Discrimination and False Accusations Against Autism Families

 

Links and information on false accusations by professionals against parents of autistic children - the NAS is aware of this problem but to date appears yet to speak out (it happens to families of children with EDS and other invisible disabilities too, accusations include abuse, neglect and MSBP/FII):

http://www.autismeye.com/parents-accused-of-fabricating-illness-in-their-child//#more ...it can happen to anyone. Full article here: http://media.wix.com/ugd/58c8f1_211d0efb4ae842f5aba2e2d5b1519d42.pdf

Another issue of Autism Eye "Refrigerator Mother theory At a paediatrician near you?" http://www.autismeye.com/digital-edition/files/assets/basic-html/index.html#6-7

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Planet Autism fact sheets: "False accusations of fabricated and induced illness against parents" and "Autistic Women as Mothers – The Lies and the Truth"

 

Unbelievably, on page 9 of this 2016 FII/MSBP presentation document, Dr Danya Glaser (child psychiatrist who has worked for Great Ormond Street Hospital - GOSH) lists autistic mothers as perpetrators of FII.  This is outrageous disability discrimination and unquestioning professionals would have sat at her talks absorbing what she said as fact, turning a blind eye to this unlawful behaviour.  She also incredibly lists seeking EDS diagnosis as an indicator of FII.  Glaser is not a medical doctor and has an extremely intense (some would say obsessional*) interest in child abuse, she seems to have built her career around it, touring the UK and abroad giving talks about FII.  Many parents whose children are or were patients at GOSH have suffered false accusations of abuse, especially FII.  Enough parents are concerned about Glaser and GOSH, that FOI applications have been made.  Glaser has ingrained herself so deeply into the child protection arena, that she is given 'special mention' by Lancashire authorities in their safeguarding manual on FII, evidencing how much her views are given credence.  Glaser joined with 17 other professionals including the notorious Roy Meadows whose theory on MSBP has been discredited (resulting in it simply being renamed as FII and continued) to write to the GMC, demanding that complaining parents be seen as vexatious and frivolous.  Sally Clark was a parent in the media, wrongly accused on the opinion of Roy Meadows and was sent to prison, she was cleared in 2003 but died of alcohol poisoning 4 years later, having never recovered.  Meadows was struck off and Southall was investigated for serious professional misconduct.  These are the people Glaser closely aligns herself with.  GOSH's 'Attachment and Trauma' department also assesses neurodevelopmental conditions, ASD and ADHD.

 

What are the chances that an undiagnosed ASD or ADHD child, whose parents are suffering false accusations of abuse or neglect, will end up instead with a misdiagnosis of attachment disorder and/or be removed from their parents?  Especially with Glaser's influence on board.  There are already a number of clinicians wrongly suspecting the ASD subtype PDA, is attachment disorder and attachment disorder is due to trauma, abuse or neglect.  It is also not appropriate to assess attachment in autistic children as they attach differently and only 30% of the population is securely attached.  *The very worrying attitude Glaser has, is demonstrated clearly in this article, in which she states that significant harm is defined by "Harm to the child that an expert can convince a judge is attributable to the parent without evidence".  There are no words I can add that explain better than that how dangerous this person is, if she advocates intervening and possibly removing children from parents based on zero evidence and she sees her role as convincing the judge of the need for such actions.  Finally, Glaser states "schools are wonderful and crucially important places to find out about children".  All the autism parents - in fact all parents out there know, that is an utterly farcical comment.  Schools are places where children are crammed into an unnatural environment and forced to be compliant and subservient and where children with SENs are sometimes restrained, abused, do not have their needs met and suffer bullying which schools do not address.  Clearly, Glaser actually intends that statement to mean, that schools are an ideal place where children can be investigated and questioned away from their highly-likely abusive parents!

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Glaser is interviewed in a podcast here on 23.2.17 by Pat Kenny (radio talk show in Ireland - so she's getting around), entitled "Are children's tantrums caused by something sinister?" which is regarding the shocking draft NHS NICE guidance on so-called "soft signs" of child abuse (which lists many traits of autism as supposed signs of child abuse and which Glaser took part in developing, the Planet Autism submission to the consultation via FASO is here)  In the interview, she states that tantrums as signs of abuse would be "repeated and extreme", that "if the child is five and has tantrums, or has tantrums that go on and on and the child is inconsolable...", then lowers that age further, by saying "or if you're still doing that at the age of four" (meltdowns are a common autistic behaviour that look exactly like tantrums and the child could be undiagnosed, or a professional could be autism-ignorant).  When a text from 'a listener' (could have been a professional plant) describes seeing parents as "goading" their child in a supermarket by saying things like "keep crying all you like I'm not listening, I don't care that you want the toy, you're not having it now because you're crying" and then describes the child crying next to the parent and the parent doesn't respond "warmly" to the child, Glaser states that the listener is describing "what we call emotional abuse and emotional neglect".  Pat then quotes a listener describing e.g. a 7yo having a tantrum because they are hungry as they haven't eaten in a while and their blood sugar is dipping or they have had a sugar overload (clearly meaning that an older child can have a tantrum for a perfectly valid reason), unbelievably Glaser leaps on that and states "yes, well what you're describing is possible neglect" and barely corrects herself, when describing a parent giving sweet food to a child as "physical abuse".

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                                      This woman, who is a child psychiatrist but is labelling adults with this profile, is very dangerous to                                                innocent families (I would find her opinions laughable if the impact of them were not so serious),

                                      especially families with invisible disabilities including ASD.  She is almost infamous on support pages

                                      and communities for the harm against families she is seeding.  Who would want to be remembered for

                                      further firing up a whole culture of suspicion, over-zealousness and false accusations, when the

                                      pendulum has already swung much too far in that direction?

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So, the big question is, why is such an obsessive person with such a massively distorted view of reality, being given so much rope?  Is she a government tool?  It's certainly very convenient for the government to prevent families gaining access to special needs resources, which they don't want to fund.  It's extremely concerning that her views have been cemented into the NICE child abuse guidance.

"Asperger's abuse inquiry pledged" http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3687612.stm (sadly a 2004 article and we are still facing this problem).

"MISDIRECTION of SOCIAL POLICY Assessing Ordinary Parents as Abusers Assessing Ordinary Children as Victims"

“The Role of Government Edicts in False Accusations of Child Abuse”.  Jan Loxley-Blount, Parents Protecting Children

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1991 article which revealed misrepresentation of abuse - with the problem having got ever worse since that time.  Six families, falsely accused of emotional harm, when it was actually Asperger's that was responsible for their children's presentation: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1793147/pdf/archdisch00649-0033.pdf

"Asperger's Syndrome - Who is Being Abused?

Archives of Disease in Childhood 1991; 66: 693-695"

"Six case histories of children referred and admitted to a psychiatric inpatient unit at a tertiary referral centre because of concerns about poor functioning and possible emotional abuse are presented.

On initial assessment the children appeared to be well functioning and the impression was confirmed that their emotional needs were not being met by their parents.

After detailed inpatient appraisal the diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome was made in all six cases..."

Article by Jan Loxley-Blount from Parents Protecting Children on what it's like to be falsely accused: http://www.parents-protecting-children.org.uk/documents/Jan%27s%20Church%20Times%20Article%2021%2002%2003%20%28Cut%29.pdf

“Council unlawfully took autistic teenager into care and banned parents from seeing her alone”
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/council-unlawfully-took-autistic-teenager-4368205 #autismstolenkids

Planet Autism blog post: "State Kidnapping of the Children of Autistic Mothers"
https://planetautismblog.wordpress.com/2016/01/22/state-kidnapping-of-the-children-of-autistic-mothers/

Mistaking EDS for abuse.  “Ehlers-Danlos syndrome - Child Safeguarding – Non- Accidental Injury (NAI) – F11/Munchausen by Proxy”  http://www.ehlers-danlos.org/patient-support/your-child-and-eds/child-protection-and-ehlers-danlos-syndrome/eds-child-safeguarding-non-accidental-injury-nai-f11-munchausen-by-proxy/

“Cinderella Law-Anything Deemed Emotional Upset to Your Child-Could Now Mean Child Abuse!”  https://streetdemocracy.wordpress.com/2014/03/31/cinderella-law-anything-deemed-emotional-upset-to-your-child-could-now-mean-child-abuse/

Lisa Blakemore-Brown vaccines and autism and false accusations:
http://www.ageofautism.com/2009/01/the-politics-and-commerce-of-autism-from-the-one-click-group.html

"False and Highly Questionable Allegations of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy by Dr Helen Hayward-Brown"
http://www.pnc.com.au/~heleneli/paper.htm

"The New Child Abuse Panic" article about the dangers you face in simply disagreeing with a professional.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/12/opinion/sunday/the-new-child-abuse-panic.html?_r=0

Article about an autistic woman's childhood, during which her parents were falsely accused of abuse for her autistic behaviours, read about the lasting the trauma that professionals caused to her and her family: "The Damaging Legacy of Parent Blame" https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/aspergers-diary/201203/the-damaging-legacy-parent-blame
 

Tim Gilling's NAS Safeguarding Conference January 2015 conference video - he and his wife were falsely accused of MSBP/FII:  "Getting it Wrong: The Impact on Families": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDKS6NmAEWo unbelieably ironic considering his job (Director of the Centre for Public Scrutiny, and leads on health and social care and oversees our work in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland - had he been a 'normal' parent he likely would not have had this opportunity!)

Monique Blakemore's Autism Women Matter submission to the United Kingdom Human Rights Committee "Human Right Violations Against Parents That Are Autistic, Have an Autism Spectrum Condition" about autistic mothers being misunderstood by professionals and being inappropriately treated by professionals, including wrongful child protection interventions: http://tbinternet.ohchr.org/Treaties/CCPR/Shared%20Documents/GBR/INT_CCPR_CSS_GBR_20656_E.pdf

A sensational new piece of research PROVING that autism mothers are being discriminated against and falsely accused by social services!  Share this far and wide! #autismstolenkids   This is major - mainstream media needs to pick this up ASAP!

Compare these rates of social services investigations to what would be in the general population (and there is enough of a problem there):

"Positive and Negative Experiences of Autistic Mothers"

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Disturbingly, approximately 1 in 5 mothers of a child with autism, regardless of maternal diagnosis, were assessed by social services; of those, 1 in 6 had their child compulsorily placed for adoption. Finally, rates of allegations and investigations of suspected fabricated illness amongst children with autism and their siblings were two orders of magnitude higher than the known incidence the UK."

"Conclusions: Mothers with autism would benefit from far more and better tailored support. Allegations of fabricated illness, and high rates of surveillance by social services suggest there may be discrimination towards mothers with autism."

Disability discrimination at it's most toxic - breaking up families, harming children and their parents.

https://insar.confex.com/insar/2016/webprogram/Paper22166.html

Forced adoption by corrupt social services: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96NI_YBclck

Via PPP, Cary Canavan's to the point summary on professional misconduct against parents:
https://www.facebook.com/PPPC.UK/posts/1134845409874808?fref=nf

A Scottish family suing the NHS for failure to diagnose their son's autism and instead blaming the mother's parenting: https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/highlands/626856/mother-takes-legal-action-over-sons-non-diagnosis/

Also happening to children with ME/CFS: http://www.tymestrust.org/pdfs/falseallegations.pdf

Interview with paediatrician Dr Nigel Speight regarding the false accusations against ME/CFS families (it's the same premise for autism and other invisible disabilities and conditions) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcRZo1vO53c

The brilliant Sue Gerard's blog "Moving on from Bowlby" discussing the logic of FII and it's use: https://movingonfrombowlby.wordpress.com/2013/02/18/fabricated-or-induced-illness/

When families suffer immense stress from misguided state interventions, the trauma is passed onto their future generations, affecting their DNA and therefore health:

"Traumatizing your DNA" http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110323104737.htm
 

"3. Discrimination makes people ill..."

https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/wres-nhs-board-bulletin.pdf

So... for every parent with autism that they falsely label as mentally-ill and are claiming they are an unfit parent, through misunderstanding or misrepresentation of their autistic traits, they are making ill. The NHS has admitted it.

FOI application to the DfE who are responsible for children's social care:

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/childrens_social_care_profession#outgoing-510039

Excellent analysis regarding the discredited MSBP/FII label:
http://www.liftingtheveil.org/pdf/Hayward_Brown-02.16.06-lecture-powerpoint.pdf

MAMA - Mothers against Munchausens: http://www.msbp.com/

Christina England's 2015 press release about vaccinations and false accusations of MSBP: http://www.thelibertybeacon.com/2015/12/12/55253/

NHS Choices removed this comment from below their page on FII and additionally blocked further commenting too.  Why could that be?  Nothing that was posted was erroneous or libellous/offensive.  Just the truth and unbiased perspective.

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ADVICE

Christina England's advice pack for parents accused of MSBP or shaken baby: "Information Pack for Parents and Caregivers Falsely Accused of Shaken Baby Syndrome or Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy" http://parentsandcarersagainstinjustice.weebly.com/uploads/2/5/2/8/25284293/information_pack_revised_14_oct_2014.pdf

You are legally entitled to audio record meetings with social services: http://www.transparencyproject.org.uk/press/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Parentsrecordingsocialworkersguidancenote.pdf do so, to protect yourself and prove what has been said.

Always have a friend or advocate present when meeting with social services or any professional that you have doubts about.  You should do this 100% of the time when you have ASC or learning disability yourself.  See this webpage for advice about advocacy, obtaining copies of yours or your child's records and rights: http://evolutian.wix.com/planetautism#!your-autism-rights/c1t44

Keep a record of any rights that have been breached and as soon as possible seek legal advice.  Many solicitors do half an hour free legal advice.  Contact Parents Protecting Children at parentsprotectingchildren@live.co.uk (Jan Loxley Blount).

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/190544/00374-2009DOM-EN.pdf

"Safeguarding Disabled Children

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2.21 Where a parent is disabled it is important that they are receiving support to meet their own needs, and are supported in their parenting role so that they are able to fulfil their responsibilities. Information is available on working with parents with a learning disability in Good practice guidance on working with parents with a learning disability (DoH and DfES, 2007) (available to download from http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20090217020108/http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Publications/PublicationsPolicyAndGuidance/DH_075119). LSCBs should work collaboratively with adult services to ensure that children are not put at risk of harm because of a lack of support to their parents. Where a disabled child has been subject to abuse or neglect, perpetrated by someone other than a parent, the impact of such abuse on the parents needs to be acknowledged and appropriate support made available."

Let's hope this includes whistleblowing about colleagues/professionals they are aware of pursuing wrongful child protection concerns against autistic parents or parents with autistic children and causing them harm! https://news.sky.com/story/child-protection-whistleblower-line-to-launch-10165172

 

Contact your local councillor, MP, Parent Partnership, local Healthwatch, complain to the head of children's services at the LA - anything to raise recogition of what they are doing to you and bring official support to your side.  They target families where they see the parent(s) as vulnerable and unsupported!