Mum pregnant with 13th baby, 12 taken by ss

[ChopsTheDuck]

here

Feel so sorry for the babies, being born under those circumstances. A case for enforced sterislisation if there ever was one!

there is never any case for enforced sterilisation. brutalising and forcibly sterilsing someone like this isnt the answer

she seems deeply inadequate,and rightly the children are removed

but state cannot sanction brutalising as treatment

it's one of those scenarios where different ethics meet head on - not up for enforced sterilising ethically but nor am i up for allowing a selfish messed up individual to continue bringing effectively 'parentless' children into the world

kayzr, I didn't realise that. But it's hardly millions is it? Even to someone on limited income £500 isn't going to solve many things is it? For the responsible ones it can mean feeding your family properly for quite a while, but she doesn't sound that kind of person to me.

No she doesn't. We used ours to by cots, pushchairs etc.

This woman's previous children were being neglected

We all get steamed up when there's a case such as Baby P, and say why didn't social services do anything, so on the flip-side it seems a bit rich to criticise ss when they do remove a child from a mother.

I know a woman who fosters babies. She has told me that ss make every effort to keep a child with its mother, but in some cases it's just impossible, usually when drugs or a violent boyfriend are involved.

I don't agree with forcible sterilisation, but perhaps a lobotomy for women who place loyalty to some random bloke over their child's welfare might be a good idea.

Yeah, let's persecute victims of domestic violence, what a great idea!

The horrible fact is, social workers have very little if any training in domestic violence. So some social workers, in some areas, take a very punitive approach.

All that does is make victims afraid to seek help. There is a poster on MN who is a social worker herself and became a victim of domestic violence. Instead of being offered help to get out, she was threatened by SS with removal of her children. It made her afraid and left her deciding to take the beatings and not even whimper rather than lose her children.

...think that she should be sterilised. No amount of education is going to change her mind, she seems determined to keep on having them, SS will just keep taking them away.

Re Domestic Abuse - there are different levels of expertise and understanding in Social Services, but let's not scare women off seeking help.

I understand that Domestic abuse is a horribly complex area to work with because there is an adult female victim (95% of the time) and victimised children. Sometimes the women and their children have different needs in terms of protection and sometimes they are in direct opposition to each other. For example, a not uncommon scenario is that of the child upstairs who is delighted to hear her Mum scream, because it means she's still alive. Now Mum consoles herself that Dad never lays a finger on the kids and they're never around while it's going on. Mum may need some time to work through what's going on a work up the courage to change her life-in the mean time, should her daughter reguarly be in fear of her mother dying?

Social Services have to represent children and sometimes make things happen faster than some women are ready for, but ultimately they have to set a timescale for change before children get further abused.

I am just staggered at johnhemming's figure that it costs £200,000 to remove a child. Rightly, it should only be a last resort but it still strikes me as a lot. Presumably it factors the cost of social services intervention, assessments, any support offered and then legal proceedings to remove.

at the grief response. Even sadder to read Hester's description of women to disorganised and damaged to change their parenting to meet the criteria for keeping their subsequent babies.

My figure is based upon foster care costs of say about £40K a year for up to 2.5 years and legal and associated costs including legal aid for the parents and the guardian's costs.

It is a figure that is accepted as a rough approximation by Birmingham.

The bereavement response needs to be properly understood. In essence the system takes no interest at all in the mother (or father) and merely does what the practitioners wish to do (which is argued for as the "best interests of the child"), but is clearly not always that.

The Irish case where Devon were trying to remove a settled 7 year old from Ireland and put him into foster care in Devon with a view to adoption is one of those cases where what is done is for the protection of "the system" rather than what is best for the child.

johnhemming, I assume 2.5 years' of foster care is because despite newborn babies being very desirable adoptees, it takes 2.5 years to actually match them with suitable adopters. In the meantime, the baby has to spend their early years in a foster care system in less than ideal circumstances.

I had a romantic notion that incomprehensible as having multiple babies taken into care may be, at least the babies would be whipped away to a bright and fresh start early on with loving future adopters. But if it takes 2.5 years in foster care for formalities to go through, then the poor babies would still inevitably have a poor start, though arguably not as bad as with the birth parents.

Words fail me

Not wanting to go into it too deeply I know of someone who has just had her 6th child taken into care the minute it was born. Of her other 5 children, 3 have just been adopted and the other 2 have remianed with teh foster carers knowing their siblings were wanted and they weren't they are school age btw so have spent years with their siblings only to be spilt up from them as no one wants to adopt a family of 6

"They need help and if the SS won't provide counselling then maybe the NHS should."

I think they need far more intensive therapy than any counselling the SS could provide

The periods in foster care vary. You then need to reocgnise that depending upon the foster care (a foster carer with three young babies has challenges) there may be developmental trauma what shows up at a later age. (what you refer to as "less than ideal circumstances").

When you study the details of the care system it is difficult to work out a worse way of dealing with the issues.

It is worth reading the recent CSF select committee report into the standard of social work training and people being allowed through who are clearly inadequate.

johnhemming, disturbing about the state of social services.

Can you elaborate on the Irish case in Devon about SS protecting the system rather than the interests of the child?

I understand there have been recent legislative changes in opening up the secrecy of family courts - would like to know your views on these changes.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/in_the_news/670551-Domestic-Abuse-and-Care-Proceedings-the-AWR-case-another-mum is the ARW case.

The recent changes are moving in the right direction, but the goverment have another planned step - which should allow discussion of the proceedings. My view is that discussion of the proceedings should require the permission of one of the parties, however.

Johnhemming, you still haven't said any more about the mother with epilepsy. Can you provide a few more details please?

It is not a right to have a child, this woman needs to be stopped.

To me, the story sounds as if the system works to a reasonable extent. Woman with a track record of neglect is not allowed to keep her babies and then they are adopted. The only improvement would be if adoption could be quicker. How anyone can suggest enforced sterilisation is beyond me.

Thanks for the link, johnhemming. I remember the AWR case - could not understand SS's actions there.

Do you know whether the mother in that case succeeded in keeping her child?

Ireland is going well for AWR. The epileptic is someone we met in the hospital, but before JFF kicked off hence we don't have full info.

We have moved into another step from the campaigning perspective. Still not exhaustive, but in a position to help more people get to Strasbourg.

What occurs to me is that the 'rare genetic condition' that some of the babies had could have been the reason that this couple first had their babies taken into care - aren't there quite a few genetic conditions that can lead to accusations of abuse against loving parents ie brittle bones or a tendency to bruise very easily or fail to thrive? In which case the SS could be repeatedly taking the babies away rather than admit that a mistake was made in labelling the parents as bad and neglectful in the first place?

We need access to full details to comment on the specific case, but removing 13 babies seems a wrongful route.

There must be something better than this.

Think of the 13 adults.

What, you just happened to bump into a woman with epilepsy in hospital who said her children were being removed because of that? What an exciting life you live.

Given you made the claim that was the sole reason for removal of her children, can we have a little evidence for that please? Presumably this is in the public arena of you have leave of the court to disclose this information...

I have access to the court paperwork to know that this is considered sufficient for the S31 threshold.