Another social services story

[dilemma456]

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When DS was in Children's Hospital, the nurses kept saying that I should go home rather than stay with him all the time . He was 13 months at the time!

I can just hear the nurses saying to Rachel, 'she won't know you're gone...'

there are some absolutely brilliant paediatric nurses, and there are some who find parents an intrusion into them treating a child.

A 2 hour stint in a very hot NICU, with your baby attached to drips, monitor, vent, etc would be enough for anyone. Maybe she only had the bus fare to come in once a day?

Maybe she had to go home to eat, as the hospital canteen was too expensive for her to eat in?

Maybe she was physically/emotionally getting over a very traumatic birth?

Does being a loving mother count for nothing these days? Rather than take the babe away, why didn't SS help her care for her babe in her home?

Call me cynical, but maybe it would be more expensive to help the mum and baby stay together then get the baby adopted.

Here we go again! Thankfully, the press appears to get involved and hopefully that will have some effect on the outcome.

I remember seeing a programme where a mother who was blind, deaf and (I think) had no arms. She was supported throughout her pregnancy and had a live-in carer to help her parent the child after he/she was born.

Surely this mother should have been allowed to take the child home and given whatever support she needed to cope with the child's medical problems, and only if she really couldn't cope should the authorities have sought other alternatives.

"The social services should be doing everything necessary to allow them to be together, even if it means 24/7 live-in support workers."

Sorry to sound a negative note, but just who do you think is going to pay for this?

Are you all willing to increase your taxes?

I read somewhere that K has 'complex medical needs' that they think her mother can't cope with.

If the reason is because she only spent a couple of hours a day visiting her baby in hospital then I can think of plenty of parents who also should have their children removed.

In my limited experience it is not uncommon for parents of babies born poorly to fail to bond. Ds spent nearly a month in SCBU and once I had to go home and commute on a daily basis I spent about 18 hours a day at the hospital sitting next to his incubator willing him to survive.

Some parents didn't visit every day, some came for a couple of hours and some came for longer. Depending on their lives outside the hospital. As I was on my own I didn't want to be at home without my baby so I chose to stay as long as I could and only going home to sleep. Even then I sometimes got called by the hospital to come back as soon as I got home.

I heard something on the radio tonight that Rachel has only had one assessment by one psychologist appointed by Nottingham council and even though that has been proved to be inaccurate she has not been reassessed. I don't understand why an independent court appointed expert has not assessed her.

Mollie, it went on to say that those needs have now resolved and, at 3yo, K needs no or almost no medical care over and above that any other child would need.

More of the same from today's paper
women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/families/article6493681.ece

I don't think SS are always perfect or that they always get it right BUT we don't know the whole story here do we? I always feel that SS are damned if they do and damned if they don't. How many children have better lives or even survive because of their involvement - we don't know about the latter and the former don't make news headlines.

There is a vast difference between parents who don't spend much time with their babies in NICU because there is little they can actually do and those who show no bond or awareness of a baby's needs. Nurses and doctors note these things and there must have been some disquiet for SS to become involved.

In an ideal world this mother would have support twenty four hours a day and seven days a week to help her care for her own baby but we don't live in an ideal world and that type of support costs vast amounts of money. Higher taxes anyone?

SS are massively underfunded and understaffed - just trying to get a phone call returned from them in my area is a nightmare. Little wonder that when faced with a difficult and complex situation such as this they head down the legal route. It's not necessarily right but unless we find money to offer the kind of support people here are suggesting this mother should have then there will be more cases like this and more news headlines.

I WOULD pay more in tax to ensure mothers with complex support needs have the input they need and are able to care for their own children as a result - anyone else care to join me?

regardless of the merits of the mothers' case, I still find it very disturbing that the Official Solicitor did not ensure legal representation, but seemed to rubberstamp SS's decision.

Re:hospital - I found it very hard to bond with DS whilst in hospital, I found it much easier once we were at home. I just wonder how reliable a judgment is in the alien and intimidating hospital environment.

What exactly is the point of the official solicitor 'representing' people in care cases if he merely rubberstamps the court's decision? Is it in order to maintain some very thin pretence that the parent has had legal representation?

The OS normally speeds up the process by preventing a mother from being obstructive.
This reduces costs without reducing the amount of money available to the solicitors.

And this is a good thing in what way, exactly? (Scepticism is aimed at the OS, not you, John.)

I mean, I thought the whole point of the British legal system was that arguments should be tested, not that one side should roll over and play dead.

IME of NICU, I was surprised at how little I saw some of the parents of the long term children in the med/low support part of SCBU.

I was actively discouraged from bf (although I did) and from having much contact with ds - picking them up wears them out apparently. I was never provided with any privacy, even when I wanted skin to skin contact and had to bf on a plastic 'school' type chair.

I was lucky that I was not a timid first timer, or I would not have had the guts to stand up for my beliefs.

My DS did attend SN nursry, I can guarantee you there were parents with multiple offspring there with IQs way lower than stated in this case.

Sorry, forgot to add, I also would be happy for my taxes to be spent on ensuring a loving parent can sucessfully bring up their own child.

when my friend's baby was born very premature neither she nor her family could cope at first. There were only short visits. Fortunately no-one could suggest they are less than normal intelligence so he's home with his family.

I know we don't know the whole story but I feel very uneasy about cases like this.