Police are appealing to find the mother of a newborn baby boy that has been abandoned in Walsall.
West Midlands Police has confirmed it has not received reports of an abandoned newborn boy in Walsall or issued this appeal.
A Facebook post falsely claims that a newborn baby boy has been abandoned in Walsall and police are appealing for his mother to come forward. However, West Midlands Police has confirmed that they have not received reports of an abandoned newborn baby boy or issued this appeal.
The claim first appeared on a buy and sell community group for Walsall on 9 April and received over 5,000 shares before it was deleted around a week later, but there is still a copy of the post shared elsewhere on Facebook.
This post, which has the exact text of the original, says: “#APPEAL | Urgent appeal to find mum of abandoned newborn baby boy. Police are appealing for the mother of a newborn baby found in the street to come forward so that she can receive medical care and support. The baby was discovered by a member of the public in #Walsall west, wearing a blue babygrow and hat. He was also wrapped in a grey knitted blanket.”
The post goes on to say that the baby’s mother will not be in trouble and asks people to “bump this post so we locate her [sic]”.
A spokesperson for West Midlands Police confirmed the force has not received reports of an abandoned newborn baby boy in Walsall, and told Full Fact: “That's not an appeal we've issued.”
There have also been no recent media reports of a newborn baby found abandoned in Walsall.
The wording of the post appears to come from a genuine appeal issued by the Metropolitan Police in January 2020 after a baby boy was found in Hackney.
We’ve previously written about a number of similar hoax Facebook posts involving false claims of abandoned babies and babies snatched from hospitals, as well as others about lost elderly people, injured dogs and missing children.
Posts like this pose a risk to user engagement with local community news because groups can become overwhelmed with false information. As a result, genuine posts may be ignored or dismissed as false.
We have written to Meta expressing these concerns and asking the company to take stronger action in response to this problem.
Image courtesy of Sandwell Council
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because West Midlands Police has confirmed that it has not received reports of an abandoned newborn boy in Walsall or issued this appeal.
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