Forced removal of children from their birth families causes trauma for both mother and child.

Research shows that one in four women in the UK who have had a child removed will face further care proceedings within seven years. For women who have another baby this risk of return to care proceedings increases to one in two. The loss of a child can exacerbate maternal mental health issues. Coupled with the stigma of being a mother living apart from her children, it often creates further trauma, negatively affecting future pregnancies and parenting capacities.

Mental health exists on a broad spectrum. It is estimated that one in four people will experience mental health difficulties at some point in their lives. Experiencing poor mental health, in and of itself, is not a reason for children’s social care to intervene in family life – and for most people, it does not lead to such involvement. 

However, the stigma surrounding mental illness is intensified for mothers who are parenting alone and living in poverty. Fear of intervention from children’s social care and ultimately fear of having their children removed often forces women to hide their symptoms and avoid seeking help.

Growing recognition

In recent years, there has been growing recognition within safeguarding policy and practice of the need to better understand and respond to the experiences of parents who have had children removed from their care. Recent updates to Working Together to Safeguard Children recognise the importance of supporting parents who no longer have children in their care to prevent recurrent removals and support reunification.

This direction is further underlined by recommendations from The Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel’s national review following the death of baby Victoria Marten. The recommendations highlight the long-term impact of trauma on parents and the need to attend to parental experiences of loss through trauma-informed support after separation.

Together, these developments call for a shift in how services understand maternal mental health. Not only as a factor in risk, but as something profoundly shaped by trauma, loss and, in many cases, the experience of separation itself.

A rising trend in child removals

The number of children being removed from their families and placed into state care in the UK continues to rise year on year. Increasingly, parental mental ill-health – particularly maternal mental health – has become the leading reason for safeguarding assessments. This trend is not occurring in isolation. Evidence consistently shows that socioeconomic disadvantage significantly heightens the risk.

These patterns demand urgent attention. Services and practitioners must look beyond presenting symptoms to understand the deeper, structural causes – and commit to implementing preventative, trauma-informed approaches before families reach crisis point.

Understanding the trauma beneath the diagnosis

But who are the women behind these numbers? To truly understand the rise in child removals linked to maternal mental health, we must first confront the gendered and traumatic experiences that often lie at the heart of their distress.

Working in substance misuse and then adult mental health, my professional experience is that many of these women have experienced trauma perpetrated by men – specifically, intimate partner violence, sexual assault or abuse, or rape. Often, it is a combination of all these experiences, which has led to long-term post trauma symptoms, resulting in problematic drug or alcohol use, mental health intervention, or both. The National Crime Survey 2021 found that 63% of women who had been subject to rape or assault by penetration experienced mental health problems. The mental health impact was reportedly more prominent than any physical or social impact.

Shame and guilt are common responses to sexual trauma, often delaying help-seeking. Secrecy and fear frequently accompany these experiences, especially if they occurred in formative years. According to Rape Crisis England and Wales, five in six women who have been raped do not report this to the police.

Disordered or traumatised

In my professional experience, the response women receive typically depends on their socioeconomic standing. Women educated to a higher level and occupying higher-class status more readily receive a diagnosis linked to their trauma, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD). This facilitates access to evidence-based treatment provided by NHS mental health trusts.

Women with lower levels of education, from minority ethnic backgrounds, or lower socioeconomic groups are more likely to receive a diagnosis of Personality Disorder(s). This diagnosis often excludes them from accessing trauma-focused treatments. Women in this group are also more likely to be viewed by mental health professionals and children’s social workers as presenting a higher risk to themselves and others.

Gaps in mental health services

Despite the wide implementation of the Family Safeguarding model, which aims to integrate adult mental health practitioners into children’s social care teams, the impact on this group of women is limited or absent. The threshold for service involvement is lower-level mental health difficulties, treated by brief intervention of up to 12 sessions. The risk associated with this presentation is too great for those teams to manage, plus the identified treatment is longer term, therefore they fall beyond the scope of this integrated service.

Traditional service models mean that children’s social care and adult mental health services, employed by different organisations, work in silo. Each concentrating on the symptoms or risks present but rarely having the opportunity to identify and treat the root cause while simultaneously meeting the needs of the child. Timescales for children in the statutory social care arena are limited, with guidelines set at 26 weeks for completion of court processes.

With ‘unmanageable’ caseloads and an ongoing staff retention crisis, children’s social workers are working with the highest-need families and have little to no opportunity to offer therapeutic, whole-family or preventative interventions. Treating the underlying causes of trauma is a slow process. Unlike the most common mental health problems, such as depression or anxiety, medication or solution-focused brief therapy are not the primary treatments. NICE guidelines recommend psychological therapies, which should not be brief intervention (less than three months), and that treatment should be part of a process in which the recipient can form a trusting relationship. This is not compatible with the timescale constraints for the family courts, nor with the reality of waiting times for NHS mental health assessment, care planning and therapy lists.

For women who have already experienced the removal of a child, these gaps become even more significant. Support is rarely structured around recovery after loss, and there are limited pathways for therapeutic intervention that explicitly address the trauma of separation. Without this, women may re-enter services in subsequent pregnancies with the same unmet needs, increasing the likelihood of further intervention.

A trauma-informed system must therefore extend beyond prevention of removal to include meaningful, sustained support after children are no longer in a parent’s care.

The overlooked link: trauma, diagnosis, and child removal

Despite growing awareness of trauma-informed practice, there remains a significant gap in research exploring the relationship between women’s mental health diagnoses. Particularly Personality Disorders, and the removal of children through safeguarding interventions. To my knowledge, no published data systematically tracks the mental health profiles of women whose children are removed following social care involvement. This absence of evidence obscures a critical pattern:

• Women with histories of sexual trauma often have unmet psychological needs;
• are misdiagnosed or excluded from trauma-specific services;
• and disproportionately become subject to care proceedings.

One such case I encountered involved a woman whose own childhood was marked by removal from her family due to her mother’s struggles, including involvement with children’s social care.

As an adult, now reunified with her mother, she has had three children of her own. Her eldest now lives with their father, while the two youngest have recently been court-ordered to be separated. One placed in long-term foster care and the youngest adopted. This woman’s mental health difficulties are longstanding and stem from severe sexual and physical violence experienced in her intimate relationships.

Despite repeated contact with Children’s Services, she has never been offered dedicated, trauma-focused treatment. Her story is not unique. It reflects a system that fails to see past behaviour to underlying harm, and that too often pathologises women instead of supporting their recovery.

During Maternal Mental Health Awareness Week, there is an opportunity to widen the conversation – to include not only mothers currently caring for their children, but also those living with the lasting impact of separation. Recognising their experiences is essential to building a more compassionate and effective safeguarding system.