Over just four and a half years, Becky had four babies and all were removed permanently from her care within days of their birth. The eldest is now five years old and the youngest just 18 months. Including another son who is eight years old and a daughter, now 18, the 34-year-old has lost six children to the care system.
Becky had a severely traumatic childhood, making her easy prey for an older man who forced her to be almost continuously pregnant for the length of their relationship, subjecting her to a campaign of violence so relentless that he twice went to prison and was reported to the police 46 times. The children were taken into care because of violence in their home.
“When you have a family like mine that don’t care about you, you are desperate for love,” Becky says. “This man dominated me and the more kids I had taken away, the stronger my bond to him became.
“Having said that, if I could have kept my babies inside me forever and not given birth to them, I would have done it,” she adds. “Pregnancy for me was just coming closer to the moment when social services would take my baby away from me.”
Becky’s story is not unusual. Analysis of data from Cafcass, the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service, by Dr Karen Broadhurst at the University of Manchester found that 22,790 babies and children were removed from 7,143 women between 2007 and 2013 in England: an average of over three children for each mother.
Approximately one in three care applications in England concerns a woman who has had other children removed previously. In some areas of the country, however, the percentage is significantly higher.
“The work of the family courts for years has been removing the sixth, the seventh, the eighth child from the same mother,” said Nicholas Crichton, founder of the Family Drug and Alcohol court in London. “In one case, I’ve removed the 14th and I know two judges that have removed the 15th child from the same mother.”
Local authorities have long been aware of the heavy financial toll for them – and the crippling emotional toll for mothers and children – of this revolving door of repeated removals. But as councillor Jonathan McShane, cabinet member for the inner-city borough of Hackney with responsibility for health, social care and culture, said: “The way local authorities are structured – around referrals and appointments, with different needs dealt with by different departments – militates against helping women whose lives are too chaotic to make or keep appointments, and whose needs are too complex for each one to be worked on separately by a different case worker, each of whom is juggling a caseload so heavy that their involvement can’t be particularly intensive.”
Instead of supporting women, the current systems can instead, McShane admitted, place them in an adversarial position.
This week, however, a pilot project helping these women to break the cycle of repeat pregnancies and removals, has won over £3m funding from the Department for Education to replicate itself in Doncaster, Newham, Southwark and Hull. The funding will also pay for a national programme director and for a second project in Hackney, targeting mothers who have had just one child taken away but who are considered to be at risk of going on to have numerous children removed.
Pause, co-founded by Sophie Humphreys, former head of safeguarding at Hackney, works entirely outside of the usual local authority structure and independently of the social care services. By engaging with mothers on a one-to-one basis, creating a bespoke programme of intensive therapeutic activities and practical support, it works with women to think of themselves as individuals for what is often the first time in their lives.
The women chosen for the feasibility project were typically complex cases: the initial group of 49 women had a total of 203 children permanently taken into care. Almost three-quarters of the women had more than four children removed. “In our feasibility study, there were two sisters who had 17 children removed between them, and one of their daughters had already had two children of her own removed. Another woman said to me that she felt like a baby-making factory for social services,” said Humphreys.
And yet, in the 14 months that it has been operating, not one of the 20 woman who agreed to be in the Pause pilot project has had a baby. Without the project’s support, the women’s previous birth patterns suggest the cohort could have had at least 16 more children – all of whom would have been taken into care. Over a five-year period and without intervention, this same group of women are likely to have had a total of 40 children, with a direct cost to the council of around £1.5m.
Kelsey ran away from home when she was 13, falling into the arms of a series of significantly older partners who variously beat her, got her addicted to drugs and put her to work on the street. Just 26 years old, she has already had two daughters taken into care: she said her final goodbye to her youngest daughter, born suffering withdrawal symptoms from the crack cocaine to which Kelsey was then addicted, in November 2013.
“When I lost my first baby, I never got any support,” she says. “But the second time, Pause was there to help me get back my confidence. I’ve been off the drugs for three months now and am focusing on my life so when my children come to look for me, I will be able to care for them.”
Participation in Pause is voluntary but a non-negotiable requirement for those taking part is the use of a long-acting, reversible contraception, such as the contraceptive injection, hormone implant or coil.
“It is really important that for the duration of this intervention, the women are able to focus on other challenges in their lives, such as substance misuse or domestic violence, and begin to develop some more positive aspects of their life,” said Humphreys.
Instead of sending the women to seek help from exisiting services, as currently happens, Pause workers go to them, spending time in their homes and communities, going with them to doctors’ appointments, court hearings, contact sessions with children or meetings with estranged family and partners.
The project is intensive and Humphreys admitted that for many of the women, having and keeping a child may not be a realistic ambition. “We are very clear with the women that this is not about getting their children back,” she said. “You’re not going to have nine children taken away from you then keep the tenth. We’re focusing on their needs as women, not what their needs would be if they become a parent again. Having said that, if a woman comes to us in her 20s, there’s a lot of work that can be done by the time she’s in her late 20s.”
Ashley, another mother in Pause, runs her fingers nervously over the white scars that lattice the inside of her arms and squeezes shut her eyes, red with tears and puffy with exhaustion.
“I’ve been cutting myself for years,” she says. “I managed to stop for a while but started again recently because it was my son’s third birthday and I couldn’t be with him. I’ve had two children removed from my care and I struggle every day with it. I don’t sleep but there are days I can’t get out of bed. There are days I can’t eat because I feel so guilty that I can’t feed them but I can feed myself. My sister’s kids ask me when they’re going to see their cousins again and I say they’ve gone on holiday: how do you explain to a kid that they’re never going to see their cousins again? People ask me on the street how my kids are and I have to say that I don’t know. There are times when life is just so painful that I’ve just wanted to give up.”
Ashley is 23 years old and has had two children taken into care. She is, as she puts it herself, “the product of rape” and a life that began with trauma has continued on the same track. “My mother was 15 years old when she had me. She chose to keep me but I reminded her of my father, so our relationship wasn’t good. I was in and out of care from nine years old. I ran away from home at 13 and a boyfriend, a heroin addict much older than me, introduced me to hard drugs at 15.”
Ashley has no doubt of the value that Pause has had in her life. “Without Pause, I would not be here now. I’ve never had anyone on my side: someone who isn’t going to hurt me, harm me or let me down. I could have kept on having kids or I could have ended it all. Or both. But Pause has helped me realise that I do have value. I do have potential.”
• All names of the mothers in this article have been changed
This article was amended on 29 October 2014 to change a reference to “militate” that should have been “mitigate”.
