Rather terrifying article about social workers attempting to take baby from its mother as soon as its born.

[Callisto]

It was in the Sunday Telegraph which I got round to reading last night. The story plus a couple of related articles is here: www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/08/26/nbaby126.xml

Thanks for that nightshade- appreciate your honesty & please don't be afraid to post. It's just such an emotive issue & you must admit there have been some stonking cock-ups by some of your colleagues in the past which unfortunately over-shadow the many many cases you succesfully deal with (& never hear about ) I'm sure.

How would the child be in danger nightshade? I think that's what a lot of us are finding hard to grasp.

I just don't believe that social workers and paediatricians have developed a magic way of telling if a woman is going to commit crimes against her child if she has never done so in the past. We don't do it for any other crime so why should child abuse be any different?

That would make sense nightshade if there was a previous history of abuse &/or likely hood of abduction.

(I have to pause there & voice a horrible though -sorry Fran_- of course we don't KNOW for sure that Fran has not had charges laid against her for problems with other children, persuasive liars are not unheard f in abuse cases are they?)

However Fran seems ready to co-operate (at the moment!!) & has offered to go into a M&B unit for supervision when Molly s born.

eliz..

if social workers had to wait until actual harm happened before they could act, there would be a public outcry.

the law states that you have to be able to prove actual or LIKELIHOOD of harm.

in this case, there have obviously been enough concerns, albeit past, for social services to worry.

i agree that there have been mistakes in the past, but i challenge any individual here to go cold into a strangers life, armed with a ream of previous mental health issues, self harm etc. and walk away with the atitude that it will all be alright.

could you sleep at night with such a responsibility on your head???

how would you deal with it in light of climbie etc?

what justification would you give to the internal enquiry whenever they produced a lenghthy document highlighting clearly all the potential risk factors??

whenever any child is taken into care, social workers rarely know whether this is the 'right' decision.

they generally do know however that the child is still going to be alive in the morning.

anyway that is my rant.

an area of work that still interests me but that i will not be involved in again.

i can see your point nightshade - and SWs need to cover all bases especially after some bad press about some situations in which children were left too vulnerable and were injured/died. But, and again we can only go on what we know, it seems from the psychologist reports that Fran should not be a danger to her child. I can see from a SW point of view it is better to make a mistake than leave a child at risk. But I just wish unless there is fundamental evidence not known to us] that they would co operate a little more with Fran and allow her to be monitored.

Nightshade you are so right SW's are dealing in ifs buts & maybes all the time aren't they?

I'm arguing myself round in circles!

I do think ruty has a poin though - Fran sems to be very together & willing to co-operate & she should at least be given that chance.

how do you monitor a situation where the potential for harm is the likelihood of death?

(not my opinion, just looking from the social work perspective).

there is no service that can provide round the clock supervision. best is a residential project where staff are in and out periodically.

if they are looking at MSBP, how do you conduct an assessment of risk?

mother could fulfill all of the parenting requirements and still pose a risk.

at the end of the day, when an assessment shows that there is potential for significant harm, then you HAVE to follow the course of intervention.

Good point- but how likely is that? I suppose if there's even the smallest risk then the Sw's have to intervene. The thing with MSBP though if I have read the symptoms corrrectly is that the mothers harm over a period of time to get sympathy, rather than kill them outright. Now obviously neither is accceptable but in M&B unit wouldn't the supervision (although not 24/7) perhaps with a cc tv camera be acceptable?

but that is the thing. As soon as you attach this label MsbP to a mother [rather like calling a woman a witch in medieval times] then there seems nothing a woman can do to prove her innocence. And MsbP surely has warning signs before death? Or are the SS convinced Fran will try to kill her child ASAP?

That's just it ruty we don't know what they think!

you're right about the label thing. once something has been attached it is extremely hard to unattach it.

as for cctv, how do you watch someone when they are not at home and who then monitors the hours of footage. how do you deal with privacy factors like the bathroom, sleeping etc and where does normal life copme in.

cctv would be enough to send someone clompletely over the edge. we all know the stresses of a newborn. wouldyou like evry bad mood, stressful incident recorded and scrutinised?

if it was between that and losing one's child....

unfortunately the human part of being a mother no longer allows me to be a social worker.

it is worth keeping in mind however that there are lots of low level, ordinary cases in which it was right ot remove a child.

of course nightshade yes. SW's protect children on a daily basis I'm sure. I just feel very uneasy about this whole MsbP thing in the light of recent miscarriages of justice. I can't help thinking the Sixth Sense [film] is to blame for getting it into the general public's consciousness and making them accept that it is just one of those things that women might do.

I've got to say I think bringing up Victoria Climbie is a bit of a red herring. The point about that poor little girl was that she was already being harmed and doctors and social workers appeared to turn a blind eye to it. Similarly with other cases where children have died (there was an appearance of harm being ignored by the authorities even if that's not the case).

"if they are looking at MSBP, how do you conduct an assessment of risk?"

Well I know I've been beating the same drum for quite a while here but they shouldn't be looking for MSBP, as it's a discredited diagnosis, they should be looking for evidence of child abuse.

I promised myself that I wouldn't post on the other thread but I've given in and posted here instead....

Generally speaking, ie without reference to FL, do you believe in the existence of FII (factitous and induced illness) as a form of child abuse? This is specifically to Elizabetth but also to WWW.

I ask because my pov is that none of us know the full facts in the FL case and I have no quarrel with anyone who wants to question the actions of ss in this case if they also accept that there may be information that we are not privy to. I do however get quite annoyed when it seems that those who are arguing for the expressed pov of FL are doing so because they do not believe in the existence of FII therefore SS must have got it wrong as FII doesn't exist iyswim.
I believe in the existence of FII as a form of child abuse. Whether or not it is relevant in the case of FL I do not know. I do know that years ago it was considered ludicrous to suggest that any parent or carer would harm their child, sadly now it is recognised that this does happen; parents physically, sexually and emotionally abuse their children and may cause them significant harm by neglect. Why is it so ludicrous for FII to be a mechanism of abuse?

I have not read all the thread, but when I was in hosp with ds2 the woman in bed next to me had just had a little girl the week b4 I asked how come she not gone home as her birth seemed normal she said sw were trying to decide if she could keep the baby so they were keeping her in hosp till a decision made . I didnt ask why and she didnt say.

LaDiDah, I'm not sure about the existence of MSbP or FII. Of course child abuse exists, but MSbP was 'described' or 'observed' by Roy Meadows whose judgement and professional behaviour has been, to put it mildly, called into question. It has not been demonstrated as clear scientific fact. It rests on the interpretation of behaviour and motive - interpretation that can, as with all human behaviour, be faulty.

I dunno, Beverley Allitt is often quoted as an example of MSbP. After the fact, though. Funny how they are so keen to diagnose it in mothers, not healthcare professionals, if she's the only obvious example proven beyond all reasonable doubt.

There was an MNer who was accused of MSbP because doctors couldn't find a diagnosis for her illness. Wind forward 15 years and she was in a wheelchair with a very real illness. Sadly it was such a rare condition that it had taken a long time to get a diagnosis. And in that time, her two children, who she had never harmed in any way, had been taken from her. The case was thrown out of criminal court by a judge who pointed out there was absolutely no bloody evidence, but the family courts just rolled over at the behest of the so-called expert witness speculating about what might happen in the future despite never ever having met the woman.

That's why I distrust the bureacracy tbh. That studying The Crucible by Arthur Miller for A-level. Striking parallels.

Exactly edam! I have been thinking of the Crucible parallels too.

LaDiDaDi, Children's services are referring to MSbP, a syndrome with doubtful existence. It seems unlikely that Fran Lyon could be showing symptoms of this "condition" as her baby has not yet been born. Worse she has effectively been diagnosed with a psychiatric condition by a paediatrician who has never even met her!

I don't doubt that there have been (very rare) instances where mothers may have induced or fabricated illness in their children to draw attention to themselves but that is simply abuse and should be treated as such, not as a peculiar psychiatric condition that paediatricians are uniquely qualified to diagnose.

Much more common will be anxious, possibly even hypochondriac, mothers who may fall under suspicion. Or those unfortunate families where a physical illness or condition is not diagnosed and an arrogant professional assumes that if they can't work out what is wrong the mother must be fabricating or inducing the symptoms.

While it might be unusual for a child to be taken from their parents for no good reason, each time it happens it is a tragedy for the people involved. Even a few hundred cases of this happening are far too many and so the social workers involved need to be held accountable for their decisions as other professionals are.

"Much more common will be anxious, possibly even hypochondriac, mothers who may fall under suspicion. Or those unfortunate families where a physical illness or condition is not diagnosed and an arrogant professional assumes that if they can't work out what is wrong the mother must be fabricating or inducing the symptoms."

Precisely! In my case the HV simply wasn't interested in listening to my description of what was happening to my son. She took one look at my bewildered and miserable face and concluded "PND". She stuck to that view right up to the final diagnosis of a physical problem which was put right with surgery.

MM

I'm aware of the background of FII.

I was trying to tease out people views regarding the existence FII without regard to the Fran Lyon case although I recognise that my late night posting may not have this clear.

Im essence I'm in agreement with you Upwind. I think that FII is likely to be rare, studies suggest round 0.5 per 100,000 as a prevalence rate. I think that FII has a value as a term, those who aqbuse in this way are often not actually phyasically abusing the child themselves but acting in a way to induce other, often health professionals, to cause physical harm whilst believing that they are helping the child. So it's very difficult to say that they are simply physically abusing their child but to say that they are using FII as a means to harm the child gives a much clearer picture of what's actually happening.

I don't think that paediatricians are able to diagnose adult mental health problems but I do think that they are very well placed to consider a diagnosis of FII as the cause of a child's symptoms or signs. That does not mean that they get it right every time and there need to be checks in place but I think it is dangerous to disregard the existence of FII.

agree with Upwind.

I wonder if we're getting a bit lost here with the discussion of FII/MS by proxy.

Re-reading the original Telegraph article, the evidence for FII/MSbP seems to be based on the single paragraph quoted from the paeditrician's letter. I'll quote it here to save everyone looking for it:

"Even in the absence of a psychological assessment, if the professionals were concerned on the evidence available that Miss Holton (as Miss Lyon was briefly known), probably does fabricate or induce illness, there would be no option but the precautionary principle of taking the baby into foster care at birth, pending a post-natal forensic psychological assessment."

After re-reading this several times, he seems to me to be saying if other professionals (doctors? midwives? mh workers? We don't know) have evidence that FL probably does fabricate/induce illness in herself, then best put the baby in to foster care until you can do an in depth psychological assessment.

The first point is that this isn't a description of FII/MS by proxy it's a description of Adult FII/MS - which has been known about since the 50's and well documented and researched.

Secondly it seems to me that he is not making a judgement of Fran's MH, as he says a forensic psychological assessment should be done. What he does seem to be inferring is that his experience of the effect on children whose mothers fabricate illness in themselves is such that he would recommend erring on the side of caution until Fran is adequately assessed.

Obviously it's hard to be sure because there doesn't seem to be any more of this letter reported and so we only have this single sentence to go on.

Am I reading it all wrong, or does anyone else read it that way?

Ladida, I'm with Edam on FII (without reference to FL specifically)