would you report to social services

[eelieza]

This is inspired by a thread on behavioural problems coming out where a 10 year old was sending abusive messages to the OPs son over whatsapp.

When a 10 year old or thereabouts is bullying others, would you assume its normal behaviour, them growing up/trying to fit in or is it always the case they have something going on at home?

Depends on the behaviour, not all kids that are bullies have something going on at home, some are just bullies and then usually grow up to be ass holes…

If I had other reasons to suspect something wasn’t right at home then I would report… e.g suspicious bruises/injuries, the child looks neglected, or I overhear the parent being verbally abusive to the child.

You would be ridiculous to make a referral to social care on this basis alone. Many children are unpleasant to each other on social media. This is not a reason to involve social care.

I think you also have little understanding of the current thresholds for intervention in social care. Children living in quite obviously awful poverty who do not even have their own bed are currently not meeting the threshold for social care to intervene. It is dreadful but this should illustrate that social workers are not the people who should be investigating online bullying. In the instance you describe, the parent should take their own child off social media and should contact the other child's parents to alert them. Reporting it to the school should also help as they will have information about the background and parental support for the children involved.

School would be the first port of call really. They would have more insight into what would be best and whether a referral is needed. Usually bullying would be dealt with in school and then by the police if it became more serious. SS might be involved as a multi agency approach after that, depending on severity I would guess.