[ID 1: Multiple screenshots of an ABC News article by Stephanie Richards reading: 1. Baby removals trigger whistleblower to tell of 'inhumane' practices and mothers' trauma.
2. After hours in labour, a new mother finally hears a high-pitched wail.
She's overcome with joy, exhaustion and relief, as a midwife hands her a tiny newborn, healthy and crying.
But in a scene described by a South Australian government whistleblower, what happens next is anything but joyous.
As the new mum holds her seconds-old baby to her chest, police officers and security guards stand at the hospital's delivery-room door.
Two child protection workers enter and hand her a piece of paper.
They tell her they are going to take her baby.
3. Last financial year, SA's Department for Child Protection removed 105 babies, aged under one month, from their mothers.
About one third of those were Aboriginal, and most were removed before they were one week old.
4. Jane said the department was concerned about "flight risk", believing some mothers would "take off and go somewhere else and have a baby" if they were told about the removal in advance.
She said police were present at most removals, and about half of removal notices were issued in hospital birthing suites.
"I think personally, it comes down to the actual social worker in the department not actually really wanting to have that open and honest conversation," she said.
"It's easier not to have it."
5. Jane estimated up to 80 per cent of women arrived at hospital in labour unaware that the Department for Child Protection intended to remove their baby at birth.
She said the department would tell hospital workers whether it had given advance notice to a family about its intention to remove the baby, and if the family had not been told health staff were "told not to tell them".
"You can imagine the excitement, the hormones – everything that's going through your body after giving birth – and then to have it ripped away without any prior warning is extremely difficult," she said.
6. SA Health policy states that "infants are not to be separated from their mother (other than for medical reasons) until section 41 [legislative powers authorising the removal of a child] has been invoked".
(Drawing of a woman touching a child's rocking chair).
But Jane said in some cases, the Department for Child Protection asked hospital staff to find a "pretext" to take a baby out of a ward, so the infant was already separated from the mother when a "section 41" removal notice was served.
"They might need some sort of care, some sort of fictitious sort of reasoning, so the baby is not in the room," she said.
"Different hospitals do it differently, but that is not an uncommon occurrence.
"There's a range of things that happen, which legally shouldn't happen until the notice has been served."
7. In February, the ABC asked the Department for Child Protection to provide data on how many babies had been removed at birth at public birthing hospitals over the past three years.
In response, the department said it did not keep data by hospital location, but said 24 babies, including six Aboriginal babies under one month of age were removed within the 2023 calendar year.
However, a department review conducted after the ABC's report last month found incorrect information had been provided.
Updated data reissued to the ABC was that 105 newborns, including 34 First Nations babies who were one month or under, were removed from their parents in the last financial year.
A department spokesperson said it had been "a genuine misinterpretation of what some of the data represented".
They said the department reissued updated data as soon as the information had been "carefully" reviewed. End ID]
[ID 2: Tumblr tags reading: note that indigenous mothers make up more than a third of the people this has happened to. an extremely disproportionate number given that indigenous australians make up less than 4% of our overall population. there are aproximately 3.8% indigenous australians but they make up approximately 35% of the people whove had their babies brutally. taken away from them within the first week since the kid's birth. its unspeakably attrocious.. australia. auspol. indigenous rights. End ID]
