Thursday, July 25, 2013

Babies put into state care

The headline on Stuff reads: Babies taken at birth from risky mothers.

Guaranteed to pique my interest.
Nearly 800 newborn babies were taken from their mothers and put into government care in the past five years, with one Waikato baby taken within hours of its birth. The 773 babies - all less than a month old - were taken due to "serious concerns" about their parents' ability to care for them.
773 babies over a 5 year period. Sounds a lot but it's only 3 a week. Out of 1,176 per week (2012).

The reporting doesn't say so but I am thinking some of these births will be to incarcerated females. While imprisoned mothers have the facility to keep and care for their newborns, some will still not be in a position to. Apparently, "The mothers and babies units are only available to women who meet security requirements."

Some of these newborns could be to mothers on methadone whose babies are removed to de-tox.

Some births will be to women with known serious mental health problems. 3 a week is not surprising.

Then, I'm looking to see if the reporter has broken down the figures annually to show any trend. No. Because if she had, more than likely the numbers are decreasing (if they reflect the below graph) - not good copy. Decreasing numbers may simply be a facet of decreasing births over the past six years.

I am left speculating on the difference between regions. The number for the Southern region seems high. Perhaps it reflects practice rather than the incidence of at-risk births.



4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Possibly particularly the decline in births to mothers under 20???? Just a speculation.

I also was surprised by the Southern statistics so it would be good to know what the story is.

Mary

S Beast said...

We need better support for abortions. Perhaps if we didn't have so many guilt ridden Catholics running around with abortion feet on their lapels we would have less of a foster burden.

thor42 said...

Three per week is *naff-all*.
There is *nothing* in those stats for the lefties to whine about (but they will anyway...).

There must still be tens of thousands of children out there who would be better off being adopted rather than staying with their feral "parents".

CYF are in a *no-win* situation. If they remove a child, the media screams "nasty cruel CYF, taking the child".

If they do not remove a child, the media screams "why didn't CYF do something?"

Sheesh.......

Anonymous said...

adoption is the better answer. A baby gets to live and people who want to parent get to parent. Yet is all but gone.