It’s cold, damp and the blanket draped across the window of the one-bedroom flat sags in the middle like a glinting eye.
The baby cries constantly. Some days the walls swell with lusty-throated screams and seem as desperate as you are to escape the incessant noise. Other days they seem to give up and close around you, pushing you in until you scream.
Your boyfriend didn’t stick around long enough to find out how the pregnancy went. You think of the freedom you used to have and wish your mother in Adelaide would come back and lend a hand.
You’re trying to survive on the sole parent payment but it barely covers the rent. The ad on telly that says, ‘Support the System that Supports You,’ now sounds like a cruel joke.
That’s why, when help is offered, it’s hard to say, ‘No’.
Rap Rap. Rap.
You don’t know it yet, but that’s the child protection knock.
Rap Rap. Rap.
It’s early and you’re still in your pyjamas. You haven’t washed your hair for a week.
Rap Rap. Rap.
It’s loud enough to wake the baby and set her crying, again.
Wearily you hoist her onto your shoulder and go to open the door.
Standing there before you are a well-dressed man and woman, their white shirts stiff with starch, their pants freshly pressed. They each hold a briefcase.
‘We’re from the Department of Human Services,’ says the man. ‘Can we come in?’
You look at them uncertainly. ‘Why?’ You want to know.
They say it’s better to discuss it inside, so you let them in.
As you do, you realise your flat has reached that state of advanced disaster where you can’t even see the floor. The kitchen sink is clogged with dishes. Dirty nappies soil the bench.
The woman takes one look and says, ‘You need help’.
You agree. Your life these days is like a blurred haze, so you agree.
‘Problems settling the baby?’ It’s not a question.
‘You need help,’ the woman repeats. She exchanges a meaningful look with the man that you can’t interpret. The paranoia associated with a visit by child protection is setting in. Have your neighbours complained about the constant crying? Do they think you’re not looking after your baby properly? Are you not looking after her properly?
‘You look tired,’ the woman says.
Tired doesn’t cut it: you haven’t had a full night’s sleep for three months; you’ve been up most of the night with the baby; you have to catch the bus to Centrelink this morning to fill in more forms; and the maternal child health nurse is coming this afternoon. You’re bloody exhausted.
‘You need respite.’
The man unsnaps his briefcase. Snap. Snap. He pulls out a green form and comes over. ‘You’d like some respite, wouldn’t you?’
‘Yes,’ you say.
The man sits you down and gives you the green form. ‘We have many foster-parents who are happy to look after children for a couple of days. You just need to sign this form and we can arrange it.’
The form looks frighteningly official. You wonder if you should read it before signing. You have a sudden image of Elizabeth Hurley in Bedazzled playing the Devil, tricking Elliot into giving up his soul for seven wishes. What are you giving up for respite?
The baby screams in your ear. Her bottom is a saturated sponge. You start to read the fine print over her pitching head, but it’s too fine. Your eyes go blurry, from exhaustion. You sign the form.
The man takes the form; the form goes in the briefcase. Snap. Snap.
‘We’ve got a foster placement available immediately,’ the woman says. ‘It’ll give you respite. Just for a couple of days, okay?’ She smiles at you as if you’re an idiot, and you feel defensive.
I’ll think about it,’ you say. It is tempting. Just for a couple of days, so you can catch up on sleep, clean the house.
‘No. It’s for today,’ the man says. ‘You need to pack some things for the baby.’
Suddenly you feel panicky. ‘The maternal child health nurse is coming today,’ you say.
‘Don’t worry,’ he says. ‘We can cancel the appointment. You need to get some rest.’
It’s dark in the house. The main light bulb’s blown. The baby’s still bawling. And you have to show your face at Centrelink. You just want to lie down and sleep.
The woman takes your baby. Your arms drop. Responsibility falls to the floor like a dumbbell.
In a state of fuzzy-headed confusion, you get your baby’s Winnie the Pooh bag and fill it with nappies, a bottle, a tin of formula, and the only clean jumpsuit left.
‘Thanks,’ the man says, taking the bag from you. ‘You’ve made the right choice.’
You follow them out to the car and watch the woman settle your baby in the waiting capsule. Then she slams shut the door.
The man pats you on the shoulder.
‘We’ll be in touch.’
Shivering in your cotton pyjamas, standing on the sunken verandah, you watch the shiny government car drive down the road. It’ll give you respite. Just for a couple of days, the woman had said.
In the grey mist a kookaburra starts to laugh: Kooka-burra sittin’ on a ’lectric Wi-re.
You go back inside and close the door. Silence swirls in the air like a silk shawl. You feel a guilty moment of relief. You’re happy to embrace the gentle hush instead of listening to the baby’s shrieks.
There are three things you don’t realise.
The first:
You’ll have to go to court to get your baby back.
The second:
You’ve lost your Centrelink sole parent payments as of today.
The third:
Your baby may not be safe in foster care.
You asked for help. You had to. You knew you weren’t coping. The maternal child health nurse said your baby was failing to thrive, that she wasn’t putting on enough weight. You thought it was your fault that she was a fussy eater, so you asked for help.
You weren’t neglecting your baby. But the constant crying—it wore you out. She wouldn’t take to the breast, so you put her on the bottle. She wouldn’t suck the bottle properly. She kept pushing the teat around with her tongue, crying, and spitting up the milk.
The maternal child health nurse was full of advice—she said your baby should be fed on demand when she was hungry, not on a fixed four-hourly schedule.
‘How do I know when she’s hungry?’ you asked.
‘When she cries,’ the maternal child health nurse replied.
But your baby cried all the time. She always seemed to be hungry. When you gave her the bottle, she wouldn’t feed.
‘You need to relax,’ the maternal child health nurse said. ‘The baby can sense when you’re getting uptight.’
So you tried to loosen up. But when your baby spat and spluttered and cried instead of feeding, you cried, too.
Things got worse. The baby’s weight didn’t go up. You didn’t sleep. Some days, it was hard to tell who was crying more: you or the baby.
The maternal child health nurse asked the people from child protection to come and see you. ‘They’ll be able to help you,’ she said.
They did help you. They ‘helped’ you by taking your baby away.
Two days later, you realise your daughter isn’t coming home at once. And you panic.
First you call the workers. They tell you that the foster-mother who is looking after your baby is going to look after her for two weeks, and you should use that time to get your life in order.
‘I want to see my baby,’ you say.
‘We’re too busy to bring her out to see you today,’ the worker says.
Next day you catch a bus and turn up at the office.
‘I want my baby back,’ you say to the receptionist. ‘They took her away and I want her back.’
The receptionist phones the workers.
‘They’re in a meeting right now,’ she says, hanging up. ‘They said they’ll get in touch with you as soon as they’ve arranged access.’ She looks patronising, even pitying, and you feel afraid.
‘I want to see my daughter,’ you demand. ‘I haven’t seen her for three days and I want to see her now.’
The receptionist leans across the counter. She speaks to you through the glass.
‘I can’t help you. You’ll have to talk to the workers about it.’
Suddenly you can’t take it. You hate the departmental process that has you in its grip. You hate the receptionist’s indifferent face. Most of all, you hate feeling powerless.
‘I want my daughter!’ you yell, hitting the glass with your palm. You’re getting hysterical. Going to hit the glass again, you feel strong hands grab your arms. Security has arrived.
The workers take your public show of anger as further evidence of your inability to cope, and apply for a protection application for your baby through the Children’s Court.
They deceived you. They might not have done anything illegal, but they deceived you in every way that counted: they didn’t offer you more support, they didn’t explain the process properly, and they didn’t respect your fundamental right to be a mother.
You read articles in the paper that scare you. Articles that say that children in foster care are shuffled around all the time; that some of them have been abused; that the system is stressed beyond ‘safe limits’.
You have to get your daughter back.
But first you get a lawyer.
Your legal aid lawyer shares an office in the city with a dozen other lawyers at the Children’s Court. The office is noisy and crowded, so he takes you to a corner coffee shop where you can talk.
You’re still reeling. You can’t understand how it’s come to this. You look through the window and see a mother pushing her baby in its pram. You can’t help it, the tears well.
‘Why did they take her?’ You want to know.
‘It’s easier for parents to lose their children now,’ he says. ‘It’s the new early intervention laws. They assume that the parents who get notified to child protection are unlikely to change. And if they do, it will be too late for the baby.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means that the department can remove your baby relatively easily and start the process of fast-tracking her into permanent care much sooner then before,’ he tells you.
‘How is that fair?’
You don’t expect an answer and you don’t get one.
‘It’s not just Australia,’ he says. ‘America, Canada and Britain have all brought in new laws restricting the rights of parents.’
You can’t believe it. ‘Haven’t they learned from the stolen generation?’
Again he doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have an answer.
Knowing about the new laws makes it easier for you to understand what happened.
When the child protection workers walked into your flat and saw the utter chaos, the young mother, barely this side of twenty, on the verge of hysterical tears, and a small baby who was failing to thrive, you can imagine what they thought.
They listened to you crying and pleading for help.
But what help could they offer you?
You couldn’t get family violence support because you didn’t have a partner, let alone a violent one. You didn’t need drug and alcohol counselling—you’re not addicted to anything. And they told you the waiting list for a family support worker was a mile long.
The only thing they could offer you was a ‘voluntary agreement’.
The voluntary agreement meant that they could take your baby away and put her in foster care without the need to offer you any legal advice or present the matter at court.
You only found that out later, though. After you signed the agreement.
You didn’t know what else to do. How can someone who hasn’t had a full night’s sleep for three months be expected to think straight? Anyway, you were scared to refuse. You were afraid that if you didn’t cooperate, they’d take your baby away forever.
They said the respite was only for a couple of days. But you signed a form that said it would be for two weeks. Two weeks between watching them drive away with your baby and being able to have her back again.
It doesn’t mean they lied to you. You could have misheard what they said. But they should have seen your confusion. They should have explained it better.
Before you face the magistrate together, your legal aid lawyer goes through all the procedures with you. You’re grateful for that.
Appearing in court is more traumatic than you imagined.
You argue bitterly to have your baby back. You tell the magistrate the department caught you at a really low point, that you’re not a bad mother. The thought of being separated from your daughter for the remainder of the protection application terrifies you.
But it takes a month of court appearances, a month of even more stress and less sleep. A month during which you can only see and hold your baby briefly during supervised visits at the department’s office.
It’s a typical winter morning in the hills. Drizzle falls out of the low clouds, there’s a chill in the air that cuts through your jeans. The fog is so thick you can touch it.
You can only see as far as the neighbour’s nature strip when you spot the headlights coming around the corner.
Your daughter is coming home. At last.
You run outside and watch the shiny government car pull up in front of your flat.
The woman gets out of the car. She’s wearing her stiff white shirt and freshly pressed pants. She opens the back door and lifts your baby out of the grey capsule.
Your daughter is back in your arms.
First her amazing warmth: her warm little body. Then her beautiful smell. Her bright blue eyes, round cheeks and dimples when she smiles. You can’t stop looking at her.
The man hands you your daughter’s Winnie the Pooh bag.
‘Thanks.’
Now that you’ve got your baby back, you’ve got nothing more to say.
You sling the bag over your shoulder and you go inside, you and your daughter.
Having her back isn’t easy. For a while, it’s like you’re both strangers, getting to know one another again. She goes on with her fussing and crying, and you go back to your anxiety and tears.
But it doesn’t last forever. You settle into a routine. And in the end, you’re fine.
You know you weren’t a bad mother. In spite of the new laws making it quicker and easier to remove your child, they should not have kept your baby away from you, denying you the right to be a family.
Child protection ——
No-one is saying they were wrong. But how did suddenly losing her mother ‘protect’ your child?
Suvi Mahonen has worked as a journalist both in Canada and Australia. She has published travel articles, some of which have appeared in The Age, and is currently working on her fiction writing. The beginning of this story, How easy it is, how easy, is an extract from a novel about child protection that she is currently working on titled 'What's the Time, Mr Wolf?' She is also working on another novel about the trials and tribulations of a young doctor training to be an obstetrician. Her short stories have appeared in Woorilla, an independent Australian literary journal in its 15th year.
