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

I seem to remember reading in the papers a couple of months back that following a review of the family court system, it had been decided to keep the secrecy because the majority of children (!) surveyed wanted anonymity because they didn't want friends, neighbours etc to know what had been going or things to be reported in the press. It makes me wonder what questions were asked in this 'survey', and I'm fairly sure "do you want to be taken away from your mummy?" was not one of them. And an unborn baby does not have a voice.

Also, the family court system doesn't apply the adage that you are innocent until proved guilty. Surely it's against anyone's human rights to be punished for a crime they cannot possibly have committed, on the say so of a doctor who has never met them? The other tragic thing is, cases like this will discourage people who genuinely need help from seeking it, because the possible consequences are too awful to contemplate. A friend of mine was treated like a criminal when his daughter broke her arm - she had tried climbing into her younger sisters' playpen and fell and broke her arm. It was an accident, but her dad was made to feel like a child abuser, because that was the assumption the medics made before finding out the facts.

Chocolatemummy, obviously we are just individuals reading newspaper articles and we don't know the facts of this particular case, you are right that there is almost certainly more to it than this.

But the case is one of many, that's what's so scary. And it reveals certain things that are in themselves frightening and wrong, eg:

1. if it happens to you you can be threatened with prison for even talking about it
2. they can take your child away without you ever having harmed anyone
3. once they are adopted that's it, you never get them back even if you are proved not to have done whatever it was they said.

These facts alone are enough for concern. Even if it did turn out the poor lady in this particular article was a actually complete evil vicious headcase and any sane person would have agreed with the decision had they known all the facts, there would still be an issue about the secrecy of the courts.

An MN campaign to open family courts is an excellent idea but I think we would need permission from MN Towers first?

X-posts ChocMummy

But the thing is, it is entirely possible to protect a child's anonymity AND operate the court without secrecy. It's already done in some places. And believe me, people in the know in the UK are well aware of that.

An official campaign or a 'we are a group of mothers from MN' sort of letter?

A full-blown campaign would take time to co-ordinate.

Rape victims are ensured anonimity in the courts so I can't see why children wouldn't be too.

Exactly, Callisto!

But men accused of rape aren't forbidden from talking about it ever.

As Expat says,it's entirely possible to protect anonymity and have justice seen to be done.

there is alot of paranoia amongst health professionals about childhood injuries but again, everybody is different some people start flapping about a couple of brusies and others don't raise alarm bells until the 7th hospital visit in a year!
Last neglect case I was involved in the house was much more than cluttere:
fleas everywhere, kids covered in flea bites, no beds, no clean clothes, no bedding, kids school attendance was less than 25%, missed several essential immunisations........we do actually help some kids you know, we dont always get it wrong

"there is alot of paranoia amongst health professionals about childhood injuries but again, everybody is different some people start flapping about a couple of brusies and others don't raise alarm bells until the 7th hospital visit in a year! "

Isn't that a problem though ChocMummy - shouldn't there be some consistency? What you have written in that sentence sounds like a bit of an indictment of your profession tbh!

FWIW I am not for a moment doubting that you do an enormous amount of good. I have no doubt these cases are very few and far between. But it sounds like there isn't a proper mechanism for identifying the bad apples among social workers (or stopping them working even when it is clear who they are, as in some of the ritual abuse cases). And also that there are problems with the system itself, independent of the individuals who work within it.

well firstly I am not health professional
secondly, yes there should be more consistency and there are trillions of guidelines and policies changing all the time.
I am not speaking for all social workers or all anything! I am not even in that role myself but just feel sometimes people only hear about the mistakes that are made (as in every profession) and not the majority of good that is done.
I am as disgusted with this article as the next person

Sorry ChocolateMummy, my fault for not reading your post properly.

I agree that in general there is too little awareness and celebration of the good that social workers do. It's not so much when I read about cases like this that it bothers me, though, as when you get comments in Daily Mail-ish places that see social workers as (along with benefit claimants and immigrants) as representative of all that's wrong with Britain!

OK everyone who wondered why people didn't appeal.... you're not going to believe this.... from a Telegraph column by Hemming linked from the last newsletter in Callisto's link:

'It was revealed last week in The Sunday Telegraph that two mothers have had their children removed and adopted and the court has failed to give written reasons - the judgment. This is a denial of justice. Because the parents don't have their judgment they cannot appeal.'

[bemused emoticon]

So they are not compelled to issue a written judgement?

Apparently the judgements in the family court are given orally.

How bizarre. I'd tape them and then launch appeal with said evidence.

I imagine if they officially need a written judgement, that's what they insist on, not a transcript of an illegal tape. If it's secret then by merely taping it you would be in contempt of court.
Though you would certainly want to secretly tape everything, wouldn't you?
Probably pretty easy to do it silently with no giveaway clicks if you use digital recorders.

I'd tape it, give it to the press, and gladly go to jail.

But as I said, my nationality would be revoked and I'd be deported. Without my kids.

So it would be blue passports in the bag, ferry to France and flight back to the US the second I heard so much as a sniff from SS.

Daily mail is biggest load of S*e I know, worse even than the sun, Because it pretends to be aimed at the educated reader when its main audience is the biggoted narrow minded,the racist, the sexist and as you said-(just about everything that is wrong with british society!"

To be honest, it escapes me how people do get away with things including the courts sometimes but I can only speak for myself and my own experience and maybe I just have a very good, decent, fair department.

I tell you what unsettles me about this the way the article was keen to point out at the beginning that she has a " has five A-levels and a degree in neuroscience" Because as we know only thick uneducated people abuse their kids, if you have a degree or a qualifications that you can't hurt your children.

I am not saying that she deserves to have her children taken away but the prejudice angers me.

I was mentally ill after having dd and in my opinion a danger to my child and I begged social services to intervene, even take dd away but they didn't. However other women I was in hospital with who did not have my education, without sounding arrogant my eloquence and ability to play the system, did loose their children and some of them IMO looking back - although of course I am not a psychiatrist did loose their children.

Hmm, I see your point Twinset, but I read it as 'Even well educated people with everything in their favour can fall foul of social services.'

I may be reading into it as past experiencesd have coloured the way I interpret things but I read it as- look this girl is like us she can't hurt her child.

I know - the Torygraph does read like a upper middle-classes club magazine sometimes, especially the letters page.

I take your point too Twinset. I think it is as Callisto says, and also because it is a broadsheet article so aiming at an educated audience: the subtext is 'Even someone LIKE YOU could lose your children.'
Which, if I'm honest, is definitely what freaks me about it. I can't write it off as something that happens to an underclass of people who are not like me. But of course the suffering is no greater or lesser according to educational level. I suppose what is crap is that it is only when it starts happening to middle class women that there is a chance of something getting done - I imagine unfair child removals have been happening to less privileged women for years