Should 200 LB Child Have Been Taken From Mother for ‘Medical Neglect?’

November 28, 2011
Patriot Update News



It’s becoming a more and more popular question: Is a child’s unhealthy weight grounds for removing him or her from a household? It was enough for county officials to place a Cleveland third grader who weighed 200 pounds into foster care, according to The Plain Dealer.

The Plain Dealer reports that the 8-year-old was taken from school by social workers in October and his mother, who adamantly claims she had been trying to help him lose weight, only sees him for two hours every week. It calls this the first case of a child being taken from a parent over a weight-related issue in Cuyahoga County and it marks a stronger national debate on the topic:

Cuyahoga County does not have a specific policy on dealing with obese children. It removed the boy because case workers considered this mother‘s inability to get her son’s weight down a form of medical neglect, said Mary Louise Madigan, a spokeswoman for the Department of Children and Family Services.

http://patriotupdate.com/videos/should-200-lb-child-have-been-taken-from-mother-for-medical-neglect

Oh yeah. The Annamarie Martinez-Regino case in New Mexico. I had forgotten about that one.