Smoking and Africa: the coming epidemic.

Abstract

of overt safeguards (in England) for the parents at the crux of the action, especially the dull and mentally handicapped. We believe that arrangements for reporting care actions in under-5s should be changed, separating out all instances of statutory removal of the newborn and children in their first three months of life. This would allow more detailed scrutiny of very early care actions and maternal abandonment for research and would enable better evaluation of a practice that has emerged tentatively over the past ten years. It would also provide more answers to questions about the drastic use of statutory powers and would, we believe, place the procedure in the context of all child care. proceedings. We believe that removal at birth is occasionally necessary and appropriate, but that more information is needed before proper criteria can be recognised and agreed. We had, for instance, wrongly assumed that psychotic illness or severe mental handicap only would justify removal of first-born children.