Monday 22 June 2009

'Catch 22' - Required Reading For The SS...

Or so it seems, when they swooped on a young couple who had paid £38,000 in IVF fees to have children:
Nurses reported that the mother appeared to feel ' bitter' towards her children after her joke about the caesarean's effect on her body.

And when the desperate woman lost her temper at social workers who had taken her babies, officials said she had 'anger problems' and could pose a threat to her twins.
React as any mother would to interfering officialdom, and you are therefore a 'danger'. Nice.

They get you coming and going, don't they?
The couple, from Hornchurch, Essex, can be identified only as Mr and Mrs N to protect the identity of their children.

They are allowed only supervised contact for ten hours a week with their son and daughter, and have been warned that the babies could be handed to strangers for adoption if a judge rules they cannot care for them.
And the SS aren't the only ones lacking in basic humanity in this case.

The 'angels' have turned out not to be quite so angelic here too:
They both weighed little more than 3lb and were kept in incubators at the NHS hospital's neonatal unit, where their parents were eventually able to help feed and care for them.

But staff became concerned that they were not giving the twins enough milk or changing them often enough.

On January 29 a senior nurse referred the family to social services.

Mrs N said: 'The hospital could see we were struggling but they made no attempt to help us. They just decided we didn't have the parenting skills to look after the babies.

'They wrote down everything we did and said so they could use it against us. They twist everything. I remember talking to my son while he was in his cot, and saying jokingly, "You want to see what you have done to your Mummy's body".
Does that repair anyone's faith in the NHS?
Social workers visited the couple and asked to take the children into foster care. When the parents refused, Havering Borough Council took the case to court and in February was granted an interim care order to give the twins to a foster carer.
My, they certainly seem to have no problem seizing the children of normal families, yet chavs and mental cases are free to injure and kill their children almost at will.

Something's very wrong in this country.
Mr and Mrs N were allowed to visit but have found it difficult to see their babies in a stranger's care, and Mrs N admits she has shouted at the foster mother and social workers during angry confrontations over the twins' welfare.

The petite, 5ft 2in woman was accused of throwing her mobile phone at a social worker, and officials once called the police during an angry case conference.
Hmmm, maybe someone should be looking at Gordon and Sarah Brown then...
'Of course I get frustrated and I sometimes lose my temper, but never with the children. We don't drink, smoke or take drugs. Neither of us has a criminal record. All we wanted was to have a family.'
There's your problem, Mrs N. You obviously need to do all those things. Then maybe the SS will leave you in peace to bring up your children.

Or murder them. It's all the same to them...

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

'They get you coming and going, don't they?'

Don't forget 'post-natal psychosis' - the most effective weapon in the nurses' arsenal.

After being badly mishandled by a careless trainee nurse (post-natal complications), I expressed my anger somewhat forcefully - once I stopped yelling with pain.

The trainee and her supervisor retreated in high dudgeon, while another nurse remained and gently warned me that any signs of anger or aggression in a new mother might well lead to a diagnosis of PNP and a call to Social Services for a care order.

Even submitting a complaint, it seemed, could warrant such a diagnosis; the balance of power lay entirely with the nurses.

I note with interest that in the intervening years, the hospital concerned has become one of Btitain's most notorious for high-profile cases of negligence and harm to patients.

Anonymous said...

A prime cause of all this is fear among nursing staff, fear of litigation, fear of being investigated PLUS the possibility of being reported by a 'colleague' who is in fear themselves and so much of this activity diverts attention from themselves unto 'the customer', the blame is squarely laid at THAT door, quickly for any delay will raise questions. Once the process is mobilised, like all those troops across Europe on the eve of WW1, the timetable cannot be stopped. Common Sense has been abandoned, individual discretion removed only the process remains and nobody can admit they may be wrong at any stage.

Hogdayafternoon said...

I long for the day when I read a story about the SS where I can say, "That is just unbelievable", Alas, I think they're long gone.

Von Spreuth said...

I have discussed this "anger" thing before.

The trouble is nowdays, and you find it on the web as well, people have been brought up in so much cotton wool, that what in the 80s would pass off as a raised voice, or a "heated discussion about politics" in a pub, is now being reported as if you had just walked into a nursery school full of bastards, carrying a bloody A.K 47, and a couple of Browning pistols.

The people of today do not KNOW how to deal with a raised VOICE. fer feks sake.

Like wise, after 10 years (?) of the labour dictatorship, they do not understand humour, or know how to take a joke any more.

Europe reminds me of those hippys on the origional Star Trek series that were so "nice" to each other they ended up all being killed off.

Von Brandenburg-Preußen.

Rob said...

My advice to her is to fake being a drug addict. Her kids will be back within a week.

The argument the SS use is that abusers are clever and conceal abuse behind a respectable front. But all of the cases I have seen recently have involved scum, chavs, druggies and the dregs of society, who were barely able to cover their abuse and then only behind a tissue of pathetic lies yet the SS didn't give a shit.

This is simple persecution, abuse of power.

JuliaM said...

"The trainee and her supervisor retreated in high dudgeon, while another nurse remained and gently warned me that any signs of anger or aggression in a new mother might well lead to a diagnosis of PNP and a call to Social Services for a care order."

Bloody hell! When did we start hiring such sensitive ninnies for maternity duty?

"Common Sense has been abandoned, individual discretion removed only the process remains..."

This seems true of almost every organisation today. Does no-one empower their staff to take decisions any more?

"I long for the day when I read a story about the SS where I can say, "That is just unbelievable"..."

Would be nice, wouldn't it..?

JuliaM said...

"...people have been brought up in so much cotton wool, that what in the 80s would pass off as a raised voice, or a "heated discussion about politics" in a pub, is now being reported as if you had just walked into a nursery school full of bastards, carrying a bloody A.K 47, and a couple of Browning pistols."

I think you're right. I've been astiomished at some of the staff issues I've had to adjusdicate recently, where 'hate speech' and 'violence' turn out to be...well, nothing of the sort!

In fact, mild disagreement would be putting it too harshly.

"This is simple persecution, abuse of power."

Agreed. Who the hell thought giving these people that power in the first place was a good idea?