This chapter examines the mothers’ evaluations of professional intervention. This evaluation covers past experiences as well as any current or ongoing professional interventions that the women were receiving at the time of the study. The mothers were asked about their experiences of the full range of professionals with whom they might come into contact given their conditions and particular situations. Since one of the conditions for selecting women for interview was participation in a child protection case conference in the past two years, each of our sample had considerable experience of social services and childcare social workers. We begin by examining their views of the child protection system and those who work in it.

Experience of child protection system

The routes by which the families had come to the attention of child care social work varied. Three women described social work involvement commencing late in pregnancy or soon after birth, three others indicated that various individuals or professionals had referred them to child care social work, while two reported contact with the service as dating from the time of psychiatric admission. Although two of the mothers acknowledged that they had needed help at that point, five had felt angry and had found the involvement intrusive:

Most of the women in the sample considered that they had had little power over the events that had taken place once the process had commenced. The investigations that followed initial contact with social services evoked feelings of a loss of control, or of being judged:

The sense of loss of control expressed by the mothers seemed to have been experienced from the early stages of their contact with the child protection system and, as discussed later in this chapter, informed the mothers’ views about working in partnership with professionals.