That Really Isn't A Price I Want To Pay, Judge...

Social workers were right to order a child to be taken from its mother in Sussex even though the woman had done nothing wrong, appeal judges have ruled.

Well, that's OK then, I suppose. Did they have good grounds for suspicion of harm?

The baby boy was born in October 2008.

His mother took him to hospital two months later after she reported he had stopped breathing.

Medical staff at Eastbourne General Hospital thought the child, identified as B in court, was fit to be released after two days but were concerned the mother, identified as A, had reported two other incidents of the baby not breathing.

No one else had seen the incidents and a consultant feared it could be an example of the mother fabricating an illness – once known as Munchausen Syndrome.

In other words, he had read a textbook or two, or was a devotee of the wretched Meadows...

When his fears proved groundless and the child was returned, the mother sued. And lost.

“This litigation demonstrates child protection only comes at a cost – to an innocent parent who is subject to it based on emergency assessment of risk and to public authorities who have had to account in a judicial setting for the exercise of power.

“It is, however, a cost that has to be exacted if the most vulnerable members of our society – dependent children – are to be protected by the state.”

In other words, 'Tough! You got your child back, what more do you want?'

And I do like the fact that the SS had to 'account for themselves in a judicial setting' is considered a cost. It's not a real cost, is it, judge. We, the taxpayer, pick that 'cost' up, after all.