Harm from Child Protection

May 23, 2008 permalink

A British organization advocating natural childbirth has published a letter enumerating harmful side-effects of the child protection system. We cannot find the original letter, but British MP John Hemming summarized it.

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Child Protection damages Public Health - AIMS

The following is an AIMs press release sent out recently that I quote.

The punitive way child “protection” is practised in the UK may be doing more harm than good. In their many cases on file, the Association for Improvements in the Maternity Services has numerous examples:

• Women with postnatal depression who are at risk of suicide conceal their illness - for fear of losing their children
• Women who are being beaten up by their partners don’t report it - for fear of social workers taking their children
• Women in need of support whose pregnancies were the result of rape conceal it from midwives at antenatal clinic - for fear of social workers being called in.
• Parents are afraid to take sick children to A & E - for fear paediatricians will have them taken away.
• Health visitors, once valuable supporters, are no longer welcomed since they became “the health police”

These and many other examples were outlined in a letter AIMS sent to Chief Medical Officers in the UK - which has now been published. “We make sure officials have the information - then they can’t say they did not know”, says Jean Robinson, former Hon. Research Officer who wrote the letter.

“The most worrying thing is that there is no adequate research base showing benefits and risks of these draconian and expensive interventions. Yet medical interventions have to be proved. The harm that can be done from even short term, minor interventions, is both deep and long lasting, yet no one has wanted to collect the data showing how serious and common it is.”

posted by john ¶ 10:30 AM

Source: John Hemming blog for May 21, 2008