30.08.2016, 19:00:00 – 30.08.2016, 20:00:00
Online WebinarJoin us in this webinar where we discuss with Katherine Hewitt the plight of vulnerable mothers whose children have been taken into care and who are left alone to cope with a series of complex needs.
You can register and join this webinar at https://app.webinarjam.net/register/20480/9917f68415 You will need to do this to join the webinar.
Thousands of mothers over the past seven years have had successive children removed by family courts in England. Court records show 7,143 mothers were involved in repeat care cases – affecting 22,790 children.
The children are in care but the mothers are often left in a destructive cycle of pregnancies and care proceedings. The courts remove a young child or baby from a mother, owing to abuse or neglect, only to see the same mother return to court a year or two later, with a new baby, and unable to care for that one either.
The problem is though that for the mother it’s not the conclusion, it’s just the start. She has to face the future without her baby and with the absence of support available to her at this time of crisis.
Whilst being subject to a Child Safeguarding plan she will have been under intense scrutiny, she will likely have had involvement from a number of agencies and she will usually have been set actions, improvements that she needs to make to show her willingness to engage and ultimately prove her ability to be a parent. Then once the baby is taken (and the speed at which a bay is removed can vary, it’s not always quick, it doesn’t always happen at birth) that’s it. The agencies disappear and she’s left to it.
Gateway Family Services is an organisation set up in Birmingham to break into this cycle that leaves so many mothers vulnerable by providing support. They provide support and advice on a whole number of issues from parenting to housing, from substance abuse to advocacy.
In supporting vulnerable women with complex needs through their pregnancies Gateway Family Services see these women again and again - it’s the revolving door scenario and in this Webinar Katherine Hewitt will discuss what can be done to break this tragic cycle.
Katherine took over as Chief Executive of Gateway Family Services in June 2014. After joining Gateway in 2011 as Programme Lead for Health and Wellbeing she spent a brief time as Deputy CEO then moved to Operations Manager. Katherine’s background is in community development and area based regeneration. She led the Community Empowerment theme of Sandwell’s New Deal for Communities Programme (NDC) and more recently she was responsible for their Connecting Communities programme. Previous to that she ran a community centre on a council estate in Grimsby.
For more information on this problem then visit this Blog article on the Gateway Family Services site - http://gatewayfs.org/2014/06/27/pregnancies-and-care-proceedings-breaking-the-cycle/
Gateway Family Services is a Community Interest Company established in 2006 and operates in Birmingham and across the West Midlands.
Their services cover areas like employment training, weight loss and pregnancy outreach. The common thread is “people who need help” and all of the areas they cover have a direct impact on health and wellbeing.
You can visit their website at http://www.gatewayfs.org/
