SUE was in a violent relationship when her daughter Molly was born almost 10 years ago. She stayed in this relationship for six years, but eventually decided to leave and sought help from her local free legal aid centre.
Molly had been diagnosed as suffering from a mild mental handicap. She was also showing signs of emotional disturbance and behavioural problems.
As Sue (not her real name) sought to end her relationship in September 1992 her partner asked the Eastern Health Board to take Molly into care on the grounds that her mother was unfit. Sue fought the order, and Molly was returned to her in January 1993.
By now Sue was in a new relationship, and she became pregnant. Her pregnancy was a difficult one, and by the end of it she felt ill and tired. Molly's behavioural problems, including soiling herself continuously and loud, rhythmic head banging in bed at night, was adding to her stress.
Sue asked the Eastern Health Board for help and a social worker `called' who suggested she put Molly into voluntary care for a few weeks until the baby was born. She discussed it with her partner, Brendan, and they agreed to care as a temporary arrangement.
When her baby, a boy, was born, he had a heart defect and died a few days later. Sue said she was in no state to take Molly home immediately. Also, she wanted to get pregnant again immediately and soon did.
Meanwhile, the foster family was having problems with Molly and she was moved to a very experienced foster mother outside Dublin.
She, too, had difficulty with her, and residential care was suggested. In August 1994 she got a place in a residential home in Dublin. Sue's baby, a healthy boy, Sean had been born in July.
Sue says the EHB's social workers had suggested courses in parenting and other support for her to enable Molly to come home. But she says this never materialised, that she was not kept informed of Molly's progress, and that the times of the visits were constantly changed.
Molly came home for Christmas in 1994. She was "utterly uncontrollable", according to Sue and her behaviour was so disturbed that Brendan and Sue had to call the residential home to have her brought back.
Sue and Brendan say their relations with the social workers involved with Molly began to deteriorate. Sue feels she was not involved in decisions regarding Molly. She said she was promised we work with Molly which never materialised.
Sue was asked if she would consider long term foster care for Molly, and she said she would think about it. Molly had been visiting a couple at weekends, and it emerged that this couple were the prospective foster parents. Sue asked to meet them.
Months later, she and Brendan did so. By now, Molly had been having weekly visits with them for eight months. However, the couple were not happy about their chances of success as long term foster parents to Molly.
Despite their misgivings, the contact between Molly and the couple increased, so that she was eventually spending most of each, week with them. Sue asked them to stop the visits for a while and said she was not agreeing to the fostering. According to Sue, the social worker said he would be seeking a compulsory care order. An interim was granted by the courts two months ago.
The Eastern Health Board has said it cannot discuss individual cases, so it could not give its reasons for seeking the compulsory care order. However, a spokeswoman stressed that such orders were rare.
"The fact that mothers break confidentiality does not mean that the health board can do it. We have 1,500 children in care, and we have no desire to take children into care unless strictly necessary. The health board's instinct is that parents should care for their children. Judges are very slow to make care orders," the spokeswoman said.
In recent weeks events have taken a dramatic turn. Sue was contacted by the social worker, band asked to see him urgently. She and Brendan went to meet him and others from the residential home. There they were told that the workers in the home had found out two weeks before that Molly, then nine, had been sexually abused in the home by a boy aged 15 and possibly also by his 14 year old brother.
Her next visit with Molly was in the presence of a social worker with whom her relations were bad, and Sue felt that she could not ask Molly what had happened. "I was told I couldn't see her alone."
Sue feels aggrieved because she feels she did not get the help she wanted for her daughter and as a result has become estranged " from her.
"I don't know why they're looking for the care order. It's not as if we're alcoholics or anything."
Because of client confidentiality, the health board cannot put its side of the story. However, this means that because discussion of specific practice is impossible, public accountability is, at the least, difficult.