Book Review: Mothers accused and abused: Addressing complex psychological needs by Angela Foster

Abstract

Mothers Accused and Abused is an important book about women and mothers who were accused of harming and sometimes killing their children. Many of these women lost one or several of their children to the care system. As the care system focuses on children, once these are removed, the parents and mothers are often left to deal with their feeling of loss on their own. As one of the women quoted in the book says, “Every time they take a baby away, the only way that I can deal with the pain of the loss is to get pregnant again as soon as possible.” Unfortunately, without dealing with the problems that led to the child being taken from the mother, it is very possible that her next child will also be taken from her. “This makes no sense and must change,” explains the editor of the book, Angela Foster, a psychiatric social worker, a psychoanalytic psychotherapist, supervisor, and consultant working with clinical teams and individuals in mental health, forensic, substance misuse, and child care services. The book examines some of the many limitations and shortfalls in the ways in which professionals too often respond to these women, much due to contemporary budgetary and organizational pressures. The endemic emphasis on “hitting targets” and “closing cases” among other factors leads practitioners to avoid dealing with some of the more loaded, negative, and often unconscious emotional content carried by these women due to the multiple traumas and adversities they experienced. This undealt with negative emotional content has destructive potential, for the women, for their children, and for the staff working with them. This destructive potential and the ways practitioners are trying to deal with it are skillfully illustrated by the authors through a series of well analyzed and presented case studies.