Refusing social services

Yes you can i did that same thing. I advise you strongly to tell them to f&ck off,. my son is disabled and they never bothered until a few days before he left school at 18 they were nowhere to be found when my son was kidnapped and my daughter was SA.. Now they wanted to help i told them they were lying vultures and to stay away as they will be putting themselves at risk coming to my house. they have never been back i strongly advise you to record every interaction between them and you they are not good people

We had a complex situation involving Children's Social Care. The Family Rights Group had some excellent advice:

Helping families Helping children - Family Rights Group (frg.org.uk)

The teenager will soon realise that by not cooperating with social services they they will increase their interest in them.

If you want to get rid of them you have to jump through the hoops they hold up and smile and nod and agree with them through gritted teeth.

Children In Need and Early Help plans are voluntary, but some cases are flagged as “if the family won’t engage, then it will be stepped up to level 4 (Child Protection)”, and that is not voluntary.

What for?

Hi does anyone know who to hire an independant socail worker to look into a possible case

Kind of. They have to have agreement from social services to place them in care and that's not often forthcoming. They have to work with social workers to try every avenue to keep them at home before a care placement would be agreed. And if the teen refuses to leave and go into care and the parent can't make them...well they aren't going, basically.

so the teen doesn’t live with mum and siblings?

They can but parents can also choose to place them in temporary care, against their wishes, until an adult

It depends if the teen poses a risk to the other children they may accept the teens refusal to engage and instead focus on any younger siblings because there they do have more say!
Or if the teen is deemed to not have capacity to make their own decisions and the social services decide the parent is not acting in the best interests of a vulnerable person they can step in.

Those sorts of things.

What do you mean by give up?
They can offer support to the mother and siblings; but if it's the teen and father who need the intervention but they don't want that support then they have to give up. They can't force a family to accept social work support under child in need. In fact you can't force a family to accept a child protection plan either but your remit is different and you have different options available.

Does the teen live with younger siblings?

If the teen lives on his own with his dad and neither of them want to engage with a social worker then the social worker will eventually (after hopefully trying various attempts to engage) give up. If they don't have genuine consent to work with the family then they can't do anything.

An intervention that involves the teenager being removed from the home would be a very extreme option. It would likely only be possible with parental consent which often isn't forthcoming even if social workers want to place the teenager, which is often not a realistic option anyway.

The teenager can refuse to engage, but that will have zero impact upon the social worker, as the focus of their assessment is all children in need, i.e. siblings as well. If parents can't keep their children safe, there will need to be an intervention.

The parent can consent to information being shared. The school would share info with parental consent but the GP may not if the child asks the GP not to. If they are Fraser competent they can request for anything not related to child protection to be confidential.

They can absolutely decline a service. The parent will be encouraged to make them available to meet with the social worker but if their are beyond parental control that may be impossible. Child in need is with consent only and that needs to be both parents and young people when they reach the age of 16.

Teen risks ending up in a secure unit for being beyond parental control. This is rare and only happens in extreme cases.

I don't think a child can refuse as the Social Workers will have a duty to consider if the 16 year old is a 'child in need'. This website explains more about what happens after a social services referral Child Law Advice

I can't answer your question op. But (?your) teen sounds very, very unhappy. Any chance of getting to the bottom of their troubles? It all sounds like a cry for help and needing attention or some mental health support. Have lines of communication between the 16y broken down completely within the family unit?

It depends what they're doing and if that poses a risk to other members of the family ie younger children. You don't get to say no, go away without anything further being done if what you are doing is illegal or is harmful to vulnerable people. If the 16 year old refuses to engage then they'll look at other ways to protect more vulnerable people in the household and worst case scenario the parents may be forced to make a difficult decision. That's why I said well they can but it won't be without its consequences.