One has to look at the situation the mother is placed in. The mother,
during pregnancy, was informed that there may be something wrong with the child
she was carrying. Downs Syndrome was voiced as a possibility amongst several
other problems. This is a fear that I am sure all expectant mothers dread to
hear. There is no way anyone, and in particular the male fraternity can know
what effect this has on the mother. One could read all the books ever produced
on the subject of pregnancy and never come close to how the mother actually
feels.
There would be in most people’s minds an expectation that the
hospital staff in a maternity ward would understand to some degree at least what
this mother was going through. Especially as most of the nurses in the
department were women. Her new baby daughter was ill. The fears that she had
harboured during pregnancy flooded back.
Did she receive the understanding and compassion as one would expect
from hospital staff. No she did not! What she was met with was outright
conflict, hostility and a total lack of concern for her feelings. She was
literally pushed aside and expected to react as if nothing untoward had happened
or was happening to her new baby. As if the situation she and her baby were in
was all perfectly normal. The application of any compassion and human
understanding was absent and the mother was plunged, understandably, into Post
Natal Depression (PND).
She was criticized by hospital staff shortly after the birth for
looking ‘disheveled’. She had given birth, her new precious little daughter was
ill and what did they expect, a Vogue model! Where was the humanity? This was
not a Hollywood movie it was real life, there
were no make-up artists or hairdressers waiting to spring into action. She
asked for a consultation with a midwife as she did not feel as she expected she
would have. The euphoria she had expected to feel after the birth was not
there. The rush of instant maternal feeling she had anticipated was not there. In
its place was confusion. A confusion caused by all the different information
she was getting from the staff and their insensitive and unfriendly attitude.
Instead of sitting her down to calmly explain what was happening and
why, she was met with raw hostility from certain members of the nursing staff.
This lack of sympathy was compounded by staff untrained in mental health
accusing the mother of having a mental health problem. The request she had made
regarding PND was totally ignored and she was threatened with the police arrest
if she continued showing signs of these spurious remarks of mental health
problems. Part of the problem was that despite suffering from PND she managed
to be assertive in her attitude. This was then considered by hospital staff to
be aggression. A mistake many make when presented with assertiveness. She was
warned that the police would be called.
Can anyone imagine the effect of this? This new mother was being
assertive and showing concern for her new daughter who was ill. The attitude
was ‘how dare she be assertive’! For nine months a woman carries her baby, she
is told there may be problems with her unborn daughter. Would it have been outside
the realms of possibility for her to expect some modicum of understanding and
compassion? Instead she was met with conflict and threatened with arrest.
It was at this point that the hospital staff decided to call in the local
authority social services. There is now suspicion that social services were
informed even before the baby was born. This suspicion is based on
documentation produced by a hospital midwife during the pregnancy. Documentation
that the mother was never informed about. It was only much later that it came
to light. It contained information that was totally wrong and should have been
checked by a simple phone call to the mother’s GP. This decision to call social
services was backed by members of the hospital staff who had never met, talked
to, or otherwise had any contact with the mother. It was purely an
administrative decision taken on what can only be described as the opinion of
staff untrained to deal with this situation. It became obvious that a certain
degree of personal animosity from some of the staff also existed.
Meetings were held between the hospital and the social services
where decisions were made that the parents were presented with as a fait
accompli. There was no consultation process with the parents where they could
give their views. The essence of this is the meetings held by the social
services and hospital staff could in fact be unlawful. Similar circumstances
had been challenged previously in the Appeals
Court and had been found to be unlawful and any decision
taken at the meeting deemed to be invalid.
The outcome of the meeting was an agreement which at first the
mother refused to sign. Not because she did not agree with it, it was simply
that it was handwritten and totally illegible. I have seen a copy of this
handwritten document and frankly it looks as if an illiterate chicken had
walked across the paper. If what I saw was an indication of the written
communication methods accepted within the local authority then I am of the
opinion that those producing the document need to go back to school. Somewhere
around the second or third grade would be appropriate. The mother simply asked
for it to be typed. Part of this agreement was that the social services
demanded that the mother have a Mental Health Assessment under the Mental
Health Act. It has subsequently found that this is a favourite tactic of the
social services. It is designed to confuse and upset the mother even further.
No consideration that she had an ill baby. It should also be noted that this
agreement was presented to the parents without the chance to consult with a
legal representative. It was also accompanied with a verbal threat, “sign or you don’t get your baby home” A
threat that is nothing less than blatant blackmail, which I may add is a
criminal offense and something that must to be looked at in more detail by some
other authority.
The result was the mother had two mental health assessments in
twelve hours. The first carried out when one of the ‘professionals’, a social
worker, was not qualified to be there but subsequently allowed to produce a
report. Twelve hours later another assessment was done by properly qualified
people. This second assessment concluded that the mother presented as no danger
to her baby. All this carried out while this new mother’s baby daughter lay ill
in the next room. The author was present at the second assessment and during it
a nurse was openly hostile to the mother for nothing other than what can only be
described as purely personal reasons. I was later informed that this was one of
the hospital staff to whom the mother had been assertive. It was also the nurse
who had said to the mother, who when observed to handle her daughter very
gently, “babies are a lot more robust
than you think” This remark should be held in the mind considering events
that were to follow a year later.
Eventually the mother and daughter were allowed home with social
services making the father the “primary carer”. At a meeting with social worker
in the family home the mother tried to negotiate a small change to the
agreement she had been forced to sign. The social worker present only said one
sentence “I can see we are in conflict I will have to talk to my manager”. At
this he got up and left. There was no discussion, no attempt to listen or
negotiate. Again I attended this meeting; my own feelings were that the changes
the mother proposed were sensible and not in any way confrontational. It was a
simply an attempt by the mother to allow her family some breathing space and
attend to their daughters needs. To be in a position where if required they
could ask for help. Which later she did and was told there was none available.
What she was actually told was, ‘if you need help you have to find it for
yourself’.
However this was followed by another ten day admission to hospital
for the baby. This time to another hospital at the mother’s insistence, as she
considered it superior for the treatment of children. This second hospital stay
was due to feeding difficulties continuing and the baby had lost two ounces in
weight. Feeding was taking on average an hour and half. This was following the
regime suggested by the original hospital to feed on demand.. During ten days
her daughter was in hospital the mother visited every day. It required her to
make a journey of eighty four miles a day. The father made one visit lasting
twenty five minutes. You will note that so far there has been no mention of the
father. That is to this point he had been ineffective in protecting his new
family. It should also be noted that he had already moved out of the family
home leaving the mother to cope on her own despite he had been designated by
the social services to be the primary carer.
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