Child protection workers have regularly breached government policy when removing newborns from a South Australian public hospital, prompting warnings of “unethical, distressing and uncomfortable” practices, leaked documents reveal.
While the Department for Child Protection (DCP) is legislated to remove children if it suspects their welfare is at risk, the way in which it takes newborns from mothers shortly after birth has come under increased scrutiny in recent months, following a series of ABC News reports.
The review states DCP also at times reportedly “requested” that midwives not allow mothers to breastfeed their babies before Section 41 was invoked.
“Staff described a lack of transparency as a moral dilemma for those involved in the medical and emotional care of women, with staff often knowing information about what will be happening when the parents don’t,” the review states.
“Staff felt that this was contradictory with their role in caring for both the baby and the mother.
“They would be encouraging women to prepare for the arrival of their infant, including setting up a nursery, while the mother did not know that there was (sic) plans for a potential removal at birth.”
[Ed: This is simply inhumane and should be prohibited. There must be facilities provided to support expectant and new mothers with babies to detox with supervision if needed and to be safe from violent fathers. Until humane alternatives are provided, Australia cannot be said to be acting in the best interests of children since the rates of abuse in out of home care are extremely high. ]
Detoxing during pregnancy is extremely risky to the baby.
Unfortunately drug addicted mothers are hard to work with and, having seen urine drug test results for over 10 years, continue drug use during pregnancy knowing that the clinic will not cease providing opioid pharmacotherapy treatment for fear of miscarriage.
Of course, when these babies are born they are addicted and require their own detox’s with small doses of decreasing morphine as they cry all the time due to the distressing symptoms of detox.
Child protection needs to be liaising with nursing staff from the time of the ante natal treatment and obviously no women who will have their baby taken into care should be encouraged to ‘set up a nursery’ but rest assured, child protection vary rarely gets involved. At least that was my experience no matter how many times I begged them to take kids into care.
What is seldom written about is the risks to the new born baby. And having seen broken and dying babies brought into ED my priority is the babies, not the parents.