“I was way beyond up upset. All I could think is ‘why is this happening?’ I never got any explanation. They just came in and took my baby.”

So said 41-year-old Jane Doe in the wake of a shocking action: Richmond Department of Social Services employees, with police in tow, seized her healthy newborn daughter at Henrico Doctors’ Hospital where she was born. (The names of the mother, father and daughter are being withheld to protect their privacy.)

Since Wednesday, Aug. 19, when the social workers came, Ms. Doe has not even been allowed to see her baby, who has been placed with a foster family who have no relation to her. The father also has not been permitted contact with his child.

Ms. Doe said she was even barred from providing pumped breast milk for the child because she said a social worker told her that her milk was causing the baby to have diarrhea, which seems to fly in the face of the current government campaign to push breast milk as the healthiest option.

The battle over custody of the newborn is raising questions about the willingness of city social workers to seize children with little justification.

Two years ago, the department was under fire for alleged failure to do enough to protect children from neglectful and abusive parents. Now there is a real question whether the department is going overboard.

This is the third case brought to the attention of the Free Press in which the department seized one or more children and placed them with foster families even though there were relatives ready and willing to take in the children.

In one case, a social worker seized two young children from a mother after she sought the department’s help with a teen son who was acting violently toward her, though not toward his young sisters. The teen did not receive attention until a judge chastised the social worker for unwarranted action and returned the young daughters.

In a separate case, the department seized three children after their mother tried to run over their father. Despite pleas from relatives, the department refused to place the children with them, instead farming them out to strangers in foster families and virtually making it impossible for family members to see them, except on holidays.

The Free Press has learned that a social worker who protested against such forced breakups of families was fired for raising objections.

In the case of Ms. Doe’s baby, Shunda T. Giles, the new city Social Services director, declined to discuss specifics.

Still, she insists that state guidelines are being followed in every case.

Ms. Giles said the department takes the drastic step of removal only after making a determination that a child or children “would be subject to an imminent threat to life or health to the extent that severe or irremediable injury would likely result” by remaining with the current caregiver. The department had the option of placing the child with the father, but rejected the option, preferring to put her with strangers at a time when the bond between parent and child is being developed.

However, there appears to be little or no evidence to support the claim of imminent harm.

Ms. Doe has no criminal record, and there is no report showing that she is addicted to drugs or alcohol. Nor is there any evidence that the father is unfit or failed to care for three other children he has with Ms. Doe.

Nor is there any indication Ms. Doe or the father were endangering the baby in the hospital.

In the case of baby Doe, an investigation began when someone from the hospital called the department’s Child Protective Services and filed a complaint. It is still not clear why a mother with a health baby was referred; the hospital, citing privacy laws, declined comment.

Ms. Doe believes that the hospital acted because she would not kowtow to the hospital’s pediatrician. One example, was his requirement that she bring in the car seat the child would ride home in and put the child in it for 90 minutes. “I’ve had four other children, and I’ve never been required to do that,” she said.

Nor could the Free Press find any hospital that makes that standard policy.

What is known is the department had previously removed Ms. Doe’s four other children on a claim she is delusional because she makes her money as a commission broker dealing in loans and overseas hotels. However, there is evidence to support her claims, as well as testimony from the father that she is self-supporting.

Even then, it is uncertain what the imminent threat was. Her three school-age children were all healthy and doing well.

Aside from having her family broken, Ms. Doe has evidence that her youngest child, a two-year-old boy, was injured after Social Services removed him. Ms. Doe said the child already had a pediatrician who objected to a medical procedure that Social Services allowed another pediatrician to perform that has damaged the child’s ability to eat. “He was starting to eat solid food, and now he can’t even chew,” Ms. Doe said.

At a closed hearing Wednesday, which the Free Press was barred from attending, Ms. Doe said the excuse the department gave for taking her child was that she had failed to seek prenatal care, even though a hospital report she obtained shows the baby is in the pink of health.

A judge, Theodore Brenner, temporarily upheld the removal decision. The only modification he allowed, Ms. Doe said, was to permit her to have brief supervised visits three days a week so she could breastfeed the child.

Before the hearing, Richard H. Lippson, an attorney who was appointed to be Ms. Doe’s guardian ad litem, told Ms. Doe he has seen similar cases.

He said these kinds of cases start with a parent offending a doctor and a call being made to Child Protective Services “and that cranks up the machine of Social Services,” he told her. Whether justified or not, “they have control.”