There but for the grace of God ......

[themolesmother]

I don’t often do rant but this has really got to me and I need to get it off my chest somehow.

http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=496235&in_page_id=1879

For those of you who hate the whole link thing, here’s a summary.

Fran Lyon is 22.  She was doing a degree at the University of Edinburgh.  She discovered

Comments

Being _really_ cynical

[nineveh_uk]

I do wonder if her refusal to put up with what sounds like some form of domestic abuse was actually the first strike against her - an attention-seeking young woman not just putting up with what she's expected to...

Re: Being _really_ cynical

[themolesmother]

In my experience social workers, even the best of them, do like you to play the victim so they can feel they are helping. I believe there is something in what you're saying.

MM

[themolesmother]

It's bloody awful, isn't it? I hope that the publicity doesn't push Social Services into trying to get her extradited as they did that couple who fled to Ireland a few years ago - the Websters.

I'm going to be keeping an eye on future developments and will post here if I find anything out.

MM

[magic_at_mungos]

Ouch! On what we see, it seems really unfair that they're not giving her the chance to prove that she won't harm her little one and being offered the appropriate support. But as you say, there must be other things behind the scenes but in the world where children are being left in situations where it's obvious where there's horrendous abuse occurring, it somehow doesn't feel right.

[themolesmother]

John Hemming, the MP who has taken up Fran's case, is convinced there is a trend towards children being taken into care younger and younger as babies are more adoptable and it is easy for social services depts to fufil Government adoption quotas. He quotes statistics to support his claim but I really am not up to trying delve into the issues more deeply at the moment.

MM

[magic_at_mungos]

That's almost a side issue really. But I don't know what the solution is. He's right to say that babies are easier to adopt but still...

[tree_and_leaf]

I've just been reading about a dreadful case in Worms, where (German) Social Services decided that there was a sexual abuse ring occurring; a large number of children were taken into care. Investigation showed that there was absolutely nothing in it. However, several of the investigators were disturbed to note that some of the girls had been sexually abused, but on the medical evidence it couldn't possib;y have been the accused father. Others drew attention to the fact that the children had an odd relationship to the leader of the home they'd been placed in, and that they - unusually - refused to have any contact with their parents after the court case had been dismissed (Social Services said they should then stay in care as contact with the parents wasn't in the children's interest). They also remarked that they thought it peculiar that the leader of the home slept in a room near the girls' rooms, rather than in the flat intended for his use, and that he conducted medical examinations of the girls himself, alone, in his own room

[nineveh_uk]

Damn LJ's just eaten my post. In brief:

- would this be the MSbP that recently had a couple accused of murdering a foster child. A child whom it turned out the hospital had killed by screwing up a dose.

- if even I knew what pyloric stenosis was at 10 as a result of fanatical James Herriot reading, why the hell didn't the HV? Except that they often seem to be oddly ignorant.

- Remembering the Orkney Satanist scandals (IIRC the people involved were barely disciplined), I think that my authoritative diagnosis from a distance and without knowing the people involved (which seems to make me the person whose opinion should carry most weight) is "mass hysteria".

[themolesmother]

Yup, it's that MSbP. The same sydrome of which the "discoverers" - Roy Meadow and David Southall - have both found themselves up before the GMC for questionable practices. There's a big ongoing debate about the whole thing and the cases of Sally Clark, Angela Cannings and Trupti Patel are only the tip of the iceberg.

The HV got her comeuppance. I "accidentally" overheard the lovely Ward Sister giving her hell when she called in to see me the day after the operation. The door had been left ever so slightly ajar and they were standing right in front of it .... :-).

The Orkney and Rochdale Satantic Abuse cases were mass hysteria INMHO, too. A lot of people with more weighty opinions have said the same. It angers me a lot that the social workers involved were not disciplined. One of them even got promoted!!!

MM

[snorkackcatcher]

Promotion is normal in cases of appalling offical screwup, after all. It's the cover-up, circle-the-wagons instinct at work -- because not promoting them would practically be to admit liability, and that would never do, would it?

Since this is a Mail on Sunday article, I suspect there may well be more to the story (or less to it, given the tabloid tendency to just make stuff up), but on the face of it it's appalling.

[themolesmother]

I've been following this story since it first caught my eye in August in the Telegraph. The MoS story is a fairly good charting of its progress as I know it. The details have also been consistent across the media which is why I tend to believe Fran's version of things. In my previous job detecting "slants" was part of my brief :-).

I agree with you about the promotion thing. Happened all the time in my old company.

MM

[purple_bug]

I'm always reading about stupid stuff like this - parents having kids taken away because of minor incidents that are genuine accidents/misunderstandings, yet genuinely abused kids go unnoticed. To judge the girl's parenting abilties before she's even had a chance to prove herself... I feel so sorry for her.

And my litte brother had pyloric stenosis when he was a baby - he showed off the scar very proudly until he was about twelve :o) I can't remember it, though, I was about four at the time.

[themolesmother]

*Grin* Offspring used to do exactly the same with his scar when he was little.

I found out a bit about pyloric stenosis afterwards and its a genetic condition which tends to afflict boys more than girls. My Grandmother said afterwards when we told her, "Oh yes, your cousin had that!" Why she couldn't have mentioned it before is beyond me.

MM

[purple_bug]

Oh, jeez. I'm even more glad I'm never passing on my own genes now :o) Coeliac, hypothyroidism, asthma, psoriasis, family-history-of-cancer-and-strokes, and now pyloric stenosis! I have a bad batch, clearly. My partner can be the biological mum :o)
(edited cos I spelt coeliac the American way by mistake *grins*)

[lyras]

I sympathise with social workers, who have difficult, stressful jobs, but it seems that in situations like these the welfare system is increasingly trying to pre-empt crimes that are unbelievably rare. The sad conclusion to Sally Clark's story broke my heart. I wish this girl luck.

[themolesmother]

I was really upset when I read about Sally Clark's death. Her family must have been devastated.

MM