Imagine having your baby taken into care soon after you have given birth, swiftly getting pregnant again, having that child taken away – and this happening maybe three, four or more times. This is the sad reality for a ‘hidden population’ of mothers with complex needs who have become trapped in a destructive cycle of repeat pregnancies and care proceedings.
At least one in four women who has already had a child taken into care will have further children removed from them by a Family Court, according to new findings from Lancaster University in ‘Connecting events in time to identify a hidden population: Birth mothers and their children in recurrent care proceedings in England’. The chances of having a baby removed increase to at least one in three for those women who were teenagers at the birth of their first child.
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