Press Release - 21st May 2008

Child Protection Damages Public Health

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 (copies available on request from chair@aims.org.uk)

"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."

Beverley Lawrence Beech, Chair AIMS

For further information contact:

Jean Robinson:
Tel: 0870 765 8782

Beverley Lawrence Beech:
Tel: 0870 765 1453
Fax: 0870 765 1454
email: chair@aims.org.uk
Association for Improvements in the Maternity Services, 5 Ann's Court, Grove Road, Surbiton, Surrey, KT6 4BE

AIMS makes information and articles freely available on its website as a public service. We also provide advice and support to individual parents and professionals at no charge. If AIMS has helped you, please help us to help others by joining or making a donation.

Version $Revision: 1.1 $ last updated $Date: 2007/03/15 14:54:58 $ by $Author: Debbie $