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Thousands of mothers are having multiple children removed from their care... So can we stop the cycle?

Lea photographed at home in London earlier this month - Elena Heatherwick
Lea photographed at home in London earlier this month - Elena Heatherwick

When an impoverished young mother has her child taken from her because she can’t cope, her response is often to fall pregnant again. One organisation is looking to break the vicious cycle that has seen 20,000 babies removed from their mothers in seven years 

Lea is making a memory box for her three daughters, Louisa, seven, Jasmine, four, and Mary, two. Her face lights up as she describes putting in photos of the girls when they were little, letters to them, trinkets and bits of jewellery she thinks they would like. ‘It may be a suitcase by the time they grow up,’ she smiles. In fact there is not much to smile about. Lea will never be part of her daughters’ growing up.

All three have been taken away from her now. Her face sinks into sadness.  ‘I have been judged an unfit parent for all my three girls. But I miss them so very much every day.’ Lea, 33, is one of thousands of women in the UK with multiple children – as many as six, 10, and in one case 17 – who have been removed by the state, some at birth.

Visits from children’s services are seared in their memories, as are attempts to hide the chaos with which they live, the marks of domestic violence, signs of drug and alcohol misuse, or the beaten-down passivity resulting from emotional abuse by partners. There is anguish as children are taken, and at court hearings when mothers are told they cannot give their young the care they need to thrive.

The memory box of letters, photographs and trinkets Lea is making for her children - Credit: Elena Heatherwick
The memory box of letters, photographs and trinkets Lea is making for her children Credit: Elena Heatherwick

Julie, 24, has had four children taken away. Two were fathered by men who said they cared but they would not or could not be adequate parents. The other fathers wanted nothing to do with their babies. Julie’s last partner, Brian, who used controlling anger and threats to cut her off from her friends, put it starkly: ‘That dirty thing in your arms is coming between us.’

It is hard to imagine the agony of getting pregnant over and over again and having child after child taken into care, the traumatised longing that never fades, yet these women are far more likely to be condemned as feckless and irresponsible than to elicit sympathy.

Now, however, the Department for Education is giving approximately £6.5 million to an organisation called Pause, to part fund its nationwide programme. This offers psychological, practical and emotional support to such women in the hope they may break out of their chaotic, destructive lifestyles. At a time when welfare is being cut elsewhere, some may question why women who do nothing to prevent the births of children they cannot keep should be a priority.

The answer is that the Pause scheme is a proven success. This summer, a report by Opcit UCLan (the University of Central Lancashire) will show the effectiveness of a series of Pause pilot schemes around the country, and that the programme can potentially save the taxpayer a considerable amount of money. Over the next six months, with the help of the Department for Education funding, the scheme will be set up in nine new areas.

Opcit UCLan has estimated how many pregnancies women who have undertaken the programme potentially avoided. Pause helps women avoid getting pregnant by using reliable long-term contraception, with the aim of enabling them to focus on themselves. Based on their histories, the 125 surveyed avoided 36.8 pregnancies during the 18 months they had a Pause practitioner, at a cost of about £20,200 per woman. The alternative – taking that number of children into care – would have been more than £50,000 per child annually.

Pause is not part of social services, which the women tend to see as working against them. It is the brainchild of Sophie Humphreys, a former head of child protection in Hackney, who says she found herself ‘removing baby after baby from the same women year after year, and seeing no change in their circumstances from the last time. One of the women, from whom I had removed two babies, has now had nine removed. This could not be ignored any longer. More and more children were going into care each year at huge financial and emotional cost, causing the women, the children and those around them deep trauma.’

PAUSE BY NUMBERS | Who the programme targets, and how
PAUSE BY NUMBERS | Who the programme targets, and how

She and co-founder Georgina Perry realised that what the women needed was a break from their often complex and chaotic lives, in which they could be helped to reflect, and shown how they could change patterns and take control. Humphreys and Perry believed that ‘these women needed a change from the guilt, sense of hopelessness and punitive judgement that shaped their days.

They needed to be offered an intense, somewhat “parental” relationship with someone who would be there for them whatever happened, and would not give up on them at the first hurdle, as so many services do.’ Pause was given funding by Hackney Council and other local authorities that recognised the possible benefit. Its success brought in the new Department for Education funding for the scheme to spread further around the country. It has, so far, helped 163 women, who between them had had 504 children removed.

So how does it work? Jane, one of Lea’s Pause practitioners, explains that the organisation receives information that identifies the women most likely to keep getting pregnant from social services and other agencies that come into contact with them. It then offers help. (Very occasionally, people find out about Pause and refer themselves.)

Pause helps women avoid getting pregnant by using reliable long-term contraception, with the aim of enabling them to focus on themselves

Jane goes on, ‘Lea was uncertain at first, but once she agreed we started talking about her life, and how she might like to change it. A starting point was to help her deal with the profound feelings of grief and loss. Other agencies tend to overlook the fact that these women have had to give up dreams they have had of motherhood being a time of joy and love.’

As with Lea, she says, ‘The women usually feel so depressed and hopeless that they don’t believe they have control over their actions; they do not consider consequences.’  It does not help, says Nina, of Pause in Hull, when there is a high level of poverty and deprivation.

‘Almost without exception, these women themselves are victims of abusive, violent, neglectful parenting and traumatic experiences. Their emotional needs are not met in childhood and there are no healthy examples of how to live constructively.’

Lea describes growing up with an alcoholic mother ‘who told me she could only stand me when she was drunk’, and a stepfather who wanted her out of the house. Eventually, Lea went to live with a loving grandmother, but when she died Lea, in her teens, was left bereft and homeless.

It was then that her mental-health problems began, leading in time to a breakdown. Out of a desperate desire for someone to care, the women with whom Pause works have frequently taken up with unsatisfactory men. So it was for Lea, who talks of partners who were violent and controlling. She lived in a series of unhygienic rooms.

She was persuaded to try crack cocaine and heroin by the father of her last child, and acknowledges, ‘I can see I was not able to give my girls the lives they needed, but getting pregnant had seemed an answer to how empty I felt.’ Pause often helps women see a role for themselves in their children’s lives.

The memory box is one example; writing a letter – as is often allowed – once a year is another. They imagine their children may find them when they are 18. It is also important to give the women a sense that they belong in a bigger world, and do things they never imagined, says Jane, who has worked with Lea for eight months.

It has, so far, helped 163 women, who between them had had 504 children removed

‘Early on, Lea and I went to the Tate, as she loved art as a child, and she has now enrolled on an art course. She is interested in photography, so we go out together and she takes photographs.’

Lea, who now lives in accommodation for people with mental-health problems, says these days she feels ‘a lot more confident in myself than I did, and I have goals. I want to train to do clerical work and carry on with my art. I am doing some volunteering and I’d like to do peer-support work for other women like me.’ She hesitates. ‘I don’t think I will go backwards. Pause has done a lot for me.’

Jane smiles. ‘Lea is blossoming. I’m so proud of her. It is heart-warming.

Susie, 22, had only had one child who was taken into care when she was selected for a new Pause pilot scheme intended to catch women early and prevent them having successive children removed. She was seen as vulnerable and very likely to go on getting pregnant. During childhood she had been abused by her stepfather, and left home.

The father of her child was delighted by the idea of a baby at first, but the child was born very premature, with a severe disability. Her partner became ever more demanding and threatening. ‘I wanted to concentrate on trying to keep my son so I split from him,’ Susie says.

She returned to the home where her abusive stepfather still lived. Social services decided the child must go into care. Susie battled against this, but says, ‘Social services didn’t listen to me, didn’t give me a chance, and they have everything on their side. My boy was taken aged 18 months.’

She found her ‘only comfort’ in smoking cannabis, drinking vodka and taking paracetamol. The women with whom Pause works must have had one or more children removed, and not have any children in their care at the time. The first few times Susie’s Pause practitioner, Angela, made contact, Susie shut the door on her.

Angela laughs. ‘I wasn’t going to be put off that easily. I left postcards and little drawings with messages asking if Susie would have coffee with me.’ That was 18 months ago. Angela worked as a pre-birth social worker before finding out about Pause and joining the organisation.

‘I was doing more and more assessments,’ she explains, ‘and I always had to put the needs of the child first, but it was depressing seeing the distress of the woman and not being able to offer comfort. How could I? I was the one responsible for their children being taken.’

The women usually feel so depressed and hopeless that they don’t believe they have control over their actions; they do not consider consequences

Rebecca Lampard

Susie gives a comical grimace when she recalls first meeting Angela. ‘She was stalking me, but  I got curious and met her.’

‘It wasn’t a straight run in the beginning,’ says Angela. ‘Susie was emotionally exhausted and flat. She wouldn’t take her medication and slept chaotically. I started by trying to understand Susie, letting her sound off and say how things felt for her. Then we would talk about what she had said. Slowly, Susie began to look at choices she had made and see how far what went wrong was the consequence of her actions, but without feeling judged. Next we needed to build some dreams, hopes, goals.’

Susie began doing a lot of cooking with Angela. This has led her to do a Level 2 NVQ in catering, and she plans to work as a caterer. Equally importantly, having neglected her health for years, Susie was persuaded to see a doctor regularly. She has begun working out. She has learnt about personal hygiene. She also goes to Pause groups, meeting other women and making friends.

Of all the things Angela has done, helping Susie get a permanent flat where she can ‘shut the door and feel safe’ is the most valued. So the two go out window shopping and choose things Susie would like to get for her home when she has some money. She has already painted the walls.

‘Susie has worked so hard,’ Angela says. ‘From having no aspirations, she has a clear vision of what she wants to achieve and the belief that she has a place in the kind of world she had always seen as excluding her. We are at the end of our time together, but I will keep in touch with Susie and I feel confident she can do well now.’ Susie nods. ‘Every day is a new stepping stone with a new target.’

Nina celebrates ‘seeing women who can scarcely walk through the door alone, their heads hanging, when we first see them, ending their time so differently. They appear heads held high, with improved healthcare and hygiene. And those who think they may want children in future are clear it needs to be planned not haphazard.’ 

Lea echoes that thought: ‘Next time it would have to be with someone who cares enough to want to marry me and can be a responsible father to his children.’

pause.org.uk

*Some names have been changed