Woman to have baby taken away at birth...

[SharpMolarBear]

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

As i social worker myself my main concern when making decisions like this was teh possibilty that if i got it wrong a child could die. my monthly wage was not even considered...ever.

I'm not a SW but I wouldn't make assumptions about 'rigorous' or fairly applied policies.

Just like I wouldn't assume The Hutton enquiry got to the bottom of it or they were right in Orkney or that Sally Clark was wrongly jailed

too right www

But it wouldn't hurt to have to consider that you might also be struck off your professional register. There are very few professions where you can utterly screw up and still go on to work within your profession. Social work appears to be one of them, judging by the Cleveland woman. (Or was it Orkney? I get the details confused.)

Although I do seem to remember the junior SW in the Victoria Climbie case being hung out to dry by the people who were running the dept. Wasn't she drummed out fo the profession? How did that happen without a professional register?

I'd rather die than let anybody take my child

I feel so sorry for this woman and her child. I am hoping somebody sees sense.

What I meant was that Sally Clark WAS wrongly jailed. The courts and sws are not always right.

agree swc about the consequences being far more serious if you're a sw. Yet fk up as an accountant/lawyer/dr and you can't do your job any more. Consequences, useful things.

Oh totally agree with WWW

Can't imagine why the default assumption would be that the SW's and courts are right. They've got form on this sort of thing.

SWs do have a register.

I agree that this is a profession where a mistake can be dire. but how many times whilst at work have you made a mistake? does iot mean your entire profession are incompetant? does it mean you are actually no good at your job or does it mean youmade a mistake?

they do have regulatory bodies such as the general social care council (GSCC) and the NCSC
The National Care Standards Commission

I thought they must have for the VC woman to be banned.

But how on earth has the Cleveland woman managed to evade being made accountable for her actions? It is absolutely undisputed that what happened there was a disgrace. I remember the children were suing. Don't know whether that's gone through, what the outcome was, etc.

whoops - over eager with the post message button. The GSCC register is reasonably new - within the last 3 years IIRC. SWs have to re-register every 3 years, and there is now the ability for people to be struck off. In addition, a considerable number of SWs in cases where there are tragic outcomes got sacked anyhow, and though there was no way for them to be struck off, they would be incredibly unlikely to ever be offered a job in that field again. Like most things, many have been rightly sacked, some have been scapegoated.

i don't kno the details of the cleveland case but yes we are registered with the GSCC and yes we can be removed from teh register...therefor prevented from working as a social worker

"why was she first placed under SS care? who reported her and what for?"

The police called in social services when she called them to attend an incident at her house where her partner was frightening her (she didn't mention what he was doing).

So basically a woman who was likely the victim of domestic abuse and calls for help is now threatened with losing her child. No wonder domestic violence flourishes in this country if this is how victims are treated.

a "conduct" referral (ie complaint) has to be made - by an individual, or an employer.

Hearings are, according to GSCC, "usually" held with access for the public. I am not sure what conditions would make them held in private, though I wouldn't be surprised if they were the same ones which mean family law cases are heard in private.

that doesn't explain why sopcial services would have been involved?

i am a survivor of DV and i have not hd SS involvment when i had to call police for my ex beating the hell out of me.

im sorry to say this as i am sure she has made some friends here, but i really do not think the full facts in this case have been made available

of course the family courts should be more open, but I simply do not believe that ss choose a child and decide to remove it for adoption purely to meet their targets, no matter what the tabloids would have us believe.

SS is one of those professions where the price for the cock-ups is high, but we don't seem to hear about the times they got it right - about the children they have taken from abusive families etc, because that doesn't make for sensationalist headlines.

I have no doubt that sS have cocked up in certain cases, as do doctors/lawyers/many other professions. But I do not believe that they can simply take a child away based on an assumption - two judges have concurred with this "evidence" so there is more to this than the media is telling us IMO.

they are held privatley in a case where both parties have requested a private hearing...usually internal problems.

wannabe - I understand why doing my job properly is not newsworthy. The idea is that if I am doing my job well, no mentally ill people should be wandering the streets in need of treatment and support, no one should harm themselves, or another person. "no-one died" - that's hardly news. it's a shame for me that people only notice me if things go wrong, but if I wanted glory, I'd have become an England footballer.
Or not.

ImBarryScott not suggesting for one minute that you would do it for the glory , but the media are very quick to suggest that social services are incompetent whereas the cases where children have been removed from horrific abuce rarely get reported because for some reason it seems impossible to give ss the credit for anything.

Also, I wonder how many women go to the media in the name of Sally Clarke in the hope that they will receive public support and that SS will be condemned even if they are guilty of a crime. Not suggesting for one minute that this woman has done this, but I bet there are women that have.

ah mamazon, you might think differently if you'd seen those sw in the video footage of their interviews in the cleveland case. that was not a mistake. it was appalling