Disability Social Workers

I suggest those of you with disabled DC, and especially those treated as incipient child abusers by SS, fill in this consultation on “Working Together”, the guidelines for assessing children in safeguarding concerns; or disabled children:

https://consult.education.gov.uk/child-protection-safeguarding-division/working-together-to-safeguard-children-changes-to/consultation/intro/

The consultation closes on September 6th 2023.

I always felt Working Together was written for children under safe guarding, and disabled children were added in later, because they couldn’t be bothered writing another one, tailored for disabled children!

We have CIN for both our disabled sons. It is so depressing but I see it as a trade off for support.

Our most embarrassing moment was DS1 was in hospital for a planned minor dental op under GA. The DSW ended up ringing the dental team enquiring after him as it had flashed as emergency hospital admittance!!! I was mortified.

Can anyone point me to any law that says if CIN need to have notes and those given to the parents please?

I ask for the notes of official meetings. Sometimes, they are pathetic!

I usually take my own minutes, and circulate them after the meeting, as soon as I have time to type them up, telling every one, these are to the best of my recollection; but if they disagree they have 10 days to send me their comments. If I don't hear from them, then I will assume they accept my minutes.

Anyway, look up online "SCIE Social work recording". It says inter alia, that

"Recording is vital:

It supports good care and support
It is a legal requirement and part of staff's professional duty
It promotes continuity of care and communication with other agencies...."

It also goes onto talk about accuracy of recording.

You can always do a subject access request in respect of DC and yourself to see what notes SS have kept on CIN meetings.

@EmmatheStageRat knowing your situation (we have spoken under another name) I think the priority is getting any and all support possible from whichever source available rather than focusing on which team. Technically, there is nothing preventing both teams from having input, although that can sometimes complicate matters, so it depends on what your local teams are like as to whether that is preferable.

I had a disability SW involved for 12 years due to my DD having severe disabilities- she is now 18 and no longer under SS. I too had the pressure from them to do things "by the book" and there were times when I found them particularly intrusive in terms of how the house was or my childrens' bedrooms and even now I get paranoid if someone passes comment on the cleanliness of the house. Also it seemed as though everyone sided with the SW at one time and I was the one made to feel a bad parent. As my Mum once said "the SW should look after DD before making judgements" which made me feel better.

Most of this is driven by the managers. I asked mine how often we should cins, how should come, should there be notes. They don't know! Even the complaints manager doesn't know. You bet your life they don't care. No manager is that thick.

Can anyone point me to any law that says if CIN need to have notes and those given to the parents please?

I mean, they must not have a conscience because if anything happens social care will know they did absolutely nothing to help except sit and watch a family fail.

Imo, that is exactly the policy often!

Regarding seeing the children's bedroom, you should realise that you can decline this, in a genuine way and without fear.

There may well be a 'child's bedroom seen' and 'child spoken to alone' tick box, but as a CIN (as opposed to CP) parents have every right to decline this and lots do. Social Care don't have any right to enter your home or speak to your child alone without your consent. Withdrawing or denying that consent would not result in S47 assessment (for CP, which doesn't need consent) on its own, there would need to be significant grounds for it.

I (secondary DSL) can recall one family who had a son with additional needs, who also became a safeguarding CIN for neglect (entirely unrelated to his additional needs). In the 4 months he was on a CIN Plan parents denied SW access to the home, full stop - wouldn't let her inside and only spoke on the doorstep. Nothing SW could do to enforce this. Now as it happens, after 4 months police visited the house (on another separate matter) and took SW with them - this was the first time SW had been inside the house. The outcome was indeed a safeguarding CP Plan. In this case there were self-preservation reasons the parents didn't allow access, not just inconvenience. Once inside the home it was clear there was significant harm to child occurring.

The outcome of my story is two fold:

Firestly, you can deny access to the child and your home if you want to as a CIN. This is a national right by law, not LA specific. Lots of families do this.

Secondly, SW being suspicious of you denying consent isn't because they are being difficult. It's because they know that parents who are significantly harming their child will almost always be evasive. That doesn't mean that all evasive parents are significantly harming their child. I'm just pointing out that the reason it spikes a SWs senses is logical and rational.

But that said - you still have rights to decline and as long as their are no other concerns, children's services have to respect this.

Demeaning. Demoralising. Embarrassing. And all for an incompetent service.

My sons SW has nothing to do with us. It's only her at CINs and she never takes notes. She never follows up on anything. I told her I was having a break down in March where she told me I was doing a fantastic job and I've not seen her since! I was supposed to have a cim in May but my mum died so it's very overdue.

Agency staff and a shit LA. I'm off radar and happy to be so. We get a respite package but I can't find anyone to employ

This is meant to say I haven't had

I have had this experience at all quite the opposite but my son's disability social worker has a child with the same disability so totally understands some of what we deal with. My son has an additional medical condition that makes things harder. I don't think thisrbrl.pf intrusion is normal from the disability social work team as I have never heard of it before. I could understand if it was the family team you were under.

@EmmatheStageRat that sounds incredibly tough. In my experience safeguarding team sounds more appropriate and are likely to have more (although often still insufficient) experience of trauma/ adoption etc than children with disability teams. Also (may vary by LA) children with disability teams usually only accept asd alongside intellectual disability. Good luck.

Soontobe60 · Yesterday 08:46
I do know of several families via my role as Senco where they get respite, some regularly (ie 1 day a week), some intermittently (ie 2 weeks a year). Yes, they have a named SW, but they don’t have this level of intrusion.
I would assume that there needs to be some level of SW input if a family need such a degree of support, which is what respite care is. Perhaps there are different practices in different local authorities.

I did this job .
Although different la s may handle things in different ways ( in addition to the statutory legal obligations) ..the skill of the sw , despite some of these uncomfortable levels of intervention , should be as such that the family feel in partnership and also supported in these interventions not put under pressure.
the need for respite is often really paramount and it would be terrible to miss that support in order to avoid the the intervention . As a sw i used to share with parents the crap ness of that sort of thing !
op i really feel
for you .

This has been a fascinating discussion, as a very involved and affected parent. So, my six million dollar question - to the experts here - is do I push for my DD(15), who is blind and diagnosed with ADHD, autism and binge eating disorder, as well as being adopted, to be assigned to the children’s disability team or to continue on the path of MAST/children’s assessment team/CIN? As mentioned before, my DD has no intellectual disability, in fact, she attends a selective state grammar school. She is violent and aggressive and the police have been involved with us before. I also have DD2(7) at home and she is often the target for her big sister’s foul verbal and physical abuse.

I'd refuse to show them the bedroom in your situation- they're not going to step up to child protection based on that and your level of need is clearly the same so there's no justification for refusing support. They'll say they have to see it but they can't enforce that - and the box not being ticked would help to demonstrate to managers how invasive the process is for children with disabilities where there are no safeguarding concerns.

Our son has a DSW (used to be a standard SW but they finally split the disability side from the safeguarding side in my LA last year). Yes they have to see our house every three months. Yes, that includes seeing our son's bedroom. We make a joke about it, the "obligatory bedroom check" so they can see that "we haven't installed manacles and prison bars". If we didn't laugh, we'd cry ... Its horrible feeling judged, but it's a necessary evil because only the DSW team can persuade the local Short Breaks team to give us access to summer playschemes and respite.

The only contact we've had in a long time was to arrange for me to be being made DS Appointee when he turned 16.

We turned down respite ages ago as he just doesn't cope being away from us overnight and were told there was nothing else they could do for us.

Yes they should. But I have disabled kids and can't even access a sw. I think it's peoples attitudes that should change though. Social workers are associated with being a crap parent and this isn't just what they do,