To think a lot of posts on this social services Facebook group can’t be entirely truthful?

I am well aware that social workers aren't always perfect, but it always irritates me when the more excitable papers run one of their "social workers take babies to meet adoption targets" campaigns with lots of sad face pictures of parents who claim their children have been taken away for no reason. They know full well that the social workers, doctors, lawyers etc involved cannot defend themselves because they can't give confidential information. If any of those cases were genuine they would be happy to disclose the evidence that was used against them, but strangely they never do.

10000% agree.

Did she, though?

From another point of view, my children were on a care plan. They went into temporary foster care when they were tiny and I was a newly single mum entirely alone in the world and crippled by PND.

I was heavily depressed, my home was a bomb site, I wasn’t coping with two under two and I didn’t understand at the time what the problem was. I thought it was the mess but it wasn’t, it was my mental health and the fact that I wasn’t coping but in the state I was in I couldn’t comprehend that.

I was lucky in that I got the help and support I needed, my home was cleaned up and my children came back in under a month. But it took me being on antidepressants for a year and a lot of support from SS to understand the way I had been living and feeling when they first got involved wasn’t normal and wasn’t ok for children to be around.

It might be that some are in denial but it’s not easy to comprehend the situation clearly when you’ve reached that point. It’s not a case of simply tidying up when you’re so mentally lost you’re not even sure if you ate a meal that day or if it was some point earlier in the week.

If there wasn’t so much judgement and stigma and people going “they’re liars, they’re delusional, they know exactly what the problem is and they should just sort themselves out and be a good mother!” then it would be so much easier for people to get the help and support they need before crisis point is reached.

I've been in one house where social services were involved but the cleanliness was considered acceptable.

You definitely wouldn't want to take your shoes off in there, and I haven't hoovered my house for a week so I'm not exactly obsessive about cleaning.

But that will only be the case when there is very good evidence that awful things have happened to other children.

If social services got involved with every parent who had a messy house then half the country would be allocated a social worker. Its not just messy- its likely to be neglect in the ways PP have described. Of course SS get it wrong sometimes but they dont get involved for not being tidy FGS. People are in denial about how bad their situations are hence the excuses like this, especially if those parents were neglected or abused themselves as kids- its probably harder for them to see it objectively.

Minor point.....its not the RCN nurses are accountable too, its the NMC (Nursing & Midwifery Council). The RCN are a trade union.

@DONTMESSWITHMEDARNA
I believe every word you say. Oh hang on, I don't.

On a different note, I am having real difficulty with trying to get my elderly parents to engage with social services over care needs assessments for dementia as they were brought up that social services are to be feared and mistrusted.

There is currently SS involvement in the extended family.
There may be abuse by the dad and stepmum. Mum is definitely struggling. Child definitely needs help.

The mum (and grandmother...the SW seems to be relying alot on the grandmother) are struggling with the input because there is a lack of clear communication and constantly changing goal posts. Part of this will be lack of resources (long waits between meetings for example). But mostly... they are confused. They don't know what is happening week to week. They are reasona ly educated people (mum was a nurse before having kids, just a bit unfeasible currently with two U5s as a single parent).

SS is a mysterious organisation to most people, even those with involvement.

I'm a teacher and can tell you that the bar for involvement is set very high indeed. We have reported many issues and been surprised that they did not reach the threshold for support. The people posting in your fb group are lying.

I have been around on parenting boards and forums for abut 20 years since I had my youngest.

I don't think in all my time online on those sorts of forums I have seen more than a couple of posts saying "We are involved with social services, i've neglected my kids, put them in danger, made really bad choices". It's ALWAYS that social services are evil, have a vendetta, have a target to remove children.

Parents who are repeatedly neglecting their kids, or moving in dangerous partners or whatever are not going to admit that online. Being generous, they are lying to themselves too.

I ived in vans and squats half the time with known drug dealing addict to multiple class As parents, who failed to feed me, sometimes hurt e and left me with randoms. SS provided many of my clothes and once a loo... We saw them fairly often over all (few times a year?) - never put on a plan though... Dad died of drug/alcohol complications in bed with DB - still no child protection plans (should have been! Mum went on a bit of a rampage then...). DB is only just 18 now, so little changed between my childhood and his.

I'd be bloody amazed if any of that was enough for SS involvement, judging by my own and DBs experiences.

I work in adult social care, so I appreciate I am not familiar with children services processes. The only time we are bothered about a messy house is if there is actually a health hazard. So extreme hoarding - can also include hoarding of human waste, fridge full of mouldy food - which may indicate self neglect, rat infestation, excrement in inappropriate places eg defecating in the bath.

if you become aware of a safeguarding issue, there are so many processes and procedures and checks in place, that I can’t see that there are hoarded of vindictive social workers out there.

Sadly, there are many parents who can spend clocking up hours on Facebook, writing about how awful their social worker is and how unfair they are being treated. Meanwhile their child lives in filth, barely showers, teeth aren’t cleaned and has nowhere decent to sleep or decent food to eat.

It is possible the “I got them both sacked” is also a lie…
I feel the same. It sounds like someone with a high desire to feel they're really in charge and prove they don't take nonsense, when it's highly unlikely they did anything of the sort.

Postapocalypticcowgirl I agree with you. Seeing what doesn't meet the threshold for SS involvement, including where parents have been calling out for help, has certainly made me very sceptical about claims by some people that SS put their child on CP for a messy house/an unmade bed/because they (insert average parenting label).

It's the SS version of "I got a detention for asking for help with my work" when asking for help with my work actually means: had disrupted the lesson during the teaching, had to be spoken about behaviour several times, was turning around and disrupting the lesson with their friends, not asking the teacher for help, but when the detention is issued for repeated disruption they were "just asking a question about the work".

DD was friends with a boy in her class. I got on ok with his mum. Out of the blue one day the lad and his siblings turned up to school with foster carers. The mum told me the kids had been stolen and she would be fighting to get them back. What she wasn’t telling anyone was that SS had placed her in a new home on the understanding her partner could not be in the house due to drugs and violence. She let him and they were both dealing. They went on to rip off members of the community. They were also aggressive to their children. She kept that so quiet and had I not found out I would have been none the wiser and felt bad for her. I think often people are in denial and really don’t seem to get it.

I’m a social worker.
In short yes they will be in some sort of denial.

And @DONTMESSWITHMEDARNA - wow - you are a walking talking red flag.

major alpha female type

Who says that irl?

And I wish you well - but don't get defensive about people not trusting the service.

It is an underfunded and underresourced profession where staff are under constant pressure. That does not make for a functioning working environment.

I don't think anyone is saying they're infallible or that there aren't unsuitable people in the job. Of course there is. I've worked alongside social workers at times, I know the system and the pressures on it.

What we are saying is that some of the things they have been accused of on this thread cannot physically have happened. Not, something slipped through the cracks or someone screwed up. It could not have happened which then leads me to think the rest of that story was also fiction or at best heavily manipulated.

I think it's complicated, because I think some people are in huge denial and "just cluttered" can actually mean serious hoarding.

As a teacher, I know how hard it can be to actually get SS involved, especially when there's a new risk to older teens eg mum moves in an abusive boyfriend or teen moves in with dad who is abusing drugs etc - even in some cases where a 15yo has been kicked out of home it can be hard to get SS involvement.

I know they are really overstretched, but ultimately it's schools that end up picking up the slack.

From that point of view I find it hard to believe they would get involved for something trivial, but equally I do unfortunately believe some social workers will make the choice that makes their life easier (which is obviously true of everyone, but in some professions has more serious consequences). And it is obviously in the context of being massively overstretched. I'm sure if funding was better then SS would provide better support.

Of course social workers can and do make mistakes. They're human. But one vindictive social worker cannot ensure a child is removed. Social services don't have that power, only a judge/the police can remove children.

My mum used to work closely with families that had SS involvement (not a social worker though). Many of them genuinely believed they were being unfairly targeted because SS just didn't agree with their parenting style, even though their children were being abused and neglected.

It is possible the “I got them both sacked” is also a lie…

The trouble is people do believe these stories and it terrifies them. I have a fear of social services after being told my baby would be taken away from me because I was untidy, the day I came home with her. I obviously wasn't in a good place anyway but that was the catalyst for my PND. I obviously now know that isn't true, and would never have happened but I still have that fear in the back of my mind. I think some of these people genuinely do believe that's what's happening or just don't want to admit how badly they are struggling.