It only happens to somebody elses family

Contact arrangements were then agreed (I say agreed, you don't really get to agree anything in this situation. The parents lawyer, and the local authority and the children's guardian, go into a room and discuss things, while the parents hang around awaiting to see what had been agreed). So it was arranged that we would get to see the children at a 'Contact Centre'. Monday morning with the younger two, Monday afternoon with the older two. Tuesday morning with the baby and Tuesday afternoon with the middle two. Wednesday morning with the younger two and Wednesday afternoon with the older two. Thursday we had all four children in the afternoon. Friday we had the Baby in the morning. Saturday all four children, and Saturday we had all four children, mid-morning, and Sunday the baby only.

Imagine being around your children all the time and having no support, only to have them taken from you and somebody dictating when and where you could see them. Bear in mind also my wife was tandem feeding the younger two children. In terms of breastfeeding, let me put point out social services view on this important bonding issue.

Do not think that because you are breastfeeding we will keep you together, we take babies as young as 'your baby' all the time.

They advised they would supply a breast pump to express, but twenty four hours later nothing. My wife had to be the maternity staff, to find her a breast pump so she could express milk for the baby. The hospital was great and supportive with this. They supplied disposable bottles and the teets, knowing the fact that we had not planned to bottle feed, they even froze the milk. The reason for this, sorry I am skipping back to twenty four hours before the baby was taken, was because my wife was told she had to get twenty four hours in front. Up to hours before taking the baby, my wife's lawyer informed her that social services had still not sourced a breast pump, but he had managed to obtain a very old model via the health visitor. As you have read earlier the baby was taken, and I was allowed to travel with him to pick up the breast pump. My mother (where the children were) had no idea, and was not supportive of breast feeding and ill informed social services, that my wife was just breast feeding just to cause problems, and why she could not bottle feed she did not know. Social Services agreed that formula feeding was just be easier.

I picked up the breast pump (which reminded me of a car engine). My wife had to use the pump every two hours. As she had never used a machine like this before, she rang a breast feeding counsellor, who was able to help but this was limited, as extended breast pumping is different from normal breast feeding. My wife came home the same day as the baby. I would have to take the milk over 4-6 times a day, sometimes as late as midnight to take this over. We had no transport and I had to walk over, which took about ten to fiftheen minutes. As my mother was not supportive of this, she would call us last minute to advise that she was out of milk. This was because she wanted to bottle feed to sever the contact between my wife and the baby. Social Services had also made my wife sign a consent form that made my mother would be able to give formula in an emergency (We assumed this meant that only if there was no other way of getting milk to the baby, and it was either formula or starve.) My wife requested a feeding diary, so we would know how much milk the baby was drinking, and how often, so my wife could settle her milk supply. Please bear in mind we were up every two hours (even during the night), my wife attached to the pump, where a lovely warm loving baby should have been.

My wife was turned down for the feeding diary as myself and my mother had great 'communication lines' and I could just find out how much milk was available, however this never happened. When the baby's milk intake jumped from two to four ounces, no one bothered to tell my wife, and she started to slip behind in keeping the milk production going. My wife was criticised this for not knowing that he jumped in milk intake. (This happened almost every time there was a change in the consumption rates).

Taken from the times website:-

I wrote on Monday about the many desperate parents who have approached me after losing their children to social services. One thing that they all have in common is shock at how quickly the system seems to decide against them, and at how doggedly it sticks to that view despite all evidence to the contrary. Some parents find that minor issues are magnified until the conclusions reached are out of all proportion. The opposite also seems to hold true: some children come to terrible harm because the system systematically underestimates the risk to them.

Why does this happen? Eileen Munro, a reader in social policy at the London School of Economics and the author of Effective Child Protection, says that “child protection work inevitably involves uncertainty, ambiguity and fallibility”. She believes that it is human nature to form a view based on first impressions, and stick to it. “This has a devastating impact in child protection work,” she says, “in that professionals hold on to their beliefs about a family despite new evidence that challenges them. It can be equally harmful whether they are over or underestimating the degree of the risk to the child. They may continue to believe parents are doing well, even though there are successive reports of the child's being distressed or injured. Innocent parents wrongly judged abusive can face the frightening experience of being unable to shake the professionals' conviction, however much counter-evidence they produce.”

The risk of groupthink makes it all the more important that decisions are transparent and open to review. We all know of the tragic deaths of children such as Victoria Climbié, who with hindsight should have been saved. We know much less about the tragedies of children wrongly separated from their families, because of the secrecy of the system.

There are several types of allegation that are almost impossible for parents to disprove. One is “emotional abuse”. You can see why the category exists. Ill-treatment comes in many forms, not all of which leave visible scars. But in that nebulous phrase lurks the potential for injustice. In the past ten years there has been a 50per cent increase in the number of parents or carers accused of “emotional abuse”. It now accounts for 21 per cent of all children registered as needing protection, up from 14 per cent in 1997. Yet the term has no strict definition in British law.

Emotional abuse is not “neglect”: that is a separate category. The Department of Health defines it as “persistent emotional ill-treatment ... [that] may involve conveying to children that they are worthless or inadequate ... and may feature age or developmentally inappropriate expectations being placed on children ... Some level of emotional abuse is involved in all types of illtreatment of a child, though it may occur alone.”

Local authorities interpret this in different ways. In Nottingham, emotional abuse is “an ingrained pattern of interaction ... which it is essential to observe and understand over time”. In Enfield it includes “swearing”, “conditional love” or “discriminatory remarks”. I have heard anecdotally of councils, including West Sussex and Cambridge, that almost never use the term. There are no statistics to confirm this. But it seems that child protection is as much of a postcode lottery as cancer screening.

Expert medical evidence is also notoriously difficult to disprove, even where there is no circumstantial evidence. Lord Justice Judge (who was named as the next Lord Chief Justice yesterday) has warned against an “over-dogmatic” approach in the criminal courts, when we are “still at the frontiers of knowledge”. But it is less clear how family judges should treat syndromes such as Munchausen's syndrome by proxy (MSbP).

Since the discrediting of Professor Sir Roy Meadow, who first defined it, Munchausen's has been relabelled as “fabricated or induced illness”. This is a perverse disorder in which an adult invents or deliberately creates a child's illness to draw attention to himself or herself. Even the experts agree that Munchausen's is rare, likely to affect no more than 50 people a year. But campaigners fear that far more people are being accused of it. For the traits of the Munchausen mother are broad enough to cast suspicion on many whose children are genuinely ill. They include a reluctance to leave the sick child's side, familiarity with medical terms and, most devastating, the denial of accus-ations of abuse.

Two years ago, a group of MPs with falsely accused constituents asked the Government how many people nationally were accused of having MSbP. The Government replied that it did not collect such data - even though Department of Health guidelines tell charity workers, nursery nurses, teachers and even pharmacists to look out for the condition.

Last year, social workers in Hexham told a pregnant student at Edinburgh University that she was in danger of developing MSbP when her baby was born, so they were thinking of removing the baby at birth. The student, Fran Lyon, had developed self-harming and eating disorders seven years earlier, after being raped. But these are disorders from which she has fully recovered. The psychiatrist who treated her as a teenager states that she poses no harm to her child. So does another psychiatrist, who knows Lyon through her charity work. The only person who seems to have entertained the idea that she could develop MSbP is a paediatrician who has never met her. But social workers have given his evidence more weight. Lyon fled to Europe last year, unable to trust her own country, and is now in a legal limbo.

To err is human. To refuse to acknowledge that is inhumane. No professional can be right all the time, particularly in this fraught territory. That is why wholesale reforms are needed - as I will explain tomorrow.

Brilliant article!. Explains it all

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/7732310.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4557538.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/south_yorkshire/7479006.stm
http://www.24dash.com/news/Communities/2008-11-13-Murdered-brothers-known-to-Manchester-Childrens-Services

Yet again, nobody has learnt from the Victoria Climbie death. Social Services are just not acting when it is time to act and are not following procedures set down by the government. How many more children have to suffer from a deparment that is clearly unfit for purpose.

The ones who need support and help, have there children ripped away, while those who need investigation are left to abuse and sometimes kill their children.

This needs to stop NOW!

What to do..I think the 1976 Movie 'Network' explains how helpless the general public is.

There was a knock at the door. I was shocked and relieved at the same time. It was social services. They produced their badges and I let them in. After a brief conversation they advised the children couldnt stay in the home as it was unsafe, and they would have to phone the police to see if this classed this as criminal neglect. (I was so lost, and my poor little boys, I suddenly realised although we loved them so much...we had let them down). The police arrived and after taking a long look at the house they advised it was not a criminal matter. I should have been relieved but I wasn't. The social workers asked if there were anywhere the children could go otherwise they would be placed into care. I had no choice and phoned my parents who collected the children and I was allowed to go and sleep over with them.

I was told not to inform my wife, but I had better consider taking legal advice as they might persue us through the courts. No list of soilictors was given (which I understand is a requirement). My wife called and I spoke to her and I felt horrible for her. She was stuck in hospital and she couldn't protect her babies, she had her new born baby and the fear, the little baby just days old, may not have the protection his mother could provide.

The next day we were interviewed together and they advised they were going to take the new born baby into custody too, to our utter shock. We felt attacked not supported and we suddenly realised these people were not going to help us and support us but wanted our children. We both phoned legal represntation (yellow pages from the maternity hospital) and we were both bewildered.

A couple of days later, I was in court with my solicitor. My wife was too ill to travel following a c-section and an infection. I was introduced to the childrens guardian (CAFCASS) Who I was under the impression was a neutral party in this. Surely everything would be fine because she would she us for the parents we were who had just fallen on hard times. She smiled and said she would come out and see us. (unknown to me, she was worse than the social services, and it had already been decided the children would not be coming home into our care). My wife's lawyer stated that as the children were taken because of chaotic home conditions, could my wife and the new born baby be placed in a mother and baby unit. This was declined based on the fact our parenting was not in question. The reason behind this is a mother baby unit is very expensive, on the plus side of £2,000 a week, and this facility is only to check for the mothers ability to care for a child. The problem is there is hostility between my mother and my wife, as my wife does not support binge dribking, and because my wife was trying to help me overcome my alcoholism, they saw this as a threat, because I no longer went out with them. Unfortunately, it was decided the baby would be placed with my mother, who I thought was actually trying to help at the time.

At this time my wifes mother (who is an amazing person)hopped on plain to England to help us. It was decided that she would come over to help clean the house. A code of expectations was drafted up (I understand that a threshold criteria should have been drafted up before the children were removed and also a family group conference should have been arranged to discuss their concerns and to offer support, neither was offered). The code of expctations was a list of what we needed to do to get the house to base-line standard. The social worker began to come round to the house to check on my progress, and she was pleasantly shocked as I spent time cleaning the house, visiting my boys, and visiting my new born baby in hospital.
My mother in law arrived, and straight away I felt hope. She would help us. and she did me and my wifes mother spent hours tidying the house, and started getting the house under control.

Thirteen days later, I WILL never forget. The time social services came for the new born baby to rip him away from his mothers arms and to place him with people he hadnt even seen (my parents had no intetion of visting the new addition to the family, even before his birth)
My wife covered him tears and hugs, and just kept saying she was sorry. He was placed in a car seat, and driven out of the maternity hospital. Something had just died in my life I felt, and I suddenly realised, that this was not right.

I don't need to tell you what this blog is about the title and description say it all. What I do need to tell you is why I decided to start this blog and who it is intended for.

You see I have experienced what you may call 'the worst nightmare'. But before I tell you about this..let me tell you what happened leading up to it. October 2006, I had three wonderful boys and a wonderful wife. However, our life was a mess. I was drinking heavily, my wife was pregnant with our fourth child, our eldest was autistic, and the work/life balance was a mess. Our house was a disaster area, and everything was sprialing out of control.

Despite this we had a midwife attending our house every week, and a health visitor, who had already confronted social services with the view to getting us support. (My own Paternal family was not much help, and my wifes family live many miles away). December came and I realised we could not continue to live like this. My wife was in hospital at the time and I was getting on the bus with three children to hospital, coming home and trying to keep hold of a house that was already beyond my control.I had a meeting with the health visitor who agreed to contact social services again.

On the Xth January our 4th Child was born (As much as it hurts I cannot mention names or places, as the local authority will use this against us) was born. He was gorgeous and straight away I had to be with him as he was taken away from his mum, as he was suffering from a mild infection. I was with him and held his hand and reassured him. A couple of days later, I had brought the children home after letting them see there now born baby brother

PR: wait...  I: wait...  L: wait...  LD: wait...  I: wait... wait...  C: wait...  SD: wait...