Woman to have baby taken away at birth...

[SharpMolarBear]

because she is likely to suffer from Munschausen's syndrome by proxy

This is awful (only read the beginning of the thread, btw...as to many messages...)....

I mean, by all means monitor someone closely if tehre are worries...but why on earth do they even believe she would suffer with Muenchhausen by proxy...what are the indicators here?

Someone mentioned that MbP doesn't exist...am not entirely sure about this...especially after reading the book "Sickened"....

geekgirl I posted that link further down this (very!) long thread but to me it actually raises more questions than it answers!

Well that all sounds very lovely nonametoday, but the fact is that there are systemic problems in child protection and the family courts, particularly around the expert witnesses they use.

I think if you're asking people to be less judgemental you should start with the social workers and Martin Ward Platt who are recommending that this woman has her baby taken away because they judge her to be a serious risk, despite having no evidence that she has ever abused a child to base it on.

Geekgirl, that so-called non-hysterical article contains private information about a man and his child that they have no business divulging and threats to out Fran Lyon's medical history.

It's a vile article and reflects very badly on the social work profession.

'From my experience bossybritches, concerns that are raised during pregnancy regarding the unborn childs welfare and safet are always acted upon in a similar manner to this particular one.

Sadly I knew of a case where Mum ahd tried to self abort at full term, was an alcoholic and alone with 6 kids who wandered the dtreets all night and SS decided there was no case for intervention [hm] even though 7 year old hadnt attended school for 6 months because Mum fancied the company

sadly consistency seems to lack!

indeed Peachy

Ok so where do we go from here?

I've read this thread and others previously on the same topic and I'm mainly with sophable and NoNameToday on this.

We do not know the full facts of this case, and I would agree with others that the secrecy around the family needs to be reviewed.

MWP's letter seems to be taken as reading that he thinks that FL's baby must be taken into care and that he is making a judgement about her mental health. Actually, from the text that I have seen here and elsewhere, he seems to be implying that SW need to make their own judgement about the likelihod of her fabricating or inducing illness or otherwise harming a child. If they think that this is likely then the child should be removed at birth. He does not appear to say that he thinks it's likely. He does seem to say that before any long-term arrangement were made for the child then psychological assessment should be made. Without knowing what other information SS hold and further details about the background of FL, and let's face it, why the hell should we know this personal info, then we cannot really say if ss have a right to be concerned or not. I accept that on the info we have it may seem unlikely but we do not know the full story.

Whilst the Label of Muchausen's syndrome by Proxy has been discredited we know that parents do induce and fabricate illness in children and that this can be abusive either by the emotional harm that can be done to a child how is led to believe that they are ill when they are not or by the physical procedures that they endure.
Consider a spectrum of parental behaviour in response to illness in their children. Most parents fall in the middle, appropriately seeking medical attention for their children. Some may miss hospital appointments but their child may come to no harm. Some may present frequently to GP or A+E with trivial illnesses. All are within the range of normal.
Some parents fail to keep appointments that lead to their child coming to harm, fall to give important medicines, fail to comply with special diets/feeding. If the child is harmed then this is neglectful.
At the other end of the spectrum parents repeatedly represent their children with symptoms that do not require medical attention or are never witnessed by anyone else, eg seizures. This may lead to the child having unwarranted invasive investigations and being place on medications with significant side-effects and having their lifestyle restricted by their "illness". This falls into the spectrum of fabricated/induced illness.

I'm unconvinced that there is evidence of a misogynistic conspiracy to remove children from their parents for adoption. I do think that child protection is taken much more seriously now and that the damage done to children who are in and out of the looked after system and who have repeated placement changes is well known thus there is a move to place children permanently either in adoption or long-term fostering much sooner once it becomes apparent that their biological parents cannot meet their needs. I would also add that adoption and long-term fostering by other biological family members is also encouraged if they can meet their needs.

as i mentioned earlier on in this thread, this is far from the first time that this has happened.

as some of you may remember i was personally involved with the case of a lady called Janipher Maseko, who had her 2 week old baby and 14 month old toddler removed from her care. they were apart for 4 weeks, which is about 3 weeks and 5 days longer than they should have been (after it had been established that Janipher was capable of looking after he children - which she was - they should have been returned to her, they weren't). one example of the gross incompetence she faced is that one of the reasons her children took so long to be returned to her was because the SS in question (not sure whether I can name them?) had difficulties finding an infant car seat for her tiny ds. however, when she was later released from detention, SS expected her to make the journey from Yarl's Wood in Bedfordshire to Uxbridge in a taxi with no child restraints whatsoever.

FWIW - i do not think there is a sinister agenda here, either in Janipher's or Fran's case. i do, however, think that SS are woefully underfunded and understaffed, not to mention mis-managed in the most basic areas. i do not doubt for a second that the majority of SW's are hard working, conscientious individuals, but as someone further down said, it only takes one old fashioned SW to make life very difficult for a family.

it does not help that often the medical profession wield the threat of SS where there is no justification for it - i myself was threatened with a ward of court (whatever that is) when i was in hospital having ds, because i wished to discharge us. my HV also darkly hinted that SS could be involved if i continued to refuse to top ds up with formula. there was no reason for SS to be involved with me or my family and HCPs who threaten vulnerable people with SS should face disciplinary actions!

La did da I TOTALLY agree with your summation but from what we have heard there is NO precedent in this lady's history to point to this need for IMMEDIATE removal of the child frorm her mother. As FL has been very frank in telling us all her medical/social history why would she leave out relevant parts knowing that she would be found out later by going public? Before an MP takes a case seriously he/she will research it to the best of their ability to prevent egg on their faces.

From all I have read on here any damage done by a MBP parents not immediate & violent but attention -seeking & gradual so therefore if it was being watched for by a team of carers, say in a M &B unit there would be ample time for intervention foir the childs safety (which I think we all agree is paramount)

TUD i agree most SW tems are terribly stretched & over worked. I do not blame them at all but the pen-pushers who run their departments & pile on the paperwork & regulations.

Whilst I'm not saying at all that this is happening FL has told us a lot of information about herself. We do not know if there is more, equally vaild and relevant, information about her available to ss etc. This information would never become available publically unless FL wished it to as ss would not be able to reveal it for fear of breaching confidentiality. Equally it would not be available to an MP unless FL wished. No I know that I'm making a big leap here, no such info may exist, but we cannot assume that it doesn't either. Here lies a conundrum in the family courts, what should be made public so that the public can be satisfied that any action taken is for the best interests of the child and when is it in the child's best interests for information about them and their family to remain confidential?

I agree re FII that it seems that most cases are subtle and go on for long periods of time before harm is done but this is not necessarily so.

The cases of FII that I know of, and where I believe that is what has happened, have been insidious. Parents have presented repeatedly often making the patient journey from GP to tertiary specialist and representing the child at many different hospitals. Doctors often get quite "duped" for want of a better word as they believe the parents and it is not until someone looks at the case anew, ie someone who has never heard of the case before that the possibility of FII is raised. Doctors who have been involved may feel angry at the suggestion of FII as they are upset that they have been instrumental in the abuse of the child.

I think to get involved in this case would be absolute madness.

We do not know the facts. We do not know this woman personally and therefore no-one can vouch for her character or state of mind.

The only information we have about her is the information she has provided on a website, and that which has been written in the media. We don?t know what information she is withholding from those she is trying to gain sympathy/support from.

It is quite possible that social services have other information on her that they are not allowed to divulge publically because of confidentiality.

The issue here is the interests of the child, and currently that child is perceived to be at risk. We do not know why.

But imagine if we went in all guns blazing, wrote to mp?s/started petitions/were quoted in the media as being on Fran?s side/being outraged at the disgrace that is social services handling of this case (and yes, mn is quoted in the media quite frequently), and under pressure, social services decide not to act. What if they were right? What if harm were to come to that baby? Would you be happy to put your name to action that led to that happening? Based on limited facts, and a one-sided view?

I think it?s important not to get carried away with emotional involvement here.

Social workers and doctors are usually at their most rubbish when they do precisely what some of the posters on this thread have done, imo. Jumping to conclusions with without knowing the full facts and without gathering proper evidence with an open mind is a recipe for disaster. For parents, children and wider society. I completely agree with sophable, mamazon, NoNameToday et al that we just do not have the full facts here. While I concur that the secrecy of the family courts is something that should be carefully examined, that there are some well documented cases where social workers and doctors have performed woefully inadequately with desperately tragic consequences and, especially, that the doctor who referred www to social services sounds like an absolute w (though big respect to the social worker who saw immediately that the referral was based on a load of old cobblers), I don't think anyone on here has the requisite knowledge of this particular case to give an informed opinion. I'm very impressed with the community care article. Might even renew my subscription.

Wannabe you are SO right ....but equally if Fran is prepared to bare all ( & if not all risk the rest being revealed in public) why does the SS hde behind the "confidentiality " smokescreen?

I strongly feel Frans case is NOT being represented here. If she IS a danger to her child then being that it is all in the public domain anyway why not have the guts to say THIS is the perceived risk, THIS is what we propose to do & THIS is when we shall do it & review it.

Who is losing if they do ? Fran & her baby? Who else is important here?

Social services aren't allowed to breach confidentiality, bossyb.

But for who's benefit?? If the patient has broken confidentiality/anonimity (as in a rape case) then who are they protecting?

Themselves of course?!!

And its the babies confidentiality that is being protcectd too

baby's

But she isn't born yet & if she were taken away she would get anonimity/another name/identity so that's no defence!

but she does have legal representation bb.
And the confidentiality exists to protect the subject/the baby. If there are facts that are not known to the general public, it is not for social services, or any body to divulge those facts to the public via the media or other means.

This is a very sensitive case. It involves possible abuce to a child. Fran's picture has been in the media, people know who she is, we live in a society where hate crime is not unheard of. I'm fairly sure that if social services were to divulge the rest of the facts of this case, there would be those that would feel it their duty to take matters into their own hands..

fair comment Wannabe- but I still think the case stinks, she hasn't done ANYTHING wrong fgs!

If she had MH issues that were currently dangerous would 2 respected MH charities take her on as an employee??

But we don't know the exact reasoning behind this decision. and as I've read it it's a recommendation, not something that has been set in stone, so it's not 100% going to happen.

And I read somewhere that the psychiatrist that vouched for her state of mind hadn't actually seen her for 5 years, so not exactly a recent view either?

I am really not impressed with the misinformation being promulgated on this thread by people claiming we don't know the full facts. This isn't a recommendation by the court, this is a ruling by the court that the baby will be taken from Fran Lyon as soon as it is born because they regard that she is at risk of harming it.

I'm also amazed at the short memories of people regarding children who have been put up for adoption based on the evidence of doctors accusing parents of Muchhausens Syndrome by Proxy. Sir Roy Meadow who invented this imaginary "syndrome" has been discredited as an expert witness, which threw into question thousands of cases he had been involved in where children had been taken from their parents and put up for adoption.

The only reason that these cases were not reviewed as they should have been was because according to Margaret Hodge, the minister in charge, it was seen as not in the best interests of the children. So possibly innocent parents had their children removed on the say-so of a dodgy expert witness but now nothing can be done because it is a fait accompli.

How many mistakes have to be made before people start questioning the system? Martin Ward Platt the expert witness in this case and whose recommendations that the child be removed are the ones being followed was an expert witness in both the case of Angela Cannings and that of Trupti Patel, both accused of having MSBP, imprisoned but now exonerated.