Saturday 7 June 2014

The Real Fat Police

Just a quick mention of this story of a couple who've been detained by police under "suspicion of neglect and child cruelty."

Their son's 11 years old, weighs 15 stones/ 210lbs/ 95.2 kg and has a BMI of 41.9. Now, I do not know whether there is more to this story than meets the eye. He's already known to social services, apparently for this same reason.

If this is case is prima facie then it exposes yet again the cost of 'obesity' lies and who's actually paying for them. Framing weight as fully under the control of the parents is a dirty trick unworthy of a profession people trust with their lives. It leaves people guilty as charged and under pressure.

The problem seems to be no weight los/ceasing of weight gains. But that should have been the duty of "obesity medicine" [sic]. It hasn't bothered so cannot promise. It's failed to formulate that as a worthwhile goal and tackle it, too busy indulging its slimmer of the year level yearnings. 

It's almost beyond comprehension that anyone could turn metabolic function into a legal tussle, the incompetence is mind-boggling. Especially when you consider the lengths social services can go to keep children with those committing all sorts of genuine damage to their children, in the name of keeping families together.

If you're wondering how the parents ended up in custody, they went voluntarily. I wonder if that's why genuine abuse is harder to stop, lack of co-operation from the parents. This level of aggression towards fatness is out of control and shows the spread of the 'obesity' echo chamber in certain quarters. I also suspect that its an easy target. There's an element of show.

I hope someone gets sued. I'm wondering whether this impinges on article 8.

Whilst it may be possible to check weight in some way through the imposition of diets and exercise on children. It should never have been relied on to the expense of any other possible approaches. Nor should any pretense that it can be taken for granted be a basis of judgement. If that was the case,  'obesity medicine' would routinely be managing it and this detaining would be unnecessary.

It's this policy of at the exclusion of all else, plus the punitive atmosphere that has led here, not the parents ability. If this had been done with other areas of well-being and health, the jails would be full of parents. There's barely one parent who can claim confidently not to have one area that could be seen as not living up to the high standards of social services.

Feeding your children is not and never has been an exact science and no one should expect it to become so just because capricious authority deems it the route it flex its might.

There should be a system in place to help weight outliers such as this boy achieve his full potential. Something like an out patient clinic, where there's access to physio, as well as nutritional advice. A check on his emotional state, helping him manage it if necessary to help keep him mentally robust. He needs to be in this atmosphere.

If he feels bad about himself or is being teased a lot, then that may add a significant problem, whether he has an issue with his hunger/appetite or not.

From what his parents seem to have said, they're positive and accepting of him and they should be congratulated for that. It's not easy to resist such a fat phobic surround.
“Any action taken by any agency will be subject to a joint strategy between all partner agencies and will always be taken with the welfare of the child and their protection from harm as paramount.
If that was in any way the case, the crusade you are involving yourself in, would not have had setting people up to fail as its main concern. The welfare of children has stopped none of this. Indeed, one of the main reasons why I never thought things would get anywhere near this bad, is that people wouldn't want to hurt children.

How wrong was that?!

And bracketing fatness thus;
A force spokesman said officers from the child abuse investigation unit worked closely with health and social services to deal with “sensitive issues such as obesity and neglect of a child.
Has gone beyond reason. 

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