Keeping my son in hospital against my will

[TaashenMartian]

My son was born at 34 weeks on the 14th October with a heart condition. For the duration of his life (2 months) we have been in different hospitals. He is now stable enough to go home until his operation but because me and my sons dad had an argument in the hospital social services are involved and they won’t let us take him home. I have another child (a3 year old) who is still in my care and they have no plans to take her away. I want to know if they can legally keep my son in hospital due to safeguarding issues If my daughter is still in my care? Can I legally self discharge him if he is well enough to go home even though social services are involved? They have no reason to take my children from me as all it was was an argument, hence why my daughter is still in my care. But they are refusing to discharge my son until the case is resolved. Can they legally do this? What rights do I have? I feel if there are real safeguarding issues and my son can not be in my care then surely my daughter can’t either? Any advice would be much appreciated. This is incredibly stressful and I just want my son home for Christmas

Far more to this story than is written here.

Some of you are calling “bullshit” and saying there must be more to the situation. If there was more to it do you think I would be posting on here asking for advice? There is genuinely no more to this which is why I can’t understand it. There is no reason for some of you to get rude about it, I just asked for some advice

The operation he’s having in January is risky and there is a chance we could lose him. If that’s the case what kind of life has he had? He’s spent the whole of it so far in hospital. Btw I didn’t say to the social worker that him being in hospital is making us argue, just that it’s a stressful situation and and we don’t quite know how to deal with emotions right now, hence the very few arguments we have had. None were witnessed.

If ss have real concerns then if you attempt to take your child out of the hosp they will get an interim care order to enable them to control the situation. Dont fight them on it . You will not win and need to jump through every hoop they put in front of you to prove that your absolute priority is your childrens welfare. I am a fc and adoptor and my child came to me under similar circumstances after a long stay in hosp. There has to be more to this and you do not want to jeopardise your daughters situation either. If you prove your childrens welfare is paramount and there is no real risk then you should be able to take your baby home when they are satisfied. Hope it works out for you all .

I have now got more info from a solicitor and we need to clarify if they are keeping him on the advice of the social worker or because he actually can’t go home. Without a court order they can’t keep him there so they have broken the law with the way they have gone around this. We have a case if they won’t discharge him as it’s conpletely obsurd, to the point a lot of you feel there must be more to it, which there genuinely isn’t

If they are keeping him due to SS then if you attempt to discharge just because they do not have a care order, then they will get one immediately.

It sounds as if they may be keeping him in for medical reasons.

If the hospital wants him to stay for medical reasons, would you still try to discharge him?

OP are you aware that, unless you have changed some details, you have included enough information in your posts to identify you?

Have you actually been told he’s ok to come home ?

I'm glad you have a solicitor now. It's always good to have someone to fight your corner when you are going through such a difficult time.
FWIW, I get really irritated with the idea that there's no smoke without fire, you must have done something to warrant this etc. I know this is a more comfortable viewpoint, but it just isn't true at all! Obviously we don't know you, or your situation, but mistakes happen and not everybody is competent.
I hope this works out well for you and that the surgery goes well.

The baby is your partners first child right? Is your partner already known to police or SS?

I can only think of one possibility SS are thinking.
Perhaps they believe you're a victim of dv and that seeking help from the nurse but are now under duress by your partner and belittling any problems with your relationship. I would be careful getting solicitor involved rather than working with SS, may create more red flags and cause them in invoke a care order.

Is he actually well enough to be discharged?

If the baby needs a life saving operation in a couple of weeks; would they really have told you that he's medically fit enough to go home for Christmas? Have you clarified that with medical staff?
Leaving aside the whole issue of sending him home to a setup where domestic violence may be happening and being minimised by you...

Sounds like SS have an axe to grind. If they interfered with every family due to parents arguing, all our kids would be in care!

But then it depends what you mean by 'arguing'. Me and my DH bicker, we have had the odd argument infront of the DC but we are never threatening, we never swear, mostly just annoyed by eachother.

I have family that argue very differently. Swearing, back and forth leaving eachother and ignoring eachother for days. Whilst in an ideal world we would do our best to never argue infront of kids, some arguing kids don't feel scared by, some is damaging. My DC simply feel we are annoyed with eachother, they don't fear we will break up, hurt eachother etc.

I am with Bertrand. I don't want to be horrible to OP, who is clearly in a difficult situation whatever else may or may not be going on.

It is very hard to believe though that with a severely stretched NHS a baby who could go home is being kept in a very expensive neonatal cat without good reason, medical or otherwise.

I am glad you are now getting legal advice. You really cannot be accurately advised on an internet forum. I hope that one way or another things are resolved satisfactorily soon.

OP - at 10.51 you wrote - We had a discharge meeting the other day and they said they needed more time to decide whether they would discharge him.

This sounds as though your baby is not medically cleared for discharge yet and that there may be medical reasons for keeping him in hospital

I went to one of the nurses and said to them, in confidence, that we are finding the situation stressful, its creating arguments, and I think we need some more support. They had said many times that if we needed more support to tell them and that’s what I did. They immediatey contacted social services behind my back and now this situation has arisen

I have worked on several NICUs and in safeguarding. Parents arguing due to stress is totally normal and all the staff understand this. There is no way that simply admitting to having arguments would trigger a referral to social services without your consent. You are not telling us the whole story, OP.

I am sorry you are going through such a stressful experience, but it won't help anyone if you minimise what has happened.

I would let the baby stay in hospital, to be fair I don't think you have much choice.

I would keep very low key in this, go along with SS and it will be fine.
Start kicking up a fuss and you could open a "can of worms".
There is a risk you could lose this baby if you don't chill out!

I have now got more info from a solicitor and we need to clarify if they are keeping him on the advice of the social worker or because he actually can’t go home

So for all you know he can't medically go home? You don't seem to actually have a handle on what is going on here, which is probably one of the reasons there are concerns.

It has been confirmed that he is well enough to go home as they just want him to gain weight for his operation. They have said they have no medical reason to keep him anymore and the hospital want him discharged ASAP. If there was a medical reason I would certainly not be trying to take him home, I understand that if he needs medical care he needs to be In hospital. They have said they are waiting on ss to give the go ahead to discharge him but the social worker we are speaking to has concerns about arguments if he does go home. She would rather he stay in hospital until the safeguarding issues are resolved. I am upset that if we did lose him he would have had no time with his family, wouldn’t even have met a lot of family as they live a distance away and can’t get to the hospital to see him easily due to commitments at home. He is medically well enough to home to gain weight and this is what the hospital want, they have said they actually don’t have any concerns it’s just the social worker doesn’t think couples should argue and doesn’t want him coming home. If they weren’t involved he would have been discharged 2 weeks ago

The solicitor said that we need to find out if ss are advising he stay there or if they actually won’t let him go home, nothing to do with medical reasons at all

Neonatal cot, not cat!! Ridiculous auto-correct there.

I completely understand the medical side of it, I just don’t understand how they can keep him in hospital when he is well enough to go home just due to arguments that they haven’t even witnessed. It is my partners first child, he had never had any involvement from ss before and there is no dv

These are the only concerns they have told us about. I have asked many times about their concerns as I agree there must be more to it if they won’t let him come home but they are only saying arguments