I’m a Child Protection social worker AMA

[Lupinslupinelady]

I won’t be breaching any confidentiality...

How many reports of mothers being abusive do you get from recently divorced dads and why do you even give them the time of day.

Quite a lot - we have a duty to investigate whether there are children at risk in this situation and that sort of situation can involve emotional abuse.

Hi, please post on the thread on here tonight if you haven't already to help the children that the poster has overheard. Her thread is called 'WWYD Mother verbally abusing children...'. Think that's the title.

If someone does file a complaint with you guys about child neglect but it turns out they filed it spitefully do they get any trouble

But don't you think it's odd that all the time they were together the mother was fine but the minute they split up she's abusive?

Don't think the spiteful reporter gets into any trouble, am stunned they get taken seriously to be honest

How do you feel when police call you in/remove children before you?

Or the other way around. All the time they were together the dad was fine, but the minute they split up he was abusive?

How many reports of fathers being abusive do you get from recently divorced mums?

I was reported for neglect because I committed the heiness crime of going to bed at 9pm and leaving my dd downstairs. She was 15.

We're just moving this over to our AMA topic.

Spiteful reporters - we call that malicious and sometimes they will be called to say that their report was not helpful - parents can pursue it without the police.

Yes of course we are very suspicious of exes who suddenly allege abuse when things turn against them.

Thank you for your honesty OP. Apologies if I were a bit abrasive but it's a sore point with me.

Roughly what percentage of your reports of abuse are malicious in your opinion

No worries - v understandable. I don’t deal with cases at the referral stage but yes, a good number are malicious but those are usually weeded out early.

Police - we work with them loads so just feel it’s another job to do and hope it goes well.

Can you force a child to see people they dont want to see. Even if its a parent?

No, but the Court might direct that.

Can social s over ride the courts

Do you feel that enough time and money is spent on helping families to become more functional before children are taken away and fostered/adopted?

No, we can’t ovveride the Court, we can only make recommendations and those can be very hard to get passed.

MotherofDragons, yes, in my work - can’t speak for other Councils but the costs of removing and fostering children not to mention the huge impact way outweighs costs of services to prevent this.

Ok, so if a parent has had her (for argument's sake) children removed. What's the best way to get them home as soon as possible?

Oh and also, is it true that if a child has to go into short term foster care due to parental illness and lack of support, that the Ss will automatically start investigating for reasons not to return them.

(Hopefully myth busting for families that I work with so I may be back with more questions, sorry!!)

I think that people who make false malicious accusations about child abuse should be prosecuted and go to jail. Do you agree?

The mother would need to address the reasons why her children were removed so if it’s drugs, get clean; if it’s domestic abuse, stay away from the abuser and go to Women’s Aid or similar. All the reasons will be in the court paperwork. Get advice from her solicitor - legal aid for care proceedings. Work with the social workers even if she can’t stand them! Prove that she loves her children enough to do this and put them first.

Believe it or not, we try to get children home - if we didn’t try that, the Court would be down on us.

Example that happened to my friend - husband was (mildly if such a thing) abusive towards child. Social workers called in by school. Decided there was no case as such but a certain degree of monitoring instructed and "parenting classes" so my friend had to deal with all the monitoring and classes which really stressed her out whilst the dad who caused it said he couldn't come because he was at work. The mum was really pursued and the dad basically got away with it. How is that right? Now I can understand if they were trying to persuade her to leave him, but they weren't!

Re false allegations, it’s a police matter - I don’t know if it has ever ended with jail. Agree it can cause huge harm to families and is abusive. And makes our job even harder.

Spanglylycra, agree it is not right when one parent has to do all the work and that case might have been poorly managed. But it might also have been intended to make the mother more protective so the dad couldn’t do it again?