Children in Care

As an advocate for children and young people in care I’m deeply troubled by the way professionals gang up, which can push vulnerable people over the edge. Instead of solving problems they contribute to them.
One young person I visited in a young offender’s institution. While there she gave birth to her second daughter. She worked hard and got early release with excellent comments on her parenting and on her education. Social care and health weren’t prepared for this to happen, even suggesting that she remained in prison! This really amazed a number of us, including senior staff at the institution. While there she had no money to buy clothes and either wore her outsize maternity dress or borrowed from someone else.
Nevertheless a place was found at a mother and baby institution where she could be assessed with her child. An institution it was and in the circumstances it was amazing she stayed as long as she did. When the inevitable happened and she was booted out, she was sent on her own late one night to a strange bed and breakfast hotel while her baby was taken into care. Since I was there I took her instead of having to get a taxi. I just wondered what harm was being done to this young person.
A flat was found supposedly sharing with another young person who had offended. In practice she was never there. She appeared one day with a boy friend and they left the place for this young woman to clean and tidy when they left.
This was her second child taken into care. It happened to her first child. That child died in care. No one told her and she found out by chance when it was mentioned in court. Hurriedly she was taken to see the body of the girl which had severe burn marks on the legs. There were no condolences. Now the second child is in care the professionals are running around the baby with little or no support for the mother. Another statistic of a family being broken up needlessly.
Her solicitor is working hard for a foster care placement for mother and child. The successes she has worked for go for nought and continually obstacles are thrown down in front of her to trip up and fall over. The city’s solicitor has to be seen to be believed. She seems to be rooting for the young person to fail and get the child placed for adoption. Grandmother was in care, mother and now the next generation. Who is working to break the cycle? She has had so many social workers, and she just doesn’t get on with the present one who has been absent from so many key meetings.

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