are brilliant at mothering. My partner had to do it as I was ill and couldn't. We had each other and although no extended family, there was a decent support network via playgroups and so on. If however partner had a baby parachuted in things would have been different.

And my Mother had long hospital stays through pregnancy when my Dad looked after the older children without issue. Her own mother remarked how she hadn't been needed and it was all washed uniforms and socks hanging up by the fire. He coped brilliantly with the day to day, but i am sure your kids were glad when you were back random. I was very close to my own Father .... but he wasn't a Mum. Mums have an intangible something... not all Mums I know that. But lots that are reading this thread I imagine. Which is wonderful and good luck to those Mums and your lucky children. I wish Shayla had such a mum and am so sad her Brother is still with the absent husband.

Yes they were glad when I was back. Some men are great at caring and some women are cruel to children. I, like you fear that bad choices were made in the case of this little girl. As I said common sense has left the building. "OK Mr x and Mr y we are now going to give you 2 small, demanding and possibly damaged children to care for. One of you will be left alone all day with them whilst the other is at work. Feel free to send vile messages and scream abuse at them"

I should concede that the roles of Mother and Father are entirely interchangable and that as a group Men are just as good as women at Mothering. Is this what people believe?

I think people have said that it's not a mother or father a child needs, it's a committed and loving parent. You speak as if what a mother does and what a father does are fixed, universal- they aren't. Think of cultural variances. Think of how things change over time. I do not believe there is something called 'mothering' that only a female parent can do, or something called 'fathering' that only a male parent can do.