Yet another baby wrongly taken away

[Kathyis6incheshigh]

here
Thank God it was only for 2 weeks.
The bit that makes me mad is the way depression seems to count as a big black mark against you. I wonder how justified that is - what proportion of depressed mothers really harm their children?

frightening that the bump was noted at birth, and yet that did not count for anything ..

poor woman

The depression being a black mark is sad.

But if the doctors diagnosed it incorrectly, and tell the social workers that this is a new "injury" what are the social workers meant to do?

I don't get why they are being lambasted in the comments. What choice did they have?

Is depression + 1 bump which the mother herself brought to the attention of the health visitor really enough evidence to justify removing a baby though? Even if it was a new injury?

I think you rarely get the whole picture from such stories. It takes quite a lot of history for a baby to be under SS' eye before birth and if it had been an injury and the baby was left with mum, there would have been all hell to pay if something else happened.

As Liz says, it's not the whole picture. "A Durham County Council spokesperson said: 'For reasons of confidentiality, it is not appropriate for us to comment on individual cases.'" And it's the right thing for ss to do.

The Daily Mail always runs these one-sided stories. They have an anti-social work political agenda.

They do have that agenda, you're right, and I agree it's likely not the whole story. However. It makes the investigation look very shallow that they didn't even come up with the fact that the injury had been there at birth.
This is not necessarily the fault of individual social workers (understaffed/working within a bureaucratic system, etc) but it does suggest a problem with the system.

I agree the typical Daily Mail reader comment view of social workers as Marxist feminist fascists intent on destroying the family is stupid, to put it mildly.

I guarantee there is a lot more to this story than is reported. You have no idea what history this woman or her partner have, so please stop this 'yet another' bullshit.

Social services do not remove children on the basis of 'one bump to the head'. Nor do they remove children because the mother has depression. Please wise up. We aren't the big bad wolves, we don't remove cute ickle babies to meet adoption targets, it's all rubbish.

According to the commenters social workers are 'evil people' and 'creatures', 'power hungry' and 'evil SS'. Sigh.

You sound very naive, Kat.

It wasn't nonsense about adoption targets.

Social services have made some very high-profile mistakes involving wrongful removals of babies. The phrase 'yet another' is entirely justified.

I work for social services. I'm not naive, I know the system. I know far more about the processes than most people on this thread, I assume.

But you are assuming that things work as well everywhere as they do in your area. It was the same with the Fran Lyon case - social workers were saying 'this couldn't possibly have happened' - well it did.

I have a medical history of depression,as do many other people, and my son wasn't on the at risk register before he was born!!

There is much more to this than is in this one report.

kat, so the system works fine then throughout the whole country. Is there any room for improvement? Not likely that mistakes are made?

No, the system isn't perfect. There is not enough money and not enough time. Things get missed and children slip through. But

• babies are never removed on the basis of one bump to the head
• babies are never removed because the mother has depression alone
• SS do not remove babies to meet the govt's adoption targets

This is just fact. It is also fact that this article only discusses the parents' side of the story and that we will never be able to read about the back story, and there undoubtedly is a back story.

I hope you are right, kat. I sincerely do.

Targets were stopped in 2006. Prior to that they did exist and councils did get financial rewards and there was an increase in the number of newborns adopted, despite the fact that the targets were aimed at increasing the number of older children adopted. See here, for example

I think we have to accept that no system is infallible, and that mistakes will be made.

But I don't like this culture of bashing social services for every wrong-doing, when for every one child wrongly taken away there must be hundreds/thousands who are rightly removed from abuse/neglect.

Also, the fact that SS are not allowed to comment on these cases means that the injured party can essentially tell the press whatever they like and no-one is allowed to right the wrongs in the reporting of it, thus skewing our view of social services even more.

It is far better IMO that a child be wrongly removed, than a child be wrongly left in a situation where they are at risk. SS are damned if they do, and damned if they don't.

And women suffering from depression do not routinely have their children placed on the child-protection register. There is clearly more to this. I have a friend who has had serious mental health issues throughout her life, with eating disorder in her teens and severe depression for which she has been sectioned on numerous occasions. And she has never had any dealings with social services.

wannabe: 'It is far better IMO that a child be wrongly removed, than a child be wrongly left in a situation where they are at risk"

I am you can say that. Neither situation is acceptable full stop!

There is no margin for error. All errors have to brought to account. No one is supposed to play god.

"the foreign doctor "

typical Daily Mail!

'It is far better IMO that a child be wrongly removed, than a child be wrongly left in a situation where they are at risk.'

Until it happens to you or someone you love.

Fran Lyon had mental health issues as a teen, and she was singled out by SS.

The arbitrary nature of how they operate and secrecy is what I object to.

One person is singled out to have her baby removed based on mental health issues she had as a teen, and Caleb Ness is allowed to go home with a mother who is known to be an active heroin user who lives with her drug-addicted boyfriend who has a criminal history of violence, and who kills the baby 11 weeks later.

kathy, I am a bit confused by the article you linked. It quotes Kevin Brennan, the children's minister as saying adoption targets were abolished in 2006. But then even as late as April 2008 Hammersmith and Fulham council was getting financial incentives from the government for meeting adoption targets. The government then claimed that the payment would be one of the last? So when were these targets discontinued?

Other things in the article were even more disturbing:

"The Sunday Telegraph, in its "Stop the Secrecy" campaign, has reported cases where babies have been removed from their devastated parents at birth, following family court sessions held in private with the threat of prison for families who speak out. Campaigners claim to have identified more than 100 possible miscarriages of justice.

Sometimes pregnant women are identified for forced adoption because they are drug addicts or have neglected previous children. In other cases, social workers cite mental health problems in the woman's past, or concerns about their likely skill as a parent. Babies removed at birth tend to spend a year or two in foster care before adoption, which is permanent and irreversible."

But I suppose that is just biased reporting again?

I'm not convinced you can judge a case on what you read in the Daily Mail

I'm not by inclination a fan of social w**kers.

(trying to get hospital social services to answer the phone is near impossible. I usually tell my colleagues to use a ouija board instead. Quicker and more reliable..)

...however this story, and a number of other similar recent ones, make me feel distinctly sorry for this profession.

It seems they will be criticised whatever the do (or don't do). Difficult decisions have to be made, and someone has to make them. Yes, there should be accountability. But ultimately I would rather read these stories than those about cruelly injured, abused or neglected children who were not helped.

I assumed it just meant the decision was made in 2006 but took a while to come into effect?

Does it take so long for an adoption target to be removed? The government just stops paying money to any winners. Not as if they were rolling out a new IT system or putting in place changes in practice.

Perhaps I am being naive.