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Old November 2nd, 2009, 02:05 PM posted to soc.support.fat-acceptance,sci.med,alt.support.diet,misc.consumers,soc.culture.scottish
Hoots
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Posts: 305
Default Scottish Courts Briefly Take Obese Mother's Newborn Child

Rod Speed wrote:
Hoots wrote:
naebad wrote:
On Oct 30, 12:10 pm, "Peter Jason" wrote:
This is still more evidence for the licensing of couples to
have children. Some mothers are more equal than others.

Some women are insane, some too fat, some too thin, some too
old, some too poor, some too ugly, and some too young.

"Blob save the queen" wrote in
...
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Diet/co...milys-newborn-
neglect/story?id=8921808
A severely obese family in Dundee, Scotland, whose newborn
child was
briefly taken from them by child protective services while
the mother was
still recovering in the hospital, is now gaining
international attention
over the issue of whether childhood obesity can be a sign
of abuse or
neglect.
The couple, whose names aren't being released, has six
children and told
the British media that child protection authorities warned
them they face
losing custody if they could not get their older
children's weight under
control.
According to The Times of London, authorities already
removed two
children, aged 3 and 4, from the family home, leaving
three other children
with the couple. Investigations showed that the
40-year-old mother weighed
at least 322 pounds before she got pregnant with her sixth
child, a
toddler with the family weighed 56 pounds and an older
sibling weighed at
least 224 pounds by age 13.
The order to remove the baby from the parents, custody was
reportedly
overturned late last week after the couple promised to
work with Dundee
protective services to improve the health of all their
children.
"My wife is absolutely over the moon, and I am really
pleased and relieved
too," the father, 54, told The Times of London. "We are
going to have to
give 110 percent to this and try and work with the social
work department
and the family's project."
The Dundee City Council, which does not have the final
word on whether a
child is taken into protective custody, defended the
decision to remove
the newborn, saying there is more to the case than the
family's weight
issues.
"We will not comment in detail on any family with whom we
are involved,
but we have made it clear on numerous occasions that
children would NOT be
removed from a family environment just because of a weight
issue," a press
statement from the Dundee City Council read.
"In many cases, social workers will have been providing a
high level of
professional and caring support to a family for many years
in a bid to
keep them together. However... in some cases, despite the
strenuous
efforts of the agencies providing this support, the best
option is for
them to be looked after away from their home," the
statement continued.
America saw a similarly rare case earlier this year when a
14-year-old,
555-pound teen from Greenville County S.C., was removed
from his mother's
care in a complicated struggle with child protective
services.
Mom Who Lost Custody of Obese Son
Authorities say the boy's mother, Jerri Gray of Travelers
Rest, S.C.,
failed to comply with court-recommended treatments for her
son's morbid
obesity. She and the boy were picked up by police May 21
in Baltimore Md.,
after the mother failed to appear at a Department of
Social Services
hearing in Greenville, S.C.
Such extreme cases can often grab the public eye.
But family law experts commenting on the South Carolina
case said state
officials normally will intervene in the case only if it
is a life-and-
death situation.
"If the child's life is at risk, the state can intervene:
If it is a
relatively non-life threatening situation, the state stays
out," Thomas L.
Hafemeister, associate professor of law at the University
of Virginia Law
School in Charlottesville, commented to ABCNews.com in
June. "With regard
to obesity, in general, I don't think you're going to see
a lot of
interventions."
Indeed, medical and psychological experts say childhood
obesity alone is
too complicated a problem to pronounce it as a form of
neglect or abuse by
itself.
"There are a lot of gray terms in the is spanking your
child abuse?
Beating them is an abuse. Is sending your child to bed
without dinner
abuse? Withholding food is," said Dr. Richard Pesikoff an
adult and child
psychiatrist with Baylor College of Medicine, in Houston,
Texas.
Pesikoff said situations where children are morbidly obese
may easily fall
into similar gray areas of parenting across the country.
And while it
might be tempted to use the degree of obesity as a
yardstick for measuring
parental neglect or abuse, in Pesikoff's experience he
said it isn't
always a great measure of parental control.
For instance, Pesikoff treated a boy named "John," a
pseudonym for privacy
reasons, who was 5 feet 2 inches tall and weighed 450
pounds by age 14.
"Even if you tried to stop him from eating, he'd just push
his mother off,
push her away and go to the refrigerator," said Pesikoff.
Pesikoff said he doubted courts could "say that we know
the etiology of
obesity so well that we could point the finger and say you
[the parent]
are doing this to this kid."
Parent-Child Attachment Most Important
Pesikoff also points out that the parent-child attachment
is so important,
that he would recommend removing a child from the home
only in the case
where parents are putting the child in immediate physical
danger because
of their obesity.
Yet, despite the risky health conditions, such as heart
disease, that are
associated with obesity, those who treat childhood obesity
rarely come
across cases what would constitute an emergency removal of
the child.
Is Health Risk From Obesity an Emergency?
"First of all, you do have to work out if there are
genetic syndromes --
they are rare -- and they don't run in families like
this," said Keith-
Thomas Ayoob, an associate professor in the department of
pediatrics at
the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.
"This may be a case where the expression of a problem is
nutritional, but
the problem may be rooted in a mental issue," said Ayoob.
Apart from mental issues such as eating disorders, Ayoob
says he works
with people who simply have parenting issues.
"And if there are parenting issues, these kids aren't in
any immediate
emergency danger," he said.
Instead of an immediate removal, Ayoob said he prefers to
work with
families over a period of time.
"Healthy eating is a family issue if the parents are both
overweight,"
said Ayoob. "Removing them is not going to address those
eating habits."
Dr. Marc S. Jacobson, of the obesity leadership work group
of the American
Academy of Pediatrics, also points out that childhood
obesity isn't always
a matter of mental health, or poor parenting.
"There's clear evidence that the food industry -- fast
food restaurants,
vending machines, sweetened cereals -- influences
childhood obesity," said
Jacobson.
"I can't say which is relatively greater in influence, but
they certainly
are important," he said. "The more fast food restaurants
in a community,
the more likely the kids are to be obese."
It's from eating that genetically altered ****e Americans
call "food".
She should be stripped of her Scottish nationality and send South to
Emglistan.

Naeba

Where's Emglistan?


South of Scotland, stupid.



Oooooh...

I see! Oh yeah, there it is!

Thanks!