To ask what happens when Social Services gets involved

@MadameDeLaRue ffs that's what I mean about SS .. I have been involved with two families and SS have been awful ..

Best of luck . I always think the truth with prevail !

They don't believe me or my daughter and my ex is using my supposedly false reporting as part of a smear campaign against me.

What do you want social work to do? What would show you they believe you and what do you think social work should do here to protect your child?

You can stop contact yourself, there’s no court order in place and it’s a much easier, less traumatic process for your child than going through a child protection process. You don’t have their report yet, so you don’t know what their assessment is. Parenting classes are a low key first stage intervention, that doesn’t mean they don’t believe you, or don’t have concerns.

I reported my child being strangled at contact, he had the marks on his next and chest consistent with his allegations.

I was told by everyone involved that it was abusive to make my child report his parent to the police. I nearly lost my children in family courts.

Op you need to listen to Jellycat because she knows. You are too close to this/too emotional, to be able to be objective. You haven't thought this through, re the outcome you seek, because realistically that probably isn't possible.

As long as you can prove you put her before him you should be ok. My friends son was taken from her because she didn't . They told her to leave him and put the child first and she didn't so they removed him. She got him back but it was a long process .

Why are some men ( and women) so bloody twisted and weird . It's so sad 😢

I hope it goes ok for you but in my experience SS are shocking .

As you have been doing document everything and take pictures and videos if necessary

You need to inform the police about it. SS will get involved, there will (should) be a safety plan. her ex probably won't be unsupervised time with DD whilst the investigation is pending.

The police are already involved, and given social work are already involved I assume the OP has told them about it too. Social work will need to speak to her daughter, and her daughter will need to be able to tell them independently about what happened.

It’s not necessarily the case that contact would be stopped given there’s another adult in the father’s home who would be expected to act as a protective factor for the child - eg they would effectively supervise contact. Contact isn’t court ordered, so the OP can just not send her child and let the father take her to court. I’d think social work would expect those measures to be in place already given the concerns the OP has.

I'm sorry but not surprised. This happens a lot. Things are downplayed and dismissed. In the end OP will be portrayed badly and wonder why she bothered reporting.

You need to inform the police about it. SS will get involved, there will (should) be a safety plan. her ex probably won't be unsupervised time with DD whilst the investigation is pending.

This. It's horrendous.

But the worst thing is that no one is protecting my child.

What do you think needs to be done to protect her, and by whom?

Crikey OP, I don't have any answers but just wanted to say I'm thinking of you. That sounds like a living nightmare.

It's clear they believe my ex.

It’s entirely possible they believe you both, but trying to stop contact on the grounds of a child protection concern is very, very difficult. They would need to show serious concern that there’s a risk of significant harm and that the only way to manage that risk is to stop contact altogether. That’s why I ask you at the outset what outcome you wanted - because social work seeking a reduction in contact arrangements is incredibly rare, in the same way that removing a child from their parents is pretty rare.

@Jellycatspyjamas they interviewed and did a horrible job, something that's backed up by third party evidence.

Who else was present during the interview? Getting reasonable evidence from such a young child can be tricky, many 7 year olds are fearful and shy speaking to other adults, especially about things they find hard to talk about. There’s nothing wrong with forewarning social work about that.

Have they said you coached your daughter?

He sounds very skilled in being controlling and manipulating others, so of course he’ll use the same skills with professionals. Social workers need to take all the information and decide, on balance of probability, how likely is he to cause significant harm to a child - they need to listen to you, your child and him along with other professionals. As hard as it is, it’s not unusual for one or other parent to try and use allegations of neglect or abuse to reduce child contact with the other parent, so they need to consider the possibility of that happening here.

Social workers don’t get involved purely in contact issues between parents, they look at risk to the child and the threshold to stop contact or even look at supervised contact is pretty high. Your daughter not wanting to go to her dad’s isn’t remotely reason enough for social work to recommend stopping contact, because there are lots of reasons why a child might not want to go.

The only thing you’ve said that, from a child protection point of view, would be concerning is him harming her edited by mnhq, have social work interviewed her about that? How much have they spoken to your daughter directly? I wouldn’t give much weight to you recording her in all honesty, because it’s easy to catch a child when they are upset, and I’ve seen parents coach their children (I’m not saying that’s what you’re doing but professionals need to consider the whole picture).

It’s a difficult place for social work, you obviously have a history with someone who was very abusive to you, who still has contact with your child. Social work can only intervene if they have evidence that your child is at risk of significant harm which is a pretty high threshold. It’s the same threshold they would use to remove her from your care if there were concerns.

Is contact currently court ordered?

I’m so sorry op what happened with police?