Disability discrimination as Social Services remove son from mother
A mother’s grief: Obviously this image is only representative.
Not only is this a story about a council’s Social Services department overstepping its bounds, but it also shows how government works to deny valid diagnoses of illness for its own purposes.
The details are being serialised on Jayne Linney’s blog site, here, and This Writer would strongly urge you not only to read the original but to follow the site, as further evidence will be published there.
In her message notifying me of this article, Ms Linney wrote: “This is a true story of what seems to be disability discrimination resulting in a disabled child being removed from home and contact with his disabled mother limited.
“The mother is desperate to get her story out there and gain support.
“Both mum and son need to be back together.”
Alison is a single parent of 14 year old Adam, both live with various diagnosed and pending diagnosis health disorders including Fibromyalgia and Elhers Danos; Alison is also Autistic and symptoms suggest Adam is as well.
Due to Adams health, he found it difficult to cope with school from the beginning and despite special educational needs intervention, including one to one lessons he struggled experiencing bullying which resulted in him developing depression. These experiences became worse during Adams transition from junior to senior school, so much so that in 2015, Alison began to home educate him. Utilising her qualifications in Advanced Sports Therapy, Holistic Therapies and counselling, Alison along with other professional devised and delivered a programme of education with a wide variety of skills and healthy activities. This proved very successful wih two reviews from the LEA and feedback from the young carers project Adam attended, resulting in him showing a general improvement in mental capacity, attitude and general happiness.
However despite the improvements in Adams education and development the local social services were unhappy and persuaded Alison to undertake a psychological assessment. This transpired to be 4 and ½ hours of Rorschach testing and a further 3 hours of probing of her medical history, during which time Alison without an advocate, perhaps understandably became extremely agitated. The findings of this assessment, which interestingly Alison’s own GP deemed totally unnecessary, was Alison being regarded as having Somatic Syndrome Disorder and thus influencing Adam into thinking he has medical conditions. The findings despite an array of medical, educational and other evidence to the contrary, was then used by social services to go to court, the outcome being Alison was found to be unable to care for her son and Adam was removed from home and taken into care.
The court when considering Adams future, refused to consider the historical and educational evidence of Adams physical and psychological health and relied entirely upon Alisons psychological assessment. The miscarriage of justice transpired therein as it appears that the psychological assessor determined: Alisons willingness and ability to research the most appropriate consultants for her sons health, indicates she is only willing to work with selected professionals; further it seems Alisons knowledge that her personal diagnoses of autism and elher danos both have a genetic pre-disposition to health issues, was considered by the assessor as a desire to transpose these onto Adam.
Further the court found that Adam should be taken into care permanently and that contact with his mother would only be regulated once Alison shows no further concern for the health of her son.
Source: EXCLUSIVE #Disability Discrimination means Son is removed from Home? | jaynelinney
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If it is discrimination who is being discriminated against, it seems that the child has been removed for his benefit, if that is the case, then surely leaving him with his mother would be discriminatory against him that other children get the care they need but he is being denied it, somehow I think there was more taken into account than the story above suggests.
The whole thing beggars belief but the final paragraph is straight out of Catch-22. ‘You can only see your son when you can demonstrate that you no longer care about his well-being’.
I am a qualified Social Worker though I took early retirement on grounds of ill health many years ago so I am perfectly willing to accept that there are two sides to this story and that a judgement or comment based on the article above may not have all the information needed but if the court has imposed an impossible condition as described then my advice would be to challenge the care order and judgement and start the appeals procedures immediately
No free society here! The judge should be sacked! Unprofessional conduct.
The SS make more money from special needs children! In 1979 they made £7000 per Week by putting me in a Special School when I was 10yrs, at 14 they couldn’t pull it off so I was sent back to mainstream school, after losing 3 years of my education! I don’t know what the rate is now but she needs legal help immediately!!!
Social Services don’t ‘make money’ from children, special needs or not. They have a fixed budget from which to meet all the needs of all their clients including children with special needs or displaying behavioural difficulties or at risk of harm. Also older people with learning difficulties or elderly people who may need care provision. As we all know the budgets are smaller than the demands and, like every department, cuts are making it increasingly difficult to provide statutory services. For example, in their wisdom, the government have made councils responsible for paying for children who are confined by the Criminal Justice System as ‘looked after children’ this eats further into budgets.
Parents can’t do right for doing wrong it seems! Underlying all this is the fact that there is cash available to remove children from their homes and place them in care at a cost of £1000 a week? Whilst the pot of cash to help and support disabled/challenged kids in the home is almost non existent. This could mean that social services, if they do feel a family are struggling, tend to use the only option available —– do nothing or remove child? Not saying this is what has happened here but it does worry me that the budget for support has been squeezed to almost nothing :0(
Sorry the date was 1981, not at all paranoid about my age really!!!
That is why the Social Services is known by those who have been touched by their nasty black arts as the “SS”. It was promised that the Courts would be looking far more deeply into SS cases bought before the Courts, especially the family Courts
where the SS were involved in trying to take children away from parents. Many cases of misconduct and foul play have been uncovered but only when the press can get involved because the existing Court processes are so secret and one sided with little help if any for families. The reformation of family Courts never happened and it looks as if it is business as usual to do what the SS wants which unfortunately involves many other co-conspirators closely attached to these decisions many of which produce lies and hearsay and little resemblance to the truth. When is something going to happen to stop this ruthless injustice..
Thanks Mike, I and the family really appreciate this xx
how the hell can they expect a mother NOT to be worried about the health of her child? good god i still worry over my kids and they are in their mid 40s.isnt it natural anymore for a mother to worry about her kids? what a ridiculous situation britiain is in now.
This is happening to a friend of mine now and although i can help with the SEN side I cant with CP. She needs a good solicitor but can’t afford one. What hope is there?
Omg!!! I’ve only just got as far as reading your post Mike and looking up somatic symptom disorders…. I’m going to read this poor mum’s blog in a moment….. But oh my good God, I’m in shock at the horror of it. Whats even more scary, any “person of authority” can decide to abuse their power, without proof.
While I understand the concern of “there’s got to be something else there…” what was not specified here is that Ehlers-Danlos (which is the correct spelling) is considered an invisible illness. It is a mutation of the collagen and can affect your entire body, Autism is a co-morbid issue. Co-morbid meaning that it’s disposed to going hand in hand with EDS. EDS has many other co-morbidities which includes your autonomic system and internal organs. It can cause you to have easy bruising and tearing. It can cause your internal organs to rupture, including your heart. It can cause severe pain and death. The only thing good going for it is it makes you look young…This is a spectrum disorder just like autism is because you can be high functioning and not feel a lot of pain or you can be on the other end and low functioning and can’t do anything without major amounts of pain and joint dislocations. You can be a good Mom while having this medical issue yourself. I know many Moms that push through their pain to take care of their very sick little ones. When it comes to this specific medical diagnosis though, you need to be proactive and make sure you’ve got your bases covered because you never know what might hit you next. It is best to be well researched and find the Drs who do understand these medical anomalies…which by the way, it is VERY difficult to find Drs who are well versed in EDS and it’s significant amount of co-morbid issues. By saying she had Sonomatic Disorder basically they’re saying she has Maunchausen’s by Proxy and used this as the reason to remove her son. In order to get her son back she has to show that she isn’t worried about his health…what Mother can do that, but when you have a child with complex needs…this upsets me. Knowing that he could die, depending on the type he has, would make any Mama worry.