A woman with severe mental health issues has failed in a High Court application seeking the return of her primary school-aged child who has been in State care since he was a month old.<\/p>\n
Ruling in what he said was a \u201cmost unfortunate case\u201d, Judge Brian Cregan found the boy was lawfully under the care of the Child and Family Agency (Tusla) on foot of valid care orders made by the District and Circuit courts.<\/p>\n
A Tusla social worker told the High Court the agency has ongoing serious concerns about the mother\u2019s mental health, behaviour and how these could affect her child if he was returned to her care. She had been known to the agency before the boy\u2019s birth. <\/p>\n
A consultant psychiatrist in a maternity hospital who saw the woman two days after the boy\u2019s delivery said she has been diagnosed with a severe personality disorder and had strong paranoid and persecutory ideas. He said he did not think she would be fit to have responsibility for her baby as a result of these. <\/p>\n
The child was taken into the care of the State about a month later by order of the District Court. A second psychiatrist found the woman had a paranoid personality disorder some time after this.<\/p>\n
The mother disputed her mental health status before the District and Circuit courts and sought the return of her child. Tusla maintained that the child\u2019s health, development and welfare would be impaired and neglected if returned to her and that his placement in State care was in his best interests.<\/p>\n
For the first years of the child\u2019s life, his access with his mother occurred regularly. However, the court heard she has not had access to her son since early 2019 due to concerns about her behaviour during visits, including refusing to return him and attempting to leave the vicinity with her child. <\/p>\n
The social worker said the woman has been offered fortnightly face-to-face appointments and telephone calls with the agency for regular updates on her child, but she has refused these. He said the woman had brought numerous applications before the District, Circuit and High courts challenging the validity of her child\u2019s care. <\/p>\n
The woman told the High Court she brought her application, seeking the release of her child, on grounds of a \u201cmedical emergency\u201d as a mother to a boy who was being denied healthcare and fundamental rights. She said the birth of her son was the \u201chappiest time of my life\u201d before she was targeted shortly after birth and \u201crobbed\u201d of dignity.<\/p>\n
She made various general allegations of fraud, mistaken identity, false impersonation, medical identity theft and kidnapping. The judge said her court documents were \u201cin many respects unclear\u201d. <\/p>\n
He was satisfied the child was being \u201cwell cared for\u201d and was validly under the care of the Child and Family Agency. If the woman wants greater access to her son she should apply to the District Court, he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A woman with severe mental health issues has failed in a High Court application seeking the return of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":547084,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[13553,36527,5721,103,73,61,60,410,411],"class_list":["post-547083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-circuit-court","tag-courts-service","tag-district-court","tag-health","tag-high-court","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-mental-health","tag-mentalhealth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547083\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}