They Are At It Yet Again…

It beggars belief that in the UK in 2008, a teenage mother has to flee to a neighbouring country to keep her child. Yet that’s just what Sam Thomas has to do:

A mother-to-be has fled to Ireland because she fears social services are planning to seize her newborn child and have it adopted.

Sam Thomas, 19, left Britain alone, despite being heavily pregnant.

She discovered that her social worker had told the local hospital not to let her leave the maternity ward with her child - a girl - without social services being involved.

Sounds awfully familiar.

Hmm, so, what’s the history here? Previous child cruelty? Mental issues? Lack of parental support?

Oh, right, of course. Nothing at all:

The county council has not obtained a court order giving it authority to keep Miss Thomas in the hospital, and she has no history of being a danger to children - yet social workers appear convinced she is unfit to care for her baby.

Once again, we see a disturbing pattern – pounce on a newborn (born to a teenager who can be bullied andbamboozled) which will be easy to place, and ignore the older children clearly at risk from their parents because they don’t fit the all-important adoption profile.

She had been living in Yeovil, Somerset, with her mother Carol Hughes and looking forward to the birth of her first child.

She became concerned, however, at Somerset County Council's growing interest in the birth, due in early October - and says it soon became clear that there was a risk she would not be able to keep her child.

And that risk? Well, it seems that despite vocal protests about the way mental health issues are ‘stigmatising people’, the social services aren’t above stigmatising people themselves, when there’s something in it for them:

Miss Thomas accepts that she has harmed herself and taken an overdose in the past, but insists she has not been troubled by problems related to depression for two years.

Yet council documents show her past difficulties are still considered serious.

There is a further issue surrounding claims that she has failed to take medication for a health condition related to blood-clotting.

Hmm, perhaps instead of having a child she should have a serious mental disorder that threatens the safety of others, then no-one would care whether she took her medication or not…