Woman to have baby taken away at birth...

[SharpMolarBear]

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

I have known of a few FII cases in my work, but none that I have worked on. It is very real and is a mental illness which is hard to prove/detect. The parents or carers that do this do not have a huge sign on their heads saying what they are doing, they dont want to be found out.
Its intresting that people are commenting about SS not acting in cases and then when they try to do a preventive measures rather than reactive they get slated!
I think you would really need to know all the facts about this case before we could judge.

i think it is the specific preventative measure of taking the child at birth, when Fran has offered to be closely observed for as long as it takes, and the fact that the psychologists have stated she has not suffered from mental health issues for a good few years, which people object to. I can see that in a situation where a parent is convinced a well child is ill and insists on invasive medical procedures, that intervention is necessary - I am not sure that taking the child away immediately would be the answer there either though, of the parent was not deliberately harming the child. the child would need placing on the at risk register, and the parent would need psychiatric help, and close monitoring, but just whisking a child away and putting them into a potentially even more problematic system of fostering/homes, a system in which many children fare badly, may not be the right solution. I know a police man who often has had to intervene in violent relationships and witness alcoholic/drugged parents in charge of children. Those children have to suffer at the hands of their parents all the time. There just seems to be a very strange hypocrisy going on though yes there may be more details to this case we don't know about. It is worth being concerned about though.

if the parent was not deliberately harming the child...

I know mental illness is hard to understand but have worked with a girl with personality disorder and it really does have a profund effect on someones ability to parent, and there is no cure and its not safe to risk returning children to those parents

I know the lady involved has agreed to go to a mum and baby unit, and think it is a fair ask to be honest. I think it would be hard to "fake" good parenting 24 hurs a day and we do have a unt like that which is used and parents often manage to "fake" for the first week or so, but never very long. I guess the question is would it be fair on that child to risk that given the evidence they already have. I am only guessing on some of this as i dont know loads about this woman.

ruty, but the child is harming the child if they are convienced that child is unwell. FII is very dangerous, some might not physically harm the child themselves but are putting that child though emotional abuse and medical processes that are not needed that can be dangerous. Sad but true

ruty, a parent that does this mbp thing can not be compared to a parent that , maybe once, thought there was somehting wrong with teh child and wanted it tested further out....someone who does this does it all the time, they don't do it because they are really worried about the child, they know darn well there isn't anything wrong and if there is it is down to their own action...we are not talking about loving caring parents here....
honest, you might want to read the book I earlier mentioned....it really has got some valuable info in it.

LaDiDaDi, if you haven't been involved in cases of MSBP/FII where does your expertise come from? You appear to be speaking as an authority on this.

"It is very real and is a mental illness which is hard to prove/detect."

Funny how LaDiDaDi contradicts you saying that this isn't a diagnosis of the parents yet there you are calling it a mental illness. I take it you don't mean that the child is mentally ill. You don't have to detect someone's mental illness as a medical professional or social worker your job is to detect if the child is being abused. Why do you need to detect a mental illness in someone who isn't your patient?

How many social workers/healthcare professionals are posting here? It's very odd that so many would arrive on this one particular thread. I didn't think social work or the medical profession was overrepresented at Mumsnet although you'd think so from the number of people in those professions taking an interest here (to support the MSBP/FII diagnosis and to gloss over the nefarious behaviour of its progenitors).

Elisabeth...but if a child is being abused, doesn't it then also become rather important, aswell, to find out why the child is abused, what drives teh abuser, etc....surely that is important information to know? Part of the whole assesment.

Btw...that was just another general statement/question...not really about the op per se....

there is a few sw on here and docs. The reasons Social worker would know about parents illness is that you dont just work with children, you work with families. I also know a little about it ( and i mean a little) is that child protection is a multi agency thing.

This is all very interesting as an academic exercise ladies but doesn't further the cause of Fran & Molly which we were originally discussing!

bossy...seeing that non of us have the real facts, etc...what are we menat to do?
It could only ever be a discussion, etc....
as sorry as I feel, and as horrible as it would be if the child would be removed if there really wasn't any danger, etc...but without really knowing the facts, tehre really sin't anything we could do....

3 and.. exactly I feel so helpless for this lady!!

All the debate in the world...........

whether she is capable of looking after her baby long term or not..................

I just keep thinking of that first few moments when we all held our babies & thought "wow" look what I did !!!"

.........and I know that I wouldn't deprive ANY woman mentally OR physically ill from that moment & those first few hours/days thereafter.

Excuse me from being a soppy date but that's the bottom line as far ar I go so I shall
bow out of this arguement with that!

FII is not a diagnosis of the parent's mental health state. It is a descrption/category of abuse suffered by the child at the hands of a parent/carer who may well have a mental illness. I don't think that is too hard to follow.

Elizabetth, from your posts it seems clear that you doubt the very existence of FII. I'm not trying to speak as an authority on it, I certainly am not, but I am trying to put across my own view which has been formed from the child protection training that I have had and the experiences of clinicians who I personally know and trust and before you ask I have never met Roy Meadows and have no particular desire to! I notice that your earlier assertions about the adoption of middle class children to meet targets was based upon hearsay. I'm not sure that you are any better informed about the other areas that you are discussing.

I think that we are all in agreement on this thread that we want the best for FRan's unborn child. Without the full facts of the case we cannot know if any putative descisions made by ss are in the best interests of the child and actually even if we did all know all that there is to know about this case we would not necessarily arrive at the same conclusion. I'm not convinced that ss are doing the right thing in FL's case, but I don't know that they are not.

I've quite enjoyed this debate but unless new ground is covered I probably won't come back to it .

LaDiDaDi, MSBP/FII is a diagnosis of the parents. It's simply ridiculous to try and pretend otherwise. The "symptoms" are in the main subjective examinations of the parent's behaviour and attitudes not of the child itself. The diagnosis is then applied to the parent.

I believe that child abuse exists, I don't believe that paediatricians and social workers are qualified to make a psychiatric diagnosis about someone who isn't even their patient. That should be left up to an appropriately qualified person. The danger is that they apply a label to a parent which is then almost possible for the parent to escape. Rather than looking for actual evidence of abuse the "experts" rely on the label to base their decisions on.

Bossybritches says we have gone off topic, but the point is that what is being done to Fran Lyon is part of a much wider systemic failure that involves paediatricians who overreach their areas of expertise, social workers who blindly listen to them and family courts that are being corrupted because of the secrecy they are allowed to operate under. The targets for adoption that social workers strive to meet (a threefold increase in adoptions in the past few years) merely adds to the problem.

I'm as well-informed as most on this subject and probably better informed than quite a few. If you have evidence or facts that contradict what I have said here, then present it. The thing is the facts support my argument not yours.

Well done Elizabeth- you have made MANY salient points, just can't keep up !!

If what I'm saying here is getting in the way of helping Fran and Molly however, I'll gladly cease this particular part of the discussion.

No Elizabeth- anything that keeps the case in the public eye must be good I would think?

Whichever way it goes the fact that the case is under scrutiny must help keep all parties on their toes.

elizabethh - with reference to your post of on Sat 20-Oct-07 21:42:25

the sws posting on here, myself included, have done so to shed some light on how child protection systems work, as requested by other posters.

given that no-one seems interested, and takes my posts as "nefarious" defence of the diagnosis of Munchausen's syndrome by proxy, I won't bother you all on this thread again.

elizabetth you speak of the family court system as some form of authority-what experience do you have of the family court system other than that you have gleaned from the popular press?

Good posts Elizabetth, please don't stop posting on this thread (unless you want to)

I think as Elizabeth said, we have seen some grave miscarriages of justice recently with regards to misdiagnosis of M by P, with the result families have been torn apart and lives have been destroyed. Therefore it seems that the utmost caution must be applied in any case where M by P is suspected.[And one should admit, even in the light of the SW's personal opnion/experience that it exists, that it is not proven as a real illness at this point in time] It does seem a bit like calling a woman a witch in medieval times - once the suspicion is there, there is very little a woman can do to prove her innocence. Of course the most important thing is that children are protected. I just feel the whole SS and medical community could do with a little humility and self examination on the subject, and extreme caution. I do not think this is happening [no reference to specific SWs on this thread who I'm sure do a difficult and great job.]

IBS, it's useful to have a SW's point of view on this I think, please don't waste your time discussing boots and lipstick As I have previously mentioned I have a lot of respect for SWs, the only criticism I have in my limited experience is that a lot of them have their hands tied by volume of work, which obviously is not a criticism of the individuals, but the system.

I think people are making a very good point that we don't know the full facts of the case, but as far as they are being portrayed by the media and by FL, the story is that her baby will be taken away from her at birth because of either or both of domestic violence and mental health problems she's had in the past which have caused experts to decide she will suffer from MSbP and therefore harm her baby. It also seems that they are unwilling to see that she wants to co-operate and take reasonable action to both protect the baby and allow her to be a mum. Unless there are significant other facts about this case, then I think this is completely unreasonable, cruel and inconsistent. If there are other facts which are not publicised for confidentiality reasons, then all this will do will be to deter women from seeking help for rape, domestic violence and depression for fear their babies will be taken away - despite all the reassurances you get! I can't see any solution really