A college worker says her fight to keep her three children out of care was “every mother’s worst nightmare”.

Emily Boyle, from Franklin Road in Portslade, said she endured three months of hell after being accused of breaking her infant daughter’s arm.

The mother-of-three had to spend three months living with a foster family in Crawley with the threat of losing her children hanging over her before a judge ruled that the injuries were the result of an accident.

The family’s trouble started on Saturday October 29 when Emily Boyle’s partner Robin Neal was feeding Miss Boyle’s youngest daughter.

Mr Neal discovered a lump on the six-month-old baby’s right arm and they immediately took her to the Royal Alexandra Children’s Hospital in Brighton where X-rays revealed she had a broken arm.

Miss Boyle, a learning resource assistant at Sussex Downs College, was quizzed by doctors about how her daughter’s arm had been broken and they forwarded the case to social services and the police.

Mother and daughter stayed in hospital for two days until November 1 when social services told her that they were going to go to court in the morning to obtain an emergency protection order to place her three children in care.

Accident These orders can only be applied for if a council has reasonable cause to believe the child is a risk.

The following day the care order application was dismissed but Miss Boyle agreed she and the children would move in with a foster family in Crawley so she could be supervised while further investigations were carried out.

In February a week-long court session at Brighton Magistrates’ Court declared that the injuries had been caused by an accident.

The 32-year-old said: “When they said they could take my children into care my whole world just crumbled and I felt my heart break into a million pieces.

“I had a panic attack while looking into my eldest daughter’s eyes. She just beamed up at me, not knowing that they were trying to take her and her siblings away from me.

“I work with vulnerable young adults who have been abused. I see what damage is done and I pick up the pieces, so to be accused of being the sort of person who harms children makes me sick.

“I understand social services have a difficult job to do but it was the way they went about it. I think the outcry from Baby P made them act over the top.”

A Brighton and Hove City Council spokesman said: “We are unable to comment on individual child protection cases, which have to be dealt with in strict confidentiality in the interests of the family concerned."