How child services and midwives interact
Taking a healthy baby home is what every mother wants after giving birth. But for some mothers, they leave the hospital empty handed.
The mothers we are talking about today are the severely disadvantaged, the drug addicted, the mentally ill and those in a violent relationship. In this cases, child protection services often step in and remove the child from their mother.
It can be a traumatic experience for the mother, the baby, and the midwife who has helped the woman throughout her pregnancy.
Louise Everitt is the Clinical Midwifery Consultant at St George Hospital and a lecturer in the Faculty of Health at the University of Technology Sydney. She has researched the impact of removal on midwives, and found that this is a confronting experience for all involved.
Image: Kenyaboy7 on Flickr.
