The parents of two children in Scotland taken into care by social workers for being overweight were yesterday said to be devastated after a bid to have them returned home failed.
The youngest of the couple’s six children, aged three and four years old, were controversially removed after concerns that they were beginning to become dangerously obese. The three year old weighed four stone.
Last year the 40 year old mother and her 54-year-old husband, from Dundee, had been warned they faced losing all their children unless they helped them to slim down.
A seventh child due to be born this month has also been placed on the ‘at risk’ register, with the parents warned the baby may be seized at birth.
The family’s lawyer has warned there is a “real threat” that child protection teams could enter the hospital and remove the infant minutes after he or she is born.
The mother and father have also been told “active steps” are being taken to remove the remaining children from their care.
The family’s legal team had challenged the decision, taken almost two weeks ago, to place the two youngest children with foster carers.
The couple’s lawyer, Kathleen Price, described Dundee City Council’s handling of the case as “scandalous” and has launched an appeal to have the children returned to the family. She said: “This whole case has been dreadful. Neither of these parents takes drink or drugs. They have a big, happy, noisy family, which is prone to being overweight.
“To remove their children for that reason is scandalous. They had their children taken from them a week past Thursday and have no idea where they are. I have also had to warn them I believe social workers will enter the labour suite when their new baby arrives next month. They feel they are being victimised and are a complete mess.”
Price said it had been decided at a Children’s Panel hearing yesterday that they should be kept in care, pending a family assessment by health workers.
She said: “They want to wait on that information, but they should have done that now.
“The mother and father are terribly upset, she is due to give birth in around three weeks. So it means when the baby is born the children are not going to be there.”
Ms Price said she had launched an immediate appeal.
The family of eight, who cannot be named for legal reasons, first came to the attention of social services when the parents asked for help in caring for their children. It emerged their eldest son, aged 12, weighed 16 stone..
Dundee City Council has refused to comment on the case, but stated that children would not generally be removed from a family environment “just because of a weight issue”.