Mail on Sunday Magazine

[lottiejenkins]

I found this article today..........I thought it was very moving,,,, what a decision that lady made... dont think i could do it though!
www.mailonsunday.co.uk/pages/you/article.html?in_article_id=522925&in_page_id=1908

Pagwatch, the library is going to do a roaring trade.

"it's not the child you ever want to run away from it's the whole screwed up system and a society which views some children as more valuable than others"

is that not exactly what JH did when she chose to abandon her child with SN but keep her NT child and then go on to have ANOTHER nt child?

" would trust the judegement of one them and thier family well beyond any social worker"

Thanks for the compliment.
If it helps i would rather my child were placed in residential care for teh elderly rather than be placed with a foster carer who either believes my child is revolting or believes that i thought he was.

Talies - if it's any consolation i don't actually think your as much of a troll as you like to make out.
I have picked up on a few not so subtle hints that you have either a SN child or famly member, im not sure why it is you have not just come out with it as you have tried repeatedly to get us to notice.

What i think you are trying to say ( and please by all means tell me if im wrong)
is that you think JH reached her decision to place Imogen into care because of lack of care provision. you feel that had she been given more support Jh would have been more at ease to have kept Imogen at home?

jamSambam - you are right. there are some on Mumsnet that seem to live in a world that is very different to mine. they have teh luxury of cleaners and nanny's and posh cars and lovely holidays. im lucky if i can afford a weekend in Bogna and some Andrex loo roll.
You seem to share our views about Jh, and yet you have come on the thread and in one post agreed with us and then told us we are all barking?

What i think your trying to say is that we should agree to disagree.

its an admirable point of view but on a subject as emotive as this i just don't think it possible.

Jonkat - Im afraid i find you deplorable and i cannot find anything to defend.
Im sorry.

I felt Richard and Judy was everything bad about Britain today.

Some yank I for one had never heard of gets a huge interview about basically nothing; her celebrity lifestyle and singer husband.

JH Tania and Immie come on and they could not get through the interview quickly enough.

Someone where there were real issues and really pertinent matters and it was all dealt with at in a totally superficial way.

JH did not however appear to have horns and she was sat there with Immy who was plainly not very well.

Shame really as if presented immi as a very quiet passive person which does not quite fit in with the Immie I met.

I would love to have that bloody paed on there when Immie is well and remind him that he said she would have no intelligence, then ask him wrong can you be......

As an adoptive mother who has taken over he care of children whose birh parents have fel unble to cope with the needs of heir disabled child i find it exceptionally sad to read of the apparant "hate" (that is how it reads to me...not necessarily how it was felt by the writers) hat is pouring out in the direction of a mother who has opened her heart for the world to scrutenise.

Julia Holland is one of many many mothrs ho has felt totally incapable of meeting the needs of a disabled baby and the needs of he rest of her family....that is not a crime it is a fact of life. Julia loves Immogen and always has...the fear, grief, anger and any other emotion she experienced have never taken away from the love.
Just because these other mothers acknowlege they cannot or maybe even do not want to take on the 24/7 care of their children does not take away from the love they have for them.

Knowing that someone else can and will love their child as their child deserves to be loved is not a crime...it is a knowledge that frees them to make the best decision or them and their child...and maybe for the other children in their family.

Immi is loved beyond measure..Tania is a lady wih immense knowledge, love and compassion. Whatever is there to be so woun up about?

Who did Julia write for? Yes maybe for her on therapy, maybe to display the failings in the services available..maybe for other mothers who have made or who are considering a similar decision. I know the birth mothers I have spoken to have had a tough time facing people who know they have given their children up...to know maybe there is someone out there who understands could just help them.

Many of you who have carried on and succeeded in loving, caring for and meeting the needs of your disabled children...that is fantastic, you are doing a very difficult job and doing it well....we walk that road with you. It does not mean it is the only right road...if it is not the right road for someone else that really is OK.

Just because you personally may never have been driven to the extremes of despair to feel negative emotions towards your child does not mean tho experiences are not very very real to others. Just because you have never felt a need to walk away and keep on walking does not mean that some other mother has not had that overwhelming need to do so. Accepting that you just cannot do this...be it afer 10 days 10 weeks 5 months or however long....being sure that your child is taken into formal care and the best solutions made available is the best thing to do!
My first child lived with his parents for 18 months...rarely shown love, rarely cuddled...fed and kept clean at the very best....before the parents were made awre that adption was available to them as an option....from the time he was taken into foster care the family were able to learn to love him but still felt that adption was the best option.
Our second child was discovered to have a genetic disrder, his parents were told when he was 10 days old and they immediately felt they could not care for him and that day he was taken ino care and came to us for adoptin at 6 months...this birth family stayed in touch only by letter.
We went on to adopt a third child whose parents walked outof the delivery suite unale to face the fact their daughter had been born with a devastating genetic syndrome...they have been unabl to maintain any contact.
Our final adopted daughter has ongoing contact with her birth family and with hindsight I believe the SGO would have been a better option for her and her birth parents but was an option that was never explored. I see and hear the anguish of her birth parents in every call, every visit every word. they have never felt they made anything but the right decision, they wish deeply they could have coped but the fact remains that they couldn't...they tried for 7 months and it very nearly destroyed their family...the healing is still ongoing 4 years down the line.
It is easy to condemn someone bcause you do not agree with their way of dealing with things. We are all diferent, have difrent abilities and different ways of coping and dealing and indeed of loving.
I have known families who have stayed together where the needs of none of them are met...where the disabld child is a nuisance, is left out of all the fun sides of life and is not accepted as part of the family...I have tried to help, given some space, taken both disabled child out to give the rest of the family time together,and have taken siblings out to enjoy things the family would never contemplate...I have been told to poke my nose out too!
The fact that Julia has been honest about her dark thoughts her panic and her fear is going to comfort others who find themselves in those black days too. Just because you cannot see it from her point of view...he fact you find those thoughts so abhorent does not stop them xisting and being very normal and even healthy for some others not so able as you!
with love...which seems to have been sadly missing here from what I can see....towards people who maybe need that support you talk about...support not for your point of view bu for theirs!

Ahh poor old Mamazon....

People saying they don't trust the judgement of social workers.

I don't think Justice Munby was over the moon with some SW today either.....

Then again it was open season on Taliesintractions here not too long ago too.

I am sure we are both big enough to cope.

As I said yesterday I am pretty shy about what i do because there is a hit squad on here whose discourse seems to be:

TT is a XYZ which is great cos all XYZ's are (chose one from the random list of bigoted statements)

I mean I cannot even be a truck driver I have to be a "hairy handed truck driver"

Interesting though, because I have worked with older children who challenge apparently I know nothing about loving families who struggle to raise their children. Not that there are bigots here......

But I digress.

To clarify things a bit.

I refuse to condemn JH for leaving her child.

I do not have that right.

I would not however support her in describing Immie as an animal, or rag doll, or other such things.

Not that I saw someone with an "animal" on Richard and Judy.

Then again most people on here seemed pretty cool with the paed having said she would never have any inteligence.

I was not cool with that, it left me cold.

But anyway about me, everyone seems to want to know.

I will confess I once spent an evening in a bar with the Pogues shortly after I had recovered a prominent member of another band from a brothel in Lorient into which he had blundered whilst "confused".

I have also chaufered Mick Jagger.

Does that help?

tell me about mick jagger he is a legend

In which case talies i give in.

I have tried to give you teh benefit of teh doubt, attempted to see things from your PoV but you seem content to just persist with this rather immature point scoring.

Had yoy been around more than five minutes you would know that whilst i am a social worker i work within youth Justice. My experiance of older children with challenging behaviour is quite extense.
I do get a bit about the constant social worker bashing but i really don't take it too seriously. i am the first to get irritated by the system and will condemn any named SW who cocks up.

I am quite open about who i am. i wont hide behind a screen name shouting and pontificating. I am happy to stand by the things i say here and the opinions i put forward.

It is a shame you do not have the same confidence in your views

oh and i have dated footballers, been clubbing with many popstars and attended the wedding of a politician.

but whose scoring points

mamazon don't let him wind you up.
I know you and you give good advice.
(ans some very bad..)

and mamazon has met me

well i thought you would look fab with purple spkiey hair and red tartan trousers.

syas the woman who was dressed in leopard rpint from head to toe

2 shoes,

Hi,

Fantastic on stage, superb live performer.

Shrewd and beyond, he owns the rolling stones locks stock and.....

Everyone else just works for him.

Even the T shirts on sale were his.

Would I trust him to parent a SN child?

Sorry, I won't say, he has very good lawyers.

what has an sn child got to do with MJ?

i love his music but wouldn't trust him to father a dog

Mamazon

There are social workers and social wa@@@@@.

The sooner the latter can be driven out of the system by the CSC the better.

I have no interest in point scoring.

I am just concerned that in all this JH bashing the need to meet every childs needs is slipping off the radar.

tinadawn - well said!!!!

2 shoes,

Father a dog?

They never got the case to court......

LOL

Hi Tinadawn

What a refreshing post.

How non judgemental can you be.

Everyone should feel humbled.

wtf humbled??
tlisman
by the way I am lucky my dd has a briliant SW

the only time I have felt humbled is ..
talking to my freind who's son had a terminal disability. watching her and her x dh working together to give him the best life possible.
listening to the love in her voice when she spoke about him at his funeral.
then I was humbled.
never about people abandoning babies.

Yes people who abandon babies must be desperate or ill.

I was not there and I am not qualified to be the expert.

PS. Glad you had a good SW, don't let go of them, they are not as common as we would all like.

we are lucky where I live. one of the reasons I would never move. good school, good ss childrens disabilaty team, good holiday play scheme, good rehab.
shame about the shit hospital

I replied to Tinadawn but it doesn't seemt o have shown up [grrr]

You are right on so many levels TD BUT Jh isn't just being honest about her views during those dark days.
she is infering that WE, the wider SN community feel the same.

that we all have thoughts of murdering our child, that we wish we were brave enough to place our child in care, that our other children are somehow being neglected in order to care for our Sn children.

This is dangerous.

This book may indeed be used by mothers who have just had the DX for their beautifull baby.
this book is wrtten with rose scented ink. It is being touted as teh reality of having a child with Sn and placing t hat child in care.

In fact its not. the reality is quite often very very different.
looked after children will usualy be moved about frequently and can be placed with up to 3/4 homes a year.
It is even harder to place a child with SN in long term care.

I hate to think of parents in teh first stages of grief reading this boko and thinking that this is the easy option, that by placing their child in care they will be ensuring them a life of easy part time parenting.

It think if a family with a newly diagnosed child read the book, they will either be thinking 'i couldn't do that' or thank god there is another option. If thinking the latter, I think they would be in the minority and all options should be given to them

Most of us never thought to hand our babies/children over to someone else but there are some that will never cope and know that. Why shouldn't they be informed that it can work and they don't have to soldier on regardless