Newborn baby and 6 siblings taken into care

The baby and children have been taken away from their 23st mother due to obesity scares. This story horrifies me. To take away a day old baby from it's mother, (not to mention the other children), is unbelievably cruel. I appreciate there are health concerns and the parents have been offered help, but I think thiis decision is totally wrong. How about removing the children of drug addicts, alcoholics etc.

That is awful, and TBH where does it end? Do you remove the children of cancer patients because they are weak after chemo, or car crash victims because they have a couple of broken limbs and can't get about the way they used to.

It seems all to easy to pick on fat people, yes some of it is self inflicted, but I'd say that to get to 23st there's an underlying cause, probably psychological, and rather than take the kids away and spend a fortune on foster parents or care facilities, why not spend that money getting the mother some treatment?

I can't decide whether the children should have been removed or not, mainly because social workers seem so determined to keep drug addicts with their children. How can they justify this, if they hand a defenceless child back to a drug addict mum?

On the other hand, the family concerned had been on the social work radar for a while because their children are so unhealthy. They even had a social worker living in the family home trying to educate the parents into feeding the children properly (apparently it cost the local authority thousands to give this family their own personal social worker). And it was all for nothing, because the parents just kept feeding the children junk food and takeaways and refused to accept any advice. The children aren't just chubby, they're all incredibly fat, life-threateningly fat. So I honestly cannot feel much sympathy for the parents when they were given all that help, and every opportunity to feed their kids properly but are just too lazy to make the effort. They're obviously not good parents, however much they claim to be. Seven children is far too many anyway!

I agree that feeding already overweight children junk food is wrong, but to take all the children away is really heavy handed. There must be some other way of sorting this family's problems out.Goodness knows what psychological problems it will leave them with, especially the younger ones, it will also cost a fortune to keep them all in care. At what point are they going to be returned to her?

I've just read another story where a "mother" left 4 children alone,(ranging from a few months old to 3 years), stayed out drinking all night, leaving her children cold and hungry. The children have been taken into care, and rightly so. This is the sort of "parent" who should have her children removed, not the one who doesn't seem to get the message about junk food.

Chances are that second mother will have a sob story and get her kids back in a few weeks

I haven't read the story so don't know anything about the size of the kids, but I did read that there's been a huge increase in children being taken into care since Baby P, which means either the social workers weren't doing their jobs properly in the first place, or there are a lot of knee jerk reactions going on. I would like to see social services put more help in rather than take children away.

Although it does sound like this woman has had a lot of help.

The "fat mum" has been given her baby back after agreeing that she will co-operate 100% with the people who are trying to help her. Can't say fairer than that really, and I hope she sticks to it for the sake of that little baby.

The mum who disappeared for over 24 hours on a drinking binge shouldn't get those little children back at all. It was just too sad to read that the oldest child (FOUR years old!) had been trying to feed her younger siblings. Poor little scrap. Stuff all the "keep the family together", get those children adopted while they're still young enough to get over this.

I have to agree there Jo, I do believe that some families should be kept together, but plain and simple selfish and dangerous behaviour like that mother's it wrong on so many levels.

If I see a newborn baby, I just can't help but smiling. I tell to myself how lucky they are their mothers give them the chance to live. But if I see a newborn baby abandoned by their parents, I tell myself those parents are not lucky because they did not considered that there are couples who don't have baby.

Hi Elma, welcome to the forum