Category: Talks

Relationship break down doesn’t happen overnight it is usually the result of a long unhappy period that quite often includes the months of pregnancy.

Increasingly, especially in Western society, relief from life’s stress comes from drowning the sorrows with alcohol. It doesn’t work of course but that’s beside the point. People think it does and so the self abuse of copious amounts of wine, sprits and beers will continue.

Although many pregnant women give up drinking many more don’t. They try to cut down but then the need to ‘feel better’ about their lot in life drives them back to alcohol.

In many parts of the world authorities are tackling what they believe is one of the main reasons for the increase in children being born with learning difficulties, hyperactivity, poor memory and speech difficulties. These difficulties are collectively referred to as Foetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS). According to The National Organisation for Foetal Alcohol Syndrome – UK, this is such a well recognised condition in the rest of the world that there are over 250,000 existing websites on the subject (if you are searching you will need to use the international spelling of ‘Fetal’).

In the US all products containing alcohol carries a health warning ‘(US) GOVERNMENT WARNING: ACCORDING TO THE SURGEON GENERAL, WOMEN SHOULD NOT DRINK ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES DURING PREGNANCY BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF BIRTH DEFECTS’.

Facts

• Alcohol can cause more damage to an unborn baby than any other drug.
• FAS is one of the leading known causes of mental retardation.
• FAS can cause serious lifelong social and behavioural problems.
• FAS and alcohol related birth defects are 100% preventable if no alcohol is consumed during pregnancy.
• There is no safe level of alcohol during pregnancy.

Useful Information

If you have any specific concerns do get in touch with our experts http://www.mychildcontact.com
Email: kenn@mychildcontact.com
Helpline: Freephone 0800 0283163

The National Organisation for Foetal Alcohol Syndrome – UK
Email: nofas-uk@midlantic.co.uk
Helpline: 0870 0333 700

Luca, Austin and Cecilia Riggi have apparently been murdered by their 46 year old mother Theresa.

What state of mind must she have been in to have taken the precious lives of her birth children?

First reports indicate a marital and child custody dispute. Of course, unfortunately these tragic deaths are not the first. At the time of the Moat killings, in the village of Holbrook Derbyshire dad Andrew Cairns stabbed to death his partner Rachel Slack and their 23 month old son Auden (see mychildcontact.com blogspot earlier report of 4th June 2010).

There are many similar reports and it seems as though violence is becoming the norm to solve child custody disputes.

All this comes at a time when the Government is responding to a Family Justice System under enormous strain by:

• Capping the fees Independent Social Workers thereby undermining the important role ISW’s have in ensuring that children and families can have a independent professional voice to challenge finance driven Local Authority Social Care workers
• And secondly, causing the loss of almost half of the Family Law firms because of the Legal Aid Commission’s decision not to award them new contracts, in an effort to cut costs.

Without doubt, these decisions will seriously affect the welfare and safety of vulnerable children and disadvantaged families.

At mychildcontact.com we are actively seeking the appointment of a Minister with sole responsibility for Child Contact, Access and Custody and challenging poor decision making. You can help in this by letting your MP know the serious consequences of the Government’s actions.

We have a letter that you can download and send to your MP. Please click this link and download here.

The similarity between Moat and his actions are chillingly close to the 1982 incident when fugitive and police hater Barry Prudom spent 18 days on the run skillfully using escape and evasion techniques he’d learned from books and survival magazines in his effort to kill as many police officers as he could.

Like Moat, Prudom was a fitness fanatic, and lived a Rambo style existence using the natural surroundings for cover and food as he played out his police killing role.

My mentor and trainer Sgt Major Eddie McGee was a military survival expert and tracker called in by the police to help in the hunt. Eddie led the police to the feet of the triple killer who had used a discarded plastic sheet to construct a hide and shelter within 300 yards of a local police station. Armed and dangerous Prudom lay in wait. McGee used his skills to get so close to the killer that he touched his boot giving the waiting police Prudom’s exact position. Moments later four high velocity shots rang out and Prudom was dead.

Police searching for Raoul Moat would be wise to re-visit the intelligence in the Prudom case as the similarity between the two men is quite bizarre.