Shoe-box baby should leave hospital this week

The baby boy, left in a shoe box in a Cospicua alley, on April 1, should be discharged from hospital this week and placed in the temporary care of a foster family.

In the meantime, his 19-year-old mother is being allowed to see him every day after The Times reported on Saturday that she was yearning to hold her son and was distraught after being initially denied access.

Ruth Sciberras, Appogg children's services service manager, explained that it was too early to say whether the baby would soon be back in his mother's care.

"It's a very complex matter and in the coming days a child protection case conference will be held to establish the way forward," she said when contacted.

One possible outcome would be to issue a permanent care order, to which the mother would have 21 days to appeal. Another would be to allow the mother to raise her son while the state continues to act as the "father", meaning that the baby would be constantly monitored.

"There could be very different conclusions from the conference so we have yet to wait and see," Ms Sciberras said.

The mother was being very cooperative and she clearly wanted the baby back, contending that "here and now she is capable of caring for him".

Both Appogg and the police have adopted a cautious approach as they try to establish what really led to the baby being abandoned.

The picture that has been painted so far through first-hand accounts from the girl's mother and close relatives, shows a young woman who hid her pregnancy from everyone, giving birth alone at home in the morning of April 1.

The mother then wrapped the baby in a beach towel and placed him inside a shoe box, before driving off to pick up her mother from Hamrun barely two hours later.

The boy's mother was apparently waiting for nightfall to smuggle him to the nuns in Zabbar. But her plans were foiled when her 37-year-old mother discovered the shoe box in the washroom and, mistaking it for refuse, took it round the corner from her house where residents place rubbish for collection.

Three teenagers found the baby and informed the police.