Mother 'not clever enough to raise child' has baby snatched by social workers

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What do we think?

JH I would love to believe and know for myself that you are correct about this case but I will, of course, never know the ins and outs.

It is awfully sad whichever way one looks at it. Sad if the mother is incapable and SS are right and sad if they are wrong and a terrible mistake has been made.

However, I would like to ask you how you remain objective about cases when it is clear you feel extremely strongly about injustices that abound?

Is 'Johnhemming' the poster really John Hemming the MP as his profile and comments here suggest???

Yes, he is.

Going for the votes of the average DM reader then!? ...clever.

I don't get it. What is so hard to understand about the idea that social workers can only remove children from their parents with the clear permission of a court, in the form of an order made by a judge. It is the judge who decides whether a child should be removed. Social services makes the application and presents their evidence for believing that a child may be at risk of significant harm from the care they receive from their parents.

It's all quite straightforward, really.

Indeed that is true. And if a mother breast feeds on demand then the judge decides that her baby should be adopted because she has failed the parenting assessment.

Straight forward really.

Judges act on information gathered by social workers. Wise social workers, inept social workers, and so on...

jh, you ignored me on a previous thread too

Any possibility of replying to my question Mr Hemmings?

They should have parent support workers so that mum can keep baby but recieves help from a mentor. Or is that already done? Seems like a sensible solution and will create jobs.

If the mum was neglecting baby or abusing that is different. Neglect and abuse dodn't necessarily have anything to do with intelligence as I am sure that many intelligent mums abuse their children. It just seems prejudiced. She was breastfeeding which seems like a fairly intelligent choice. Mabe she hasn't a high iq but she can still have a mum's intuition.

What about (and this is purely conjecture) her partner has a history which would render her raising her child in a safe environment impossible? Truly impossible. And (again, what if) she was unwilling to change those circumstances, even if it meant losing custody of her child?
I am genuinely interested in any answers to this.

But why on earth can she only visit for 2 hours every other day? Her child. Not seeing its mother.

johnhemmings. You must know that isn't true. What's the point of all this?

poshsinglemum. Really, "a mum's intuition?" Where was that when all those other mothers abused and neglected their children. The issue for this women appears to be the risk of neglect raised by her disability, which clearly was not ameliorated by her family, partner or unwillingness to work with the local authority. If any of these had been a protective factor then the LA would not have applied for an order and the judge would not have made the order.

Ime social workers are simultaneously highly risk averse (figures, but still...) and also lacking in specialist knowledge of mental health issues so I'm guessing the same is true of learning disability?

Okay, they may seek reports from experts in order to substantiate their concerns but often these are disregarded when they do not fit with a social worker's personal perception of a case.

So what do you imagine the outcome to be when a Judge is faced with pages and pages of 'evidence' from a social services point of view against one or possibly two reports from specialists in assessing learning impairments or mental dysfunction?

The odds are stacked against families whom, for whatever reason - justified or otherwise - social services have decided are 'unfit'.

Hi Mrwahwah - maybe this is your first experience of John Hemming MP and his stance on child protection. You ask him "what is the point of all this" - if you google JH you will see that his campaign to discredit social workers, (and indeed all professionals involved in the family courts) including solicitors, barristers and judges is based on something that happened to him personally a few years ago. He will deny this but the evidence is clear. He has been highly criticised by a High Court Judge in a written judgement. He has been ordered out of a court in Birmingham. He must be the only MP in the land to issue a writ against a local authority, in his case Birmingham City Council, claiming £300,000 to be paid for by social workers directly. Of course it did not succeed but this gives the measure of this irrational man. On top of this he assists (as in this case) parents to flee the country when there are child protection concerns. So we have an MP openly stating that he is protecting the parents at the expense of the child.

For an MP to act in such highly irresponsible ways I have found very troubling. The problem is that Nick Clegg does not appear to be concerned about all of this. Maybe he will feel differently now there is a general election looming.

JH runs some sort of organisation that seeks to "assist" parents involved with social services. His contention is that the system is evil (he actually uses that word) and social workers are mere incompetent child snatchers who want to get babies adopted to meet adoption targets. Sadly there are many MN posters who believe this nonsense.

My sympathies are with the parents who go to him for "assistance" because they will naturally think that an MP will be able to fight their case and all will go right for them. This isn't the case (though JH claims not to keep any figures about "successes" or "otherwise") If he posts about a particular case and you ask what was the outcome he usually says the "judgement is due tomorrow" but there the matter ends. I suppose one can only be relieved that he cannot actually influence court proceedings and hopefully children who need protecting will be protected.

Hi post above that a child was removed because the parent Breast fed on demand is a good example of the rubbish that he posts and presumably believes. Another classic one was that a child was removed because the grandmother called the social worker "fat" - complete and utter nonsense I know BUT there are those that belive him.

Re this case - all I can say is that thank goodness his little trick to get the parents to Ireland did not pay off and this baby will be protected.

Oh and he often doesn't answer issues raised. In fact this is very rarely the case. He doesn't deal in logic or detail, just sensational rubbish. I wouldn't care if he wasn't an MP. SO if anyone is concerned be careful before you vote Lib Dem in the next election!

The system is evil???

No, there are many parents who are evil (and incompetent etc)! What rock are you living under? Haven't you been reading about the shocking events in Doncaster, where a social worker has been disciplined for not intervening etc.?

FFS

I know - let's get rid of the child protection system completely then . Yes the system is crap but it's the only one we've got until there is much more in the way of funding.

And Leonie - had the authorities intervened previously and threatened to remove the children would JH and you have called the system evil then? Would JH have assisted the parents and their children to flee? Yes I expect so had they gone to the papers etc etc.

No system is perfect and people do not have the benefit of a crystal ball - until they do all we have is this system and it's not ever going to be perfect. I'm not a SW btw but I do work with them at times (most good and some who have not been so good - like any job) and they do a difficult and thankless task. If you've met crap ones them my sympathies but you cannot condemn a whole system based upon that - instead you need to lobby for changes and accept that might mean an increase in your taxes.

I really think those of you condemning social workers need to go and work for six months as family support workers - you might then have an idea about the crap that SW deal with on a daily basis trying to support families who in some cases go years neglecting their children before enough evidence has been gathered to remove them by which point in most cases the damage has been done (and will probably be comnpunded in foster care). What we need is massive funding to provide the support these families need (right from the start) to parent their children and keep them in their homes - but while the funding is crap nothing will change.

John - do you make huge noises about that factor? If not then WHY? As it is you appear to be looking at the needs of the adults rather than the children who cannot protect themselves.

On the face of it it sounds very sad, and we'd all like this couple to be able to raise their child in a safe and supportive environment with the help of social services. But there is a great deal left unsaid in that article. As we know all too well SS do their best to keep baby with natural mother, sometimes very midguidedly and with disastrous consequences. There must be much more to this than meets the eye. I think it is not coincidental that her own parents were unable to look after her, there must be deep-seated family dysfunction issues as well as just her learning difficulties at the heart of this. Her level of learning disability is probably more serious than is being alluded to in the article. Sometimes without the benefit of a crytsl ball you have to act on gut instinct where the safety of a child is concerned.

Nana, though I do see your point about John Hemming, I don't tbh think that Mumsnetters are that easily led or will think social workers are evil merely on his say so.

From what I remember of previous threads, the ones who voice very negative views of social workers tend to be the ones who have very negative experiences of their own.

Of course this doesn't make it right for them to extrapolate and project their experiences onto a case that may be totally different. But I can sort of see that if you have had a very bad experience of a certain profession acting in a way they are not supposed to, then any members of that profession coming online to say that this couldn't possibly happen is going to be like waving a red flag. (I have reacted like that myself on threads concerning another profession that I have had problems with )

Of course it's not right to project your own experiences onto something else. But at the same time, I don't think we should deny posters their experiences. Just keep pointing out that we cannot judge any case without the facts and there are good reasons why we don't have access to those.

Message withdrawn

It also shows how social services are damned if they do and damned if they don't.

But Leonie, do you really think it is either fair or sensible to assume that all social workers balls it up because they did with you?

I have had a pretty ghastly experience with the medical profession, but that doesn't mean I go around claiming all doctors are bad or that other doctors must be getting the treatment of other children wrong because this one did with my dd. All I can say from my experience is that it would be silly to say that doctors never get things wrong. But that's a long way from saying any doctor must be getting things wrong.

My own experience of social workers has been that they were the only people who kept their heads when doctors and headteachers were running around like headless chickens looking for a sensational explanation of dd's problems. Of course, my experience is not any more valid than yours. But it's not any less valid either. All it suggests is what we might have guessed anyway: that some SWs are better than others. That is hardly enough evidence to judge any individual case.

We have no idea if the SWs in this case are more like the ones that got things wrong for you or the ones that did everything right for me.