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Baby "G's" distraught mother wept as a court ordered he should be taken away from her again and put into foster care.
The 18-year-old, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, broke down in tears and had to be supported by two relatives as she received the devastating news.
During a three-day emotional roller-coaster for the mother, her baby has been snatched from her in hospital by social services two hours after birth, then dramatically returned to her later that day after a High Court judge ruled the officials had acted illegally as they did not have a court order.
After a further hearing before the Family Proceedings Court lasting five hours over two days, district judge Richard Inglis yesterday upheld an application by Nottingham City Council for an interim care order.
The mother attended the closed hearing yesterday, but did not give evidence.
Afterwards, a friend said: "It has been a thoroughly traumatic few days for her and she is completely devastated and drained."
The case highlights the lack of transparency in the family courts, with the reasons behind the decision not being revealed to the public.
Last night, Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming, who campaigns for greater openness in the system, said: "If they are going to take such draconian action as to separate a new born baby from its mother, they should be willing to justify it in the open.
"What worries me most about these types of cases is they do not explain what they are doing or why.
"Separating a child from its mother can be damaging to both of them, creating problems such as with feeding the baby and breaking the bond between them.
"There are other options they could consider like a mother and child foster placement or an assessment centre so that they do not have to be separated.
"But they almost seem to revel in separating newborn children from their mothers in this country."
Baby G was born in hospital in Nottingham at 2am on Wednesday and social services snatched him around 4am. His mother, who has mental health problems, has just left local authority care.
The baby was taken after staff at the hospital were shown a "birth plan" that was prepared by social workers.
The plan said the mother, who had a troubled childhood, was to be separated from the child, and no contact would be allowed without supervision by social workers.
Later that day, Mr Justice Munby made an order in the High Court in London that the baby should be returned to his mother, which he duly was.
In his ruling, Mr Justice Munby said that "on the face of it" social services officials had acted unlawfully because they had not obtained a court order.
He said removal of a child could only be lawful if a police constable was taking action to protect a child, or there was a court order in place.
Giving his decision at the Family Proceedings Court in Nottingham yesterday, Judge Inglis said: "The court has decided that the welfare of G requires that he lives in local authority foster care on an interim basis while further enquiries are made and an assessment carried out.
"His mother will have frequent periods of contact with him each week.
"When the further enquiries have been made, the court expects to be in a better position later this year to make a decision about who should care for G and what part his mother and other members of his family should play in his future care."
Afterwards, Nottingham City Council said in a statement that the interim care order "enables the council to provide appropriate protection for the baby whilst continuing to support the mother who is also our concern in this case".
"The council does not intend to say anything about the background of the case which is not already public.
"Suffice to say that the council and a range of other partner agencies had enough concern for the baby's welfare during the pregnancy to believe that action would be needed to protect the baby when it was born," it added.
The decision to seek an interim care order or an emergency protection order for G was made at a case conference in December 2007 at which the mother and her legal representative were present, the council said.
"The law does not allow application for a court order before birth. The protection plan made in advance included the intention to apply for a care order immediately following the birth of this baby."
Last night, Margaret McGlade, the independent chairman of Nottingham's local safeguarding children board, said there will be a review of "the communications between all parties, including the baby's mother, particularly following the baby's birth to see if there are any lessons to be learned".
I had to flee Britain to stop my baby being snatched by the State
Fran Lyon will be a mother by now.
All alone, in a hiding place somewhere in Europe, the 22-year-old student will be cradling her newborn daughter Molly and hoping that one day she will be able to return home to Hexham in Northumberland, and share the joy of the birth with her family and friends.
Last November, at seven-and-a-half months' pregnant, Fran fled the country after social workers warned her that her baby would be taken away ten minutes after the birth and placed with foster parents.
Horrified, she moved to Birmingham.
But as the due date neared, she decided even that was too risky and boarded a flight to Europe, where she remains in hiding.
Today, one can only imagine her reaction as she learns that this week a young mother had her baby illegally snatched by social workers.
In this dramatic new case, officials claimed the 18-year-old was unfit to care for her child because of mental health problems.
But hours later a High Court judge ordered the infant to be returned immediately, ruling the social workers had acted beyond their powers.
The case has chilling echoes of Fran Lyon's experience.
Despite medical evidence to the contrary, social workers believed that because she had suffered from eating disorders and had self-harmed as a teenager, she posed a threat to her unborn baby.
In the last telephone interview she gave before she fled, Fran said: "I wouldn't have done it unless I absolutely had to.
"Every time there was a twinge, I was petrified. I just kept thinking: 'Please don't go into labour, not yet.'
"Now, for the first time, this will be just me and Molly. I want to enjoy it."
Fran, who was studying for a degree in neuroscience at Edinburgh University, became unexpectedly pregnant last April.
"I was shocked because I'd had the contraceptive injection," she said.
"I didn't have a clue how I was going to make it work with university and my job (for two mental health charities) but I was determined that I was having her."
She fell out with the father of the baby, who then became the subject of a police investigation.
He then alerted social services to Fran's medical history. When they investigated, Fran was open about her past.
The catalyst for her problems, she told them, came at 14 when she was raped by an acquaintance.
She became clinically depressed and spent the next three years, on and off, in residential psychiatric hospitals.
But she had fully recovered by the time she was 18 and the diagnosis of borderline personality disorder was removed.
Fran received a letter informing her that a "child protection case conference" would be held on August 16 last year.
She instructed a solicitor and contacted her former psychiatrist, Dr Stella Newrith, who offered her full support.
Fran claimed that social services thought she was in danger of suffering Munchausen's by proxy, a controversial and unproven condition in which a parent invents an illness in her child to draw attention to herself.
Fran was also told she could not be trusted to breast-feed her child.
By November, the plan to remove Molly was confirmed and Fran was distraught.
A spokeswoman for Northumberland County Council said: "We are unable to comment on individual cases, and we do not believe that it's in the best interests of any mother or child to discuss personal details through the media."
For Fran, however, the publicity was her last chance to stay with her little girl.
"All I am asking for is a chance to prove I will be a good mother to Molly," she said.
How social services are paid bonuses to snatch babies for adoption
For a mother, there can be no greater horror than having a baby snatched away by the State at birth.
The women to whom it has happened say their lives are ruined for ever - and goodness knows what longterm effect it has on the child.
Most never recover from this trauma.
Imagine a baby growing in your body for nine months, imagine going through the emotion of bringing it into the world, only to have social workers seize the newborn, sometimes within minutes of its first cry and often on the flimsiest of excuses.
Yet this disturbing scenario is played out every day.
The number of babies under one month old being taken into care for adoption is now running at almost four a day (a 300 per cent increase over a decade).
In total, 75 children of all ages are being removed from their parents every week before being handed over to new families.
Some of these may have been willingly given up for adoption, but critics of the Government's policy are convinced that the vast majority are taken by force.
Time and again, the mothers say they are innocent of any wrongdoing.
Of course, there are people who are not fit to be parents and it is the duty of any responsible State to protect their children.
But over the five years since I began investigating the scandal of forced adoptions, I have found a deeply secretive system which is too often biased against basically decent families.
I have been told of routine dishonesty by social workers and questionable evidence given by doctors which has wrongly condemned mothers.
Meanwhile, millions of pounds of taxpayers' money has been given to councils to encourage them to meet high Government targets on child adoptions.
Under New Labour policy, Tony Blair changed targets in 2000 to raise the number of children being adopted by 50 per cent to 5,400 a year.
The annual tally has now reached almost 4,000 in England and Wales - four times higher than in France, which has a similar-sized population.
Blair promised millions of pounds to councils that achieved the targets and some have already received more than £2million each in rewards for successful adoptions.
Figures recently released by the Department for Local Government and Community Cohesion show that two councils - Essex and Kent - were offered more than £2million "bonuses" over three years to encourage additional adoptions.
Four others - Norfolk, Gloucestershire, Cheshire and Hampshire - were promised an extra £1million.
This sweeping shake-up was designed for all the right reasons: to get difficult-to-place older children in care homes allocated to new parents.
But the reforms didn't work. Encouraged by the promise of extra cash, social workers began to earmark babies and cute toddlers who were most easy to place in adoptive homes, leaving the more difficultto-place older children in care.
As a result, the number of over-sevens adopted has plummeted by half.
Critics - including family solicitors, MPs and midwives as well as the wronged families - report cases where young children are selected, even before birth, by social workers in order to win the bonuses.
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