Social workers are under direct financial and career pressure to take children away from their parents - today's Mail

[edam]

Anyone who has followed Bunglie's saga will know how frightening social services practise towards some parents can be. Hopefully not in every case, but the attitude of professionals towards mothers accused of harming their children left/leaves a lot to be desired in terms of objectivity and evidence-gathering.

Today's Mail takes this onto new ground. I'd already heard from my sister, who works in this field, examples of parents with learning difficulties being treated as 'guilty until proved innocent' in terms of their capacity to look after their own children.

In p. 8 & 9 today's Mail carries a story on social workers removing children from people with learning difficulties. They include an opinion piece by Prof Tim Booth, prof social policy at Sheffield who has some interesting things to say about discrimination by soc. services: '[this is] a form of abuse by the system whereby people are made worse off by the services that are supposed to help them. It is rampant, pervasive and destructive of family life, and far more prevalent than ... child abuse. ...system abuse, more than child abuse, is the precipitating factor behind the high rates of child removal.'

Together with the Government's policy to 'encourage' all mothers of young children back to work whether they want to or not, and proposals for massive database storing information about all our children (and sparking social services investigations if two 'red flags' are raised - like a health visitor saying a baby is 'not gaining enough weight' and a later trip to A&E because the same child falls out of a tree), I'm very worried. It seems the Government is, whether deliberately or not, undermining the private sphere of family life and turning itself into the childcatcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

What do you think?

[katierocket]

MIL is a social worker and she works in the children and families division (i.e. get's involved where there may be a problem). If anything the approach nowadays (and she's been a social worker for 25 years) is to take all possible steps to keep families together.

Sorry to say this but The Daily Mail does print a lot of scare mongering rubbish so not sure I'd put much faith in this either.

[waterfalls]

Yes I saw A story a while ago of a woman who had her daughter taken off her simply becuase she had a low I.Q, she faught but did not get her back.

I think it is totally disgusting, when there is so many children out there in desperate need to be removed from their parents.

[edam]

sorry, didn't explain the 'pressure'. Councils have targets for increasing their adoption rates - Government wants 40 per cent more kids adopted. These targets will form, according to Prof Booth, one of the indicators used in Government star ratings for councils. So if you don't take enough kids away from their parents, you'll be named and shamed and have a Government hit squad sent in to sort you out. If you are a director of social services, your job prospects and earnings could be very badly hit by not doing well on this target. How evil is that?

[edam]

Whatever you think of the Daily Mail, they have run a page by a respected professor of social policy who thinks there is a serious problem here. And my sister has seen it happening herself.
And the fact is social services have been ordered to increase adoptions by 40 per cent. And no-one has ever apologised or promised to change the way social services works in response to the exposure of Munchausen's Syndrome by Proxy as a lie. Adds up to a scary situation IMO.

[katierocket]

well edam not all professionals are right.
as much as your sister is seeing it, my MIL says it's the opposite, so I guess 2 first hand experiences aren't really enough to gauge the real story.

"And the fact is social services have been ordered to increase adoptions by 40 per cent"

not sure what you mean by this? where is this figure from? they probably do have a target to increase adoptions of those children who are already in care but I can't for one minute believe that the target is to take children off their parents and put them up for adoption, if that is what you man.

[katierocket]

sorry "...if that is what you mean"

so much of the daily mail is designed to cause moral panic.

[Mud]

but there are not the finances available to provide the kind of family support some families need just to get by so if sw have identified families where the child may be at risk through the inability of the parents to take care of them, due to their personal disabilities. even though its not the pc thing to say is it not best to safeguard the interestes of the child in the first place until there is money and enough support there and i psersonally doubt there ever wil be enough money put in to the system to provide that kind of care

[Mud]

have social services not been ordered to try to increase the numbers of adoption of those children already in care ,, the older than baby/toddler children who languish in the pitiful care system need families

it seems to me that the daily mail are putting together different policies to make one biug scare story

[edam]

have you followed Bunglie's story at all?

On targets for adoptions, that may be the intention. But Prof Booth says hitting these targets will be more likely if there is a steady supply of younger, more eligible children. Not the older boys with problems, who are harder to place. Government targets are known to create perverse incentives - in health they have led to the system where you can't book a GP appointment in advance in many practices, for instance.

[katierocket]

yes I know Bunglie's story edam.

I'm sorry, I just cannot accept stories that appear in the Daily Mail, they are too biased.

I don't think the NHS targets to do with GPs are comparable to the adoption targets you mention.

Where did that particular figure come from? I'm sorry but I really really don't believe that social workers will take children away from parents who love them so they can then place them up for adoption. I just don't believe that. As I say, I only have my mother in law as direct experience (although she has worked in this specific area of social services for 25 years) but she paints a very different picture. And she reads the Daily Mail

[Mud]

I think it is dangerous to have one person who's story you know and empathise with colour your judgement so I don't know whether knwoing 'bungliie's story' should make any differenc at all to my view on your comments. in fact I think you should judge the story by the paper it was written in

[Caligula]

It seems pretty obvious that if you impose targets for anything, then people who are working to those targets will try to fulfill them. So of course that's an in-built incentive to get younger children away from their families, whether it's intentional or not.

In the same way, some police forces have arrest targets. Police-officers I know have told me that if they haven't done v. well on their targets that month, they'll make arrests and charge for technical offences that they otherwise wouldn't bother with.

You make the rule, you make the trick.

[tabitha]

My experience of Social Work Depts is that they try, wherever possible (sometimes beyond the point where it is sensible or reasonable) to keep children with their natural parents.
In fact, I saw a story in the press here (Scotland) to say that one of the local councils (Edinburgh, I think) were also restricted in the numbers of children they could take from their parents because of a severe lack of foster carers.

[katierocket]

my point exactly Mud, I'm not sure why you asked if I knew Bunglie's story edam but I assumed it was on the basis of "see, it does happen". If so, I would say, tragically they do happen but not you can't assume it's the norm and I would need a lot more than the say so of the Daily Mail to believe it.

[katierocket]

disagree Caligula, I regularly talk to my MIL about her job and she never mentions targets; the emphasis is always on trying to keep natural families together where possible.

[lucy5]

Didnt work that way when it should have done in my family. My newphew was beatento within an inch of his life by my sil partner. she hid this fact and even hid dn in the cupboard when police and ss came. She was eventually caught passing dn into the hands of his abuser through a window. His abuse had been going on for over a year and social services said it was one of the worst cases tey had ever seen and he wouldnt survive another beating. He was also subjected to torture. Sil has history of mental illness, drugs and violent relationships. Where is dn now, back with sil who is training to be a lap dancer and a naked cleaner. why isnt he with us, social services thought that we couldnt offer him the right cultural heritage, he is mixed race. I think we have another Victoria Climbie [sp] waiting to happen.

[katierocket]

sorry to hear that Lucy but there will always be these types of stories, they don't get it right all the time but I think they do a lot of the time and we only tend to her about the ones that go wrong.

"Child happily placed with adopted family"
or
"Family kept together with some help from social services"
doesn't really make for a good headline.

[waterfalls]

lucy5

[lucy5]

I have absolutely no faith in ss. I have only come into contact with them through dealings with nutty sil. They are useless. My newphew had been whipped with a coathanger, had his fingers slammed in a desk and had over 100 bruises and wounds on his body when he was eventually found. I think they are so politically correct that they cant see the wood for the trees. Cultural heritage was the most important factor, he has 2 cultural heritages and hasnt been given a good role model for either.

[renaldo]

but lucy 5 that just proves the daily mail wrong does't it? My experience is that SS will keep a family together at all costs, and not always in the childs' interest IMHO

[katierocket]

sorry to hear that Lucy. My MIL is a fantastic social worker who genuinely does a lot of good and makes a huge difference to families and children. I often feel glad that people like her are social workers.

yes there are bad ones, just like any profession, but not all of them are no good.

[lucy5]

Renaldo, my point exactly. Katie i'm not saying that all social workers are bad just that their hands are tied and often there is very little they can do, even though anyone looking at the situation can see that it's not right. It also depends on where you are, it's a bit of a lottery. The ones I have had contact with were all in cental london and im sure that they are vastly overworked. The first sw was very good but she told me in so many words that she thought my sil was unhinged and shouldnt be left with a child but ultimately it wasnt her decision. She pushed and pushed us to take dn and after a lot of trauma and a death threat we were dropped like a tonne of bricks. The sw left and we have not been acknowledged since. All this after having our life studied in detail even down to our sex life and our parents lives were put under the microscope. It's a pity they didnt look into sil's life in such minute detail. It's funny because we were suitable when she was sectioned and we had him for two months.

[katierocket]

What you have been through is awful Lucy and I feel really sorry that it ended up that way. I agree that I'm sure it is different depending on where you are in the country. I was originally responding (with disbelief) to Edam's comments from the Daily Mail and I stand by those comments - that I doubt what they are saying, in particular the adoption targets (in the sense that they are under pressure to remove children from happy homes just to meet targets).

[lucy5]

Katie i agree with you, I think this story is scaremongering. Why would they want to take kids away from happy homes when there are so many kids who need adopting. My dn foster mother had 2 little boys from eritrea (sp) who she knew would never be adopted as they were older kids about 6 and 10. She knew that they would be with her long term but she would never allowed to adopt them because she was of different ethnic origin. How crazy is that?

[steffee]

I don't have any stories but I really hope this is not true.