Day 3 of the Daily Mail's hatred for social services.

[Inthebeginning]

I know this is a highly emotive topic but this is there third story in as many days.
Hate this paper so much. This is going to send my grandma unto a flat spin!

[Inthebeginning]

www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2532299/From-wrinkle-busting-pillows-overnight-cellulite-cures-How-wake-beautiful-went-bed.html link if anyone wants it.

[Hels20]

I think you copied the wrong link. Do you mean the Curlews' story? It would be interesting to see the other side. Perhaps the grandparents couldn't be trusted to keep the children away from the parents?

On the face of it - of course it sounds bad on Social services. But I am sure there is another side. Errors must v occasionally happen - but reading some threads on the fostering pages of MN, it's pretty clear how children are often left in their diabolical home circumstances because of complete lack of cash...

[Lilka]

Damn SS and their wrinkles

Now I have to go sifting through the DM website. Ew. Back when I've read the article

[Inthebeginning]

I'm an idiot.

[Lilka]

Okay read it if I've read the one if it's the one about the Curlew's

It's here

For those who don't want to read it directly, the story is about grandparents whose children are now in LTFC, who were not allowed to care for the children, apparently for no reason at all, so now they're speculating it's probably because they're members of the salvation army/christians or something like that. Plenty of references to the county council in question being terrible and awful in general and this is clearly them getting it wrong again. Tons of emotive language and silly exaggerations eg. how awful it is that their letters to the children are censored "as if they were paedophiles", which is just silly.

It was obviously hugely one sided, so much so that I've taken the whole thing with a massive pinch of salt.

Of course the comments were annoying - SS are acting like Nazis etc.

Oh yes, they act very Nazi like. It was probably at the point in the story where SS kidnapped everyone and shot them dead in secret that was most Nazi-reminiscent.....

[Italiangreyhound]

I read it too (but not the wrinkles one) and it is very sad. I did feel very sorry the grandparents and kids especially that they don't get the visits they should. It may well be that the kids would be better off with them. It's social services decision to make in the sense that if they lived with the grandparents and then something happened to them social services head would be on the block. I agree with Hels20 that maybe it is a fear that the grandparents would give the birth parents access to the kids and that would be a safety issue.

Of course if they are not allowed to go back to their home town then they would have to change out of their school uniforms to avoid identifying where they are.

I also felt the grandfather did not realise how seriously he needed to take the power that social services has. Of course it is annoying when things go wrong but throwing social services out of his house or 'exploding' with passion as it says "Already distressed, Graham exploded with understandable but very unwise passion" when the social worker got his grand daughter's name wrong.

I have no idea if their being Christians has played into this. We are Christians and it has not stopped us being approved to adopt.

It's so hard to know what is right in these situations. I found some of the comments showed a lack of understanding of the potential risks and social services are always complained of whatever they do. Having said this if this happened to me, I would be devastated and I would probably jump through every hoop I could to get to my grandchildren. Maybe they did.

What a total mess. It does feel very sad that the relationship with the grandparents may be destroyed by this. I think the real evil in the situation is drugs and the threat of violence and failing in parenting that led to the situation.

[Italiangreyhound]

The comments at the end of the article, I mean.3.

[drspouse]

I haven't read it, but as usual we don't know the full story. If the grandparents aren't supporting the adoption, it may not be right for the children to see them because of that.

We have met birth GPs and one very helpful thing they did was to give "permission" to an older sibling to "let go" of our DS by saying that he can't be cared for within the extended family like the older sibling is. This helps the sibling and, in the future, will help our DS.

If the GPs were keeping on about how awful it is for the child(ren) to be adopted, that would be very distressing for the children.

[Kewcumber]

Yes its impossible to comment really isn't it, because all we know is that grandparents are sad that the children aren't living with them. Impossible to know if this is for good reason or mistakes have been made.

Even if the family courts are made more open I can't help thinking that the court of Daily Mail perhaps isn't the best forum to hash these things out.

I did a bit where grandparents said because letters were "censored" (ie checked) they didn't send any. Did make me wonder what was in their previous letters.

[Inthebeginning]

It shouldn't surprise me that they've latched on to the whole social worker thing but it frustrates me that they are so one sided. Obviously s.s cant comment but. ....I don't know.

[Italiangreyhound]

I thin the children have not been adopted, they are in foster care.

[NigellasDealer]

'as if they were criminals' 'as if they were paedophiles'
yeh yeh yeh
v one sided account on which it would be impossible to comment

[Sadoldbag]

Yeah I read think and thought to be fair it did say ss have offered letter box contact but they declined because they don't want there letters checked before they reach the children.


Sadly I fear this is a case of GP simply not knowing how ss work


All visit pretty much would be supervised if the fc won't have the GP at there home and since they exploded with passion at sw no wonder they won't were do GP expect to have contact apart from the ss building


In terms of letter box contact censoring is standard

[Kewcumber]

I do wonder why people don't realise that the only way SS can assess peoples temperment and character is by how they are when SS are there So losing your temper and being erratic and refusing to send letters is obviously going to give the impression that you are a bit unstable.

Of course when something so important is at stake its difficult to keep calm and try to show the best of who you are.

There should be a system of automatic befriending in some way of family hoping to get custody to help them along. It may well be in the childrens best interests to be with their grandparents as I said before impossible to judge - though notable I think that they make really no attempt to deny the children needed to be removed.

But if the grandparents appear on the surface to find it difficult to engage with SS, keep calm under pressure and maintain contact I guess SS don;t want to run the risk of placing them with GP's.

Of course that's entirely supposition - I certainly have known social workers who take things personally and appear to be on a mission to prove that their suspicions are correct even in the face of evidence to the contrary. If you are pretty calm and reasonably intelligent then you stand a good chance of getting the right result but I can see how much harder it would be if that isn;t the case.

[Kewcumber]

Yes I wonder too.

Sadly I suspect its the people who most need sensible and calm advice on how to deal with SS who are likely to be most influenced by the press/high profile individuals.

I really have come across some quite officious social workers who would be quite hard to handle if you didn't have the right approach.