What are your thoughts on this article?

I expect we may have some interesting chatter on this ...

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2011/07/13/should _parents_lose_custody_of_super_obese_kids/?rss_id=Boston+Glo be+--+Today%27s+paper+A+to+Z

I've already posted on this in two other places so I'm just going to link to one of those threads:

http://www.obesityhelp.com/forums/amos/4424340/Losing-Custody-of-Super-Obese-Kids/

Thanks for the link ... I don't go to the main forum very often & didn't know it was out there!

I feel bad sometimes doing that but I had put a lot of thought into my two posts there and I just couldn't bring myself to do it again! LOL

I am a social worker who has experience in child protection work. While I think that there likely are cases where childhood obesity is linked to neglectful or abusive parenting, I think we all know that the origins of obesity are usually more much more complex and multi-dimensional.

My view is that due to scarce resources, child protection usually errs in the direction of not intervening enough rather than too often, but it is also true that as a practitioner I was always very aware of the need to balance the harm caused by removing a child from the care of parents with the risk of harm if the child remains with the parents. (In most, but not all cases, the child wishes to remain with parents, even when there are really serious problems.) Since only hindsight is 20/20, and we don't know what will happen in the future, it is impossible to know what the least harmful choice is and we are left to make choices in a risk-averse and under-resourced social environment.

I think that obesity alone, with scant evidence of other risk or abuse, is insufficient cause to justify the removal of a child from his/her parents - and I would prefer to see resources in terms of health and education and parenting support provided instead.

And, honestly? When I was in front-line child protection practice, the sorts of cases that came to me were SO much more disturbing, frightening etc, that a phone call to my office reporting concerns about a fat kid -in the absence of any evidence of other neglect or abuse - might have resulted in a referral to a doctor, but not a child protection investigation. This may be wrong, but just like in an ER - these things are triaged according to urgency and degree of danger.