Professionals can sometimes become concerned about a form of child abuse called Fabricated Illness (or sometimes referred to as Munchausen’s by Proxy). This happens where a parent or carer exaggerates or deliberately causes symptoms of illness in the child.
The types of behaviour that professionals may be concerned about can include taking their child for medical treatment or convincing professionals the child is ill, when they are healthy, exaggerating or lying about a child’s symptoms, manipulating test results or deliberately inducing illness for instance by using poisonous substances.
There are differing reasons why someone might fabricate illness. These can include that the parent themselves may have a mental health difficult which contributes towards this behaviour and they may enjoy playing the role of a “protective parent”, in other cases such behaviour can be motivated by a desire to claim disability benefits or to prevent contact between a non-resident parent (sometimes this can be referred to as Parental Alienation). We also understand that parents can be wrongly accused of fabricating illnesses and are able to support you through the legal process and to challenge such allegations, and we know the right experts to instruct to provide an independent medical opinion in respect of your child.