CAN YOU BELIEVE? British Social Services Force a Caesarean & seize Baby

by fulltimestudent 12 Replies latest jw friends

  • fulltimestudent
    fulltimestudent

    I really can't believe this happened in the UK>

    From the Melbourne Age:

    Child taken from woman’s womb by social services in UK

    Date: December 2, 2013 - 11:00AM

    Alice Philipson

    A pregnant Italian woman was forced by social workers in Britain into having a caesarean section and then made to leave her new baby behind.

    A pregnant Italian woman who was forced by social workers in Britain into having a caesarean section and then made to leave her new baby behind had been detained under the Mental Health Act following a panic attack when she could not find the passports of her two daughters.

    The woman was in England for a two-week Ryanair training course at Stansted airport when she contacted police during the attack. She then called her mother, who was in Italy with her two daughters. When officers arrived at her hotel room last summer, they told the woman that they were taking her to hospital to "make sure that the baby was OK".

    They had spoken on the phone to the woman's mother in Italy, who explained her daughter was probably under stress because she suffered from a "bipolar" condition and had not been taking her medication. Instead of taking the woman to hospital, officers took her to a psychiatric unit, where she was restrained and sectioned under the Mental Health Act.

    Essex social services then obtained a High Court order against the woman, allowing her to be forcibly sedated and the child to be taken by doctors from her womb under a caesarean section.

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    The baby girl, who is now 15 months old, is still being looking after by social services, who are refusing to give the child back to her mother. The woman has launched a legal battle to have her returned.

    Lawyers for the woman have questioned why her family in Italy were not consulted and why social services insisted on keeping the child in Britain despite an offer from a family friend in the United States to care for her.

    Under British law, a child should be adopted by members of their wider family wherever possible. But social services ruled that an aunt of the baby's stepsister, an American resident, could not look after her because there was no "blood tie".

    John Hemming, the MP for Birmingham Yardley and chairman of the Public Family Law Reform Coordinating Campaign, which wants reform and greater openness in court proceedings involving family matters, said there were many other instances of children taken from mothers in Britain, who are then deported.

    He referred to the case of a mother whose child, now five years old, was born in Sweden, but was taken into the care of a local authority in Britain after the woman was involved in an incident at Heathrow airport. The child was placed in a foster home in September 2012 and continued to live there until an appeal court ruled that British authorities did not have jurisdiction over the child.

    Mr Hemming said local authorities were often under pressure to make quick decisions about foster placements and adoptions.

    Michael Gove, Britain's education secretary, launched a drive earlier this year to raise the number of children adopted. It came after figures showed that almost half of all councils were failing to meet basic targets for placing children with adoptive parents.

    Mr Hemming said: "It's a very big problem that has been swept under the carpet. Partly because it is so awful, people want to turn a blind eye to it."

    A spokesman for Essex county council said the local authority could not comment on continuing cases.

    Telegraph, London

    Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/child-taken-from-womans-womb-by-social-services-in-uk-20131202-2ykk6.html#ixzz2mGzyXAuI

  • Simon
    Simon

    Why be so surprised - this is the country that 'exported' thousands of children abroad as orphans after the war (that weren't) in order to help commonwealth populations. Not all (any?) of the parents were screened so as you can imagine many of the kids did not end up in good situations.

    It's kind of shocking that they do this sort of thing in the present day though - although I'm sometimes wary that newspapers can hype things and not provide all the details, social service can be a law unto themselves and sometimes have too much power and are too arrogant to admit mistakes and back down or reverse things.

    They forcibly took a load of chilren in a scottish island maybe a decade or so ago over allegations of satanic abuse which were later shown to be all bogus and I seem to recall many children not being given back or at least being separated from their parents for long periods.

  • rebel8
    rebel8

    I don't believe it either. Literally.

    Panic attacks are not a symptom of Bipolar Disorder.

    A person does not call the police when one has a panic attack unless one's judgement is impaired.

    Police here don't find someone after they've complained of having a panic attack and then her into custody.

    Furthermore, it is unbelievable that a c-section would be done only because they want to take custody of the infant. If she was being restrained due to being a danger to self or others, and medicated, perhaps the reason was for the safety of the infant, not because they wanted to hasten custody.

    I am skeptical things like that are happening in the UK either...sorry but I suspect the whole story is not being told by the article.

  • KateWild
    KateWild

    Forced adoptions like this have been going on for years. It's all about the numbers so they can say they are protecting children. From my experince, childrens social services in the UK are corrupt.

    It's feel like the holocuast all over agian to me. It's taking a toll on our family.

    Sam xx

  • KateWild
    KateWild

    I am skeptical things like that are happening in the UK either...sorry but I suspect the whole story is not being told by the article.-rebel

    It's true, it happened to my son too. The system here is corrupt.

    Sam xx

  • fulltimestudent
    fulltimestudent

    I am quite aware of the problems caused by the need for newspapers to sensationalise news stories, in order to intrigue readers into buying a copy. I am not very familiar with the editorial policies of the UK Telegraph, but when I saw that the Melbourne Age had published the story, albeit drawing on the Telegraphs's version of events, I decided to post the story (feeling rather angry about the matter), as The Age, and its sister publication, The Sydney Morning Herald, are among Australia's most reliable newspapers.

    If the story is true, it is (IMO) unbelievable that it could have occurred. A governmental apology (at the very least) is due the woman who suffered this injustice.

    I do acknowledge your point, Simon:

    "this is the country that 'exported' thousands of children abroad as orphans after the war (that weren't) in order to help commonwealth populations. Not all (any?) of the parents were screened so as you can imagine many of the kids did not end up in good situations."

    And agree that many of these kids suffered greatly. An Australian inquiry acknowledged both physical and sexual abuse ...

  • fulltimestudent
  • snare&racket
    snare&racket

    Let's be realistic, its 2013 and yes bad things do happen, but lets keep it in the realms of likely happenings.

    The mental health act can ONLY be used to treat patients with a confirmed mental pathology, the woman had bipolar and so was either in a deep depression or a manic pychotic high. It can only be used if the person is a risk to themselves or others. This evidently was the case with this woman as they used the 'Mental Health Act' (not the mental capacity act) therefore they must have used a Compulsory Treatment Order, read up on it, I think its section 63. The law is very specific, if used incorrectly it is considered illegal restraint/kidnap and serious assault. Staff and doctors don't risk this kind of thing, especially in these curcumstsnces!

    She was sectioned, this indicates that she was not just having an acute panic attack. Having spent a few months in a UK's asylum (they are closing them) with sectioned patients, I can confirm nobody was there with simply minor mental health issues. Panic attacks or mild depression does not get you sectioned! I was examined on all the laws and legislation/regulations, it is all very specific and regulated. Also, it was 5 weeks later she had her delivery following sectioning, this says much about her likely persistent poor mental health and probable long term poor compliance with her drugs, requiring some months of new re-treatment.

    Asylums are not a nice place, but they have their use. They are expensive and full, I am confident regarding the desicion, not just to put her in, but to keep her in for 5 weeks, that if she wasn't sectioned there would have beeen a risk to mum and baby. It is not a flippant desicion and especislly for 5 weeks, that is a lot of doctors, staff, social workers and patient defenders meeting her and seeing her. Likewise for the C-section, think of all the staff involved, it would have been a very unpleasant and melancholic intervention that nobody would have wanted.

    Assuming she could not have a natural delivery due to capacity or behaviour or for medical reasons, what other option was there? Obviously had she been perfectly well and able to deliver as normal, this would be the worst medical atrocity I have heard of in recent years, but nobody is claiming this. We don't know the in's and outs, it may have been a complicstion, a known shoulder dystonia or a baby >4.5kg or simply and likely.... the mother could not co-operate with the birth. Antipsychotics and mood stabilisers (lithium) make the birth that bit more complex too. Again, at this point she was 5 weeks in section and returned to section after the delivery, indicating it was an issue of mums mental health, also she was sedated, she was possibly being very difficult, which one must put in her health context as it is unpleasant to consider. She must have had a horrendous experience, being unwell during this whole event too, the poor woman must have gone to hell and back.

    It's not my place to point fingers for compliance, but in honesty I do wonder why she would stop taking her mood stabiliser medication? Despite the awful results maybe it was fear of drug side efrects on pregnancy? Maybe the pregancy worsened her mental state, a common occurence due to hormone changes, either way it is very sad.

    Once the baby was delivered, the mother was still too unwell to leave the asylum or care for her baby. The only options were to bring a baby into an asylum..... trust me having worked in one for two months they are not the place for babies, or sending the baby to America to a non blood relative of the mother. The courts could apparantly do neither. They had to make a decision there and then, literally, once the baby is born where does it go? Who feeds it? Who cares for it? The mother was obviously unwell and unable to care for the baby as she still qualified for section, meaning she was a harm to herself whereas previously it msy have been harm to her baby that was the focus of the sectioning.

    For how long can nurses in an asylum care for a baby? Within hours they had to find a home. It looks like they had to make hard desicions quickly and maybe they didnt make the best desicions, but what CAN be done is often different to what we would like done. I am sure it pained the people involved to do what they did. I have worked with these teams, they are just normal people.

    This is an awful and heart wrenching story, but doctors, nurses, social services and even the court staff are largely good willed. I have never seen otherwise in my experience. I have seen mothers and babies seperated, my friends wife is a midwife and some women will go so far as give birth alone So as to keep her baby. But that is half the story, they have no home, no food, the baby is born addicted to drugs and requiring methadone from birth. Its common, its sad and we live in a world where we have a protective system ready....thankfully.

    Sometimes the system may pick up the wrong people.....was this woman one...... its easy to judge from afar, but knowing how bad bipolar csn be for some patients, I really doubt it.

    Terrible things have happened in the past, terrible mistakes are made now, but this story sounds like rocks and hard places... With possible headlines like 'Mother & Baby hurt when bipolar mother was released from asylum with newborn'......maybe it was a case of choosing lesser evils...?

    very sad.... But evil?

    p.s. I have no idea what the laws are on returning children to people at risk of relapse of bipolar activity, perhaps due to poor compliance with meds. But it really sounds wrong that she isn't allowed her child back now she has recovered. Maybe they know more than we do due to condfidentislity, maybe for example she has had repeated breakdowns due to poor drug compliance, making it very, very hard to decide whst to do. But with a well and healthy mother, obviously the baby is better with their mum.

  • kurtbethel
    kurtbethel

    This story could be a plant to test the reaction of the public to this type of scenario.

    Or it might very well be relatively true.

    I hope these stories don't embolden the right wingers in America to carry out their schemes of socially engineering families into their mold of perfection.

  • besty
    besty

    most stories are in the newspaper because they are unusual events.

    sounds like a train wreck situation though - poor woman.

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