Oldham mum losing 2 year old to adoption unfairly

[boysown]

www.oldham-chronicle.co.uk/news-features/8/news-headlines/38254/news-full#comments

Mum loses out in fight for her son
Reporter: COURT REPORTER
Date online: 16/03/2010

A 25-year-old Oldham mum was told yesterday that her efforts to change her life had come too late to ever have a chance of getting her two-year-old son back.

The woman, who can?t be named to protect the child?s identity, made an emotional plea to a top family judge.

She sobbed as she told Lord Justice Ward that she had not had a fair hearing last October, when an order taking her son into care and placing him for adoption was made.

The mother said that she had been in a psychiatric hospital prior to that court hearing, at Oldham?s Family Court, and had not been in the right frame of mind to make any decisions. But Lord Justice Ward, sitting at London?s Civil Appeal Court, said the case in favour of adoption was ?overwhelming? and the correct way to proceed.

He told the woman she had made her submissions to him ?passionately, eloquently and heartbreakingly,? but that the positive steps she had taken towards changing her ?chaotic? life had come too late.

Addressing her concerns about her state of mind at the hearing, he said: ?If she was unwell, a guardian would have been appointed for her, but her disability was never so grave as to reduce her to that state.?

He said the mother had tried to adjourn proceedings at the Oldham Family Court so that an assessment of her mental health could be carried out, but this had been refused.

A judge at Manchester County Court also refused her permission in January, this year.

Lord Justice Ward said those decisions were correct, and that both court hearings had been conducted in a ?careful and sympathetic? manner.

Describing the case as ?distressing?, the judge said: ?If I were to give permission to appeal for every litigant I feel desperately sorry for, I would be granting permission to everyone.

?The sadness for me is that this mother has demonstrated she is a loving mother and does have an ability to look after her child.

?She had lived a chaotic lifestyle, mainly due to the pernicious influence of the man who inflicted violence on her, and she has made great steps towards improving her position.

?The tragedy is that all of that has come too late for this little boy to be returned to her.

?If sympathy was the Litmus test for granting permission, I would give it.?

He refused the sobbing mother permission to appeal and told her he was ?very sorry? as he left the court.

Have Your Say

skidooodly
you really know fuck all about this, do you?
Adoption is a million, million times better than fostering. Even if a child is lucky enough to stay with the same carer until 18 (rare). It is still not the same as having your own parents and family.

The vasy majority of parents don't get their acts together. Their children are damaged by a life in the care system on top of their early abuse. Look at the stats for outcomes of children in care. they are shit.

You are so focussed on the rights of parents, who are often, often, often truly shit parents, that you are ignoring the needs of the child. It's ridiculous.

Oh Sakura
that's ignorant, reactionary bollocks.
With respect.

'she carried him'
do you think that confers a special bond between mother and child? What about the mother who drinks heavily all through pregnancy? Who uses serious narcotics? And no I'm not even talking alcohol or drug dependent women, just women who choose not to stop partying just because they're pregnant.

Being pregnant is not a magical bonding special time that causes women to grow the fuck up and protect their children. many women resent or ignore the fact they are pregnant and make no effort to protect their child when unborn - what do you think turns them into good parents overnight when the child is born?

I hate all this emotive 'she carried him, birthed him, loved him' crap. So fucking what. Babies conceived when their mothers were too out of it to use contraception, resented all through the pregnancy, and ignored when they are born. that's what I see. So stop assuming that the fact of being pregnant and giving birth makes you a fit parent, or even a loving parent, because it doesn't.

And the woman was given help and support but chose not to take it. This was not a miscarriage of justice.

It would be fucking damaging to remove this child and return him to her care. The child is the important one, not her. She had her chance. Grow up and see how the world is!

Agree with you kat.

That's a much more realistic attitude than all this 'she carried him, so she must adore him' bollocks

I had a shit childhood,I would have been better adopted a teacher at school offered to foster me but my stepfather refused saying that it wasnt fair to my half sister .

Sakura that is ridiculous. Peter Connellys' "Mother" "laboured in pain", it does not make you exempt from abusing or putting your child in danger

I having been in a very abusive relationship with DS1's father for the first 22m of his life know the affect seeing such atrocities can have on a child. I had the courage/stregnth/knowledge to get out of the relationhip before it got too bad.

Do I agree with this decision? YES wholeheartedly.

I made a concious decision to move on with my life with my DS1.

kat you talk so much sense well done.
To all those who claim a child has a natural bond to their birth mum. That is crap. Sorry if I sound angry but I am.
My dd is adopted we see her bm twice a year. There is no bond between them, I am her mum and woe betide anyone who claims otherwise. I have birth children and I can honestly say hand on heart that the love I feel for all my children is exactly the same.
I am also currantly fostering children who come from a very similar background to the child the op is talking about. The emotional damage that has been done to them is extreme. If they are lucky they will be adopted but I fear they will end up in long term fc.
There is so much more to being a mum than carrying them.

"you only have one mother".

Yes...mine is the woman who adopted me when I was less than 6 months old and lavished me with love and attention when the person who gave birth to me gave me away.

Very ignorant comment.

sakura...what a load of fucking sentimental bollocks

kat..you talk most sense here

dolphin...I admire you greatly

NORKY - I appreciate that my views are ignorant, which is why I chose to leave this conversation.

I cannot relate to a situation where a mum doesn't love her child above all else.

I find it really quite incomprehensible. I'll readily admit that and decided that I couldn't participate.

So, I'm sorry i caused offense, but I have apoligised previously

And this is what can happen when social services don't take at risk children into care ...

A child who is adopted can bond with his new mother. A child who lives with foster families and knows that he can be removed at any time will not dare to bond with anyone.

From what I have seen in my own family a mother who looks after a child from a toddler until he is grown up, and deals with all the fall-out and trauma from the early years, gets to love him just as much as any birth mother. We have both biological and adopted children in our family and I can assure you that the bond is equally strong. I'd find it equally odd if an adoptive mother looked after her child for 16 years and did not love him above all else.

All the children/adults I know who are adopted are happy and very well bonded with their parents. And their parents don't love them any less than I love my bio children.

I Just need to cement my concerns to you all, the child in the article WAS NEVER, deemed at risk, the Child was never at any harm, or placed in any harm

The Authorities never deemed him to be at risk from mother, but the reason why this adoption has happened is that the Authorities caused more problems to the mother than any other agency, it was better for the authorities to sweep this under the carpet,so they don't have to deal with their FK UP's like with the police however they were not allowed to be in court, now If I could quote them about what they think this mother and her child went through I would be thrown off here.

The child was taken from mother at less than a year old, you have not read my brief explination of the case, this mother has ANOTHER child who was not part of proceedings, this other child has also lost her brother.

For all of you who have said some quite hurt full things about this mother, please explain to me now how this mother now explains to her other child what has happend to her younger brother.

DO NOT PASS JUDGMENT UNLESS YOU HAVE BEEN IN THIS SITUATION YOURSELF

Sounds to me like you are close to this particular case mobaldy. Please be careful on here.

We only get to read snippets and never see the full picture. I agree with the general feeling on this thread that the child's welfare should ALWAYS be paramount. With regard to the details in this case, we can only summise.

Whatever, it is very

Mobaldy, are you JohnHemming by any chance?

He isn't.

Mobaldy you said the other child does not live with her either.. Just visits? There must be a reason for that?
Its all very sad. But these thing don't just happen overnight and I cannot believe she didn't have the oppertunity to clean up her act before the adoption became formalised?
She was too late for her son

The rest of us don't know the facts, and this may have been a dreadful injustice.

However, if, for every 100 children taken into care early enough to enable them to bond with new parents at an early stage (and thus reverse the negatives of their early experience), the authorities make say 1 error, then I will vote for those odds.

I'm glad that there are outcries from time to time because that helps establish socially (and legally) acceptable boundaries within which the authorities will have to operate, and I am glad that MPs and the like take these cases up and go over them.

The judge is human, the mother has very visible needs and the child has very visible needs. And the prospective adoptees probably who have been bringing the baby up also have a right to be at the table. The judge hasn't done anything unfair. If the system itself needs changing because the information before him was incorrect then we ought to look at what we can do about it. And if there aren't the funds to change the status quo then lets all add another 2% to income tax to allow for proper investment in the processes and the recruitment of enough properly qualified workers to operate effectively.

But that would mean putting your hands in your pockets and sometimes the cost-benefit doesn't pass the hurdle test (the hurdle test being the parties you vote for, by the way). In exactly the same way, it is desperately sad to see someone die because the authorities won't spend 100k on drugs to save them, but it's not necessarily wrong. If errors are made it is because the wrong people are in the decision-making process or because the process itself is wrong. That's the problem.

I was able to bond with my new parents because I was only 8 months old when I was put in a new home. Thank heavens there wasn't anyone in my corner fighting for me to be returned to my birth mother at the time. And no, I won't be asking my mum how she would have felt if she'd had to give me back after a year or so.

"I cannot relate to a situation where a mum doesn't love her child above all else.

I find it really quite incomprehensible"

I can. Unfortunately I was stuck with her until I was 18 & left home. She told me many a time that she never wanted me. Don't get me wrong, there was no physical abuse etc. But the emotional withdrawal, no affection, putting herself above myself & my sister was heartbreaking to live through.

My dad left when I was 6 & from then until I was about 9, she invited all sorts into our home. She met one guy in the park & that afternoon he came home & they spent the afternoon in bed while we played out.

Then there are the memories of seeing someone peering in my door from the stairs, while I was in bed.

So yes, there are mothers who put themselves first, above all else...never mind if you find it incomprehensible.

mobaldy - the fact that there is another child who has contact with the mother does not mean that the younger child was not at risk. The older child does not live with the mother so that suggests that there were concerns about her parenting of that child too. I would hazard a guess that the older child is too old to be adopted or lives with a relative who is unable to look after the younger child too. In this case there would be no reason to prevent the mother from having contact with the older child - but this would not have any bearing on the rightness of the decision to place the younger for adoption.

The fact that john hemming has popped up on this thread yet has not started decrying the child snatchers or shouting miscarriage of justice speaks absolute volumes to me.

I don't have to get involved in commenting on every case. I am aware of more than is in the court judgment here.

As far as the children are concerned the key period for developemt appears to be 6 months to 18 months. This child was past that period in any event.

The adoptions that are most reliable are those that occur basically from birth.

The problem the system has is that if it were to make the decisions as to the mother's fitness before birth the mother would not have the baby (as mothers facing forced adoption would often prefer an abortion).

Perhaps it is callous, but if mothers prefer to terminate a foetus rather than end up with them adopted, then I would certainly support that.

I think there are problems in gettng babies adopted quickly enough and I do think ideally it should happen within 6 months of birth, or concurrent placements used ( although I appreciate how difficult this is to find ). Sadly I think the timetable is often not set with the childs needs in mind, although I have seen some better examples of this more recently. Still it is diffculty giving parents an opportunity and the child the best chance to remain with them, yet making sure their attachments aren't disrupted further by delay if the outcome is permanent removal. I don't really know what the answers are...