If you've ever contacted social services about children you were worried about, do you feel that helped or changed anything?

[BingBunnyBlues]

Obviously we can't always know what happens 'behind the scenes' of a child protection referral, but if you've been in the situation where you contacted social services or the NSPCC because you were worried about children, do you think it helped those kids? Did anything change?

I'm feeling quite demoralised because over the course of years I have made multiple calls/emails about a pair of sisters in my wider family who have been subjected to emotional abuse, and nothing has changed. They're still living with their insane, tyrannical father and their mum who doesn't protect them from being screamed at constantly and called cunts and fucking little bitches and evil and losers by him.

I've spoken to SS, NSPCC, their primary and secondary schools. So far as I can tell, nobody has intervened to help. I've spent years trying to empower the mum to leave with the kids but she always goes back because she'd rather live in a 'nice' house than 'slum it' as a single parent.

Is this just the state of overstretched child protection now? That it's ok to grow up being called a stupid cunt by your dad everyday and to be told that when he kills himself it will be your fault (children hearing this since they learnt to talk) because there aren't the resources to count that deplorable, sustained abuse as actionable? That it's ok to go completely unprotected by your other parent so long as no physical violence is occuring?

It makes me so sad.

Nobody?

It's very very hard to evidence something like this unless there is a recording or the children disclose it. Otherwise at the point of referral someone speaks to parents and says 'we've had concerns raised that you're calling your daughter a cunt and a loser' and the parent says OMG I WOULD NEVER THIS IS A MALICIOUS REFERRAL.

So...then what is the social worker meant to do if all the other screening is OK? If Police aren't called out and the children are fine at school and drug services etc aren't involved, it's a dead end.

I reported a concern and after that the signs of the concerning behaviour seemed to stop. Don't want to go into too much detail, but in that case I think it was more a case of loving parents struggling to cope, rather than the kind of outright abuse you describe. However, the parents never spoke to me again, which I consider a price worth paying, awkward as it was. No idea how things are now with that family and I can only hope they truly are better.

I had to report a friend when I was in my twenties. Her child was quite rightly removed and placed with family.

Nope.
Reported someone for neglect. They gave them lots of warning that they were going to visit so the parent did a rapid clean up and spoke to their children with the upmost respect and kindness during the visit. Went straight back to neglecting them afterwards. There are people who struggle and there are people who are just lazy. This woman was far more interested in her boyfriend and staying up gaming. Her children just used to wake up, let themselves out the front door and knock on ours. They used to gorge on fruit. The three year olds nappy was always full as if she'd worn it all night.
I just felt really sad for them. The son in particular was so sweet and polite. My lasting memory of him before they moved was him just repeated kicking a tree out the front, over and over. He was four years old and was just full of rage. It was one of those moments where you can already see the trajectory and despite school caring, us caring and SS being aware, no one was going to be able to help him. His dad had just left, despite being very involved for the first three years, and his mum couldn't help. Who could help him?
That said, I would contact them again ten times over. It's better to do something.
Being concerned is about feeling something isn't right, rather than making a value judgement. If they don't have books in the house, that isn't neglect. Living off takeaways isn't neglect. Kids are resilient.

The thresholds for intervention are extremely high, and anything up to and including Child in Need is voluntary, so if the parents don't want social care involvement they can just opt out. It's always worth reporting in case it adds to a bigger picture, but the statutory framework does not work in children's best interests.

I once went into a child’s school because I wanted to voice my concerns about a way I saw a boy being treated by his dad outside of school (I.e when he picked his son up from school). My concerns were about the language the dad used towards the boy and some things that dad was physically doing to his son. My concerns were based on witnessing repeated behaviour, not just a one-off. The boy was 8 years old.

The child protection member of staff I spoke to knew immediately which child I was referring to as soon I said his first name and described him so I guess there were behind the scenes issues already.

She agreed that SS needed to be informed but that I would have to do it as it needs to come from a first hand source.

I said that was fine and I rang SS when I got home. They asked for his full name, date of birth and address, of which I didn’t know any as I didn’t know him or his family personally. SS told me that they couldn’t go any further with theirbreport without those details.

I rang the school and explained this to them and asked if I could have these details, which understandably they said no due to confidentiality reasons.

I rang SS back and explained this to them and they said they would ring the school directly to try and sort it out. I didn’t hear from SS again.

A week later the child protection member of staff spoke to me and said she’d gotten the child out of class and asked him to remove his jumper (so they could look for bruises) and then directly asked him about the most recent incident that I’d witnessed. I was told they’d found no marks on the child and that he’d not given the same version of events that I had. The staff member then told me she’d called both parents into the school to let them know they’d had another parent raise a safe-guarding concern about the father.

I felt so, so guilty then because I was worried that I’d potentially made things worse for the little boy.

However, the dad had always been the one to pick the boy up from school but for the remainder of the school term (about 7 weeks) the mum came to collect him everyday instead. I do wonder if my complaint was the icing on the cake and maybe she’d had her own worries about how her son was being treated by her partner and the fact there’d been an external complaint made her realise how serious things were and kicked him out.

It was about a year ago now since that happened and I still haven’t seen the dad at the school since.

I have no idea if me raising my concerns is what led to the coincidental disappearance of the dad but I hope so because I used to worry about that little boy all the time. I used to get upset when I saw how his dad spoke to him and treated him.

I guess I’ll never know the outcome of my complaint but I like to think that boy’s home life is somehow better.

I reported my sister-in-law.

She was involved with an abusive man. Police and SS got involved after a particularly violent night.

SS told SIL that if she broke it off with him, they'd drop their investigations. SIL told SS that she'd broken it off. But she didn't.

All DP's family knew that she was still seeing this violent man and bringing him into her home with her daughter. They all did diddly-fuck about it. So I called SS and told them that SIL was still seeing the violent man.

They were brilliant. They called SIL and told her there'd been a report that she was still involved with the violent man. They gave her a final warning and said they'd open investigations if she continued to see him. It scared her and she broke it off.
The lady at SS asked me to keep her updated and to report it immediately if SIL had any whiff of being back involved with the violent man.

That's a really good outcome, @MirandaGreenwood - thank you for speaking up for that girl. I find it so hard to understand why mothers put fucking awful men like that first. I know they must be scared but protection of your children should be primal.

In my experience the threshold for intervention is very high. Emotional abuse is so hard to prove and if the parents are middle class they’re even less likely to pursue it.
When I first started working in community services I was shocked to learn that living in a family where all the adults have a serious drug addiction does not even automatically mean removal or child safety involvement. I think most people are very naive about how sad and traumatic so many people’s childhoods are.

I’ve made two safeguarding reports in a professional capacity many years ago and no, to the best of my knowledge, they didn’t make any immediate impact.

One was in relation to a disclosure of sexual abuse by a child I worked with. Apparently, it was investigated, but the details couldn’t be corroborated as the child (children actually, it was two siblings) said that mum’s boyfriend who was abusing them was called Jay, but actually mum had a boyfriend called Shay (I’ve made these names up, but basically they were the same except for one letter 🙄).

The other was a child already in the care of her grandparents after being removed from her mum’s care. She showed me bruises and said that her grandparents were beating her. SS said they found no evidence to support this allegation.

That’s all I ever heard of it, but I do hope that those reports, even though they didn’t immediately lead to action, got filed away somewhere and were able to help paint a picture of what was going on in those families in time. Those kids would be adults now and I still think of them from time to time.

In a professional capacity I reported things that had been reported to me by other colleagues . The children were removed from a violent step parent but I don't know what happened in the longer run.

My DH tried to make a report and the social services essentially asked if there was an immediate danger. If yes, hang up and call the police and if no, hang up and don’t call back unless it’s to call the police.

Probably 3-4 years later social services became involved and children are subject to a child in need plan. Mum wants to take some actions she has been warned will result in a child protection plan. She doesn’t want that so her answer is to end the CIN plan. Social worker admitted they have their suspicions as to her motives for doing that but when asked, Mum lies. So social worker does nothing basically.

It’s very much shutting the door after the horse has bolted. To act they seem to need hard evidence and plenty of it, at which point a lot of the damage is done. No prevention. All reactive.

From what I know the service is so over-stretched after 13 years of the Tories it's unlikely to lead to any action in the short term because there are always children in more immediate physical danger that the SW hasn't had time for yet.

And the more poverty and financial distress, and homelessness and unsuitable accommodation and unmet mental health need the Tories create the worse it gets.

BUT every time you report you may remind somebody about them and it can add into an overall picture at some point.

I can only comment on the other side of the coin, but:

Someone on my streets made a report about neglect of my DD because she was "wandering the streets in her pyjamas". What was actually happening was she was sat on the drive for maybe ten minutes while she waited for her dad to come home from work one evening. I was with her, but perhaps couldn't be seen from the road as I was getting things out of my car. She wasn't wearing pyjamas-she's autistic with sensory issues and only wears fleecy material trousers.

However, it made things so much worse. We had two weeks of waiting while they arranged appointments to speak to all the DC, did background checks on us and finally wrote to say there were no concerns. It had a massive impact on the mental health of everyone, but particularly my oldest DC. He has severe mental health difficulties, ASD and OCD. Since they came, four months ago, there has been a huge increase in his anxiety, panic attacks and OCD.

Did absolutely nothing! They got a letter.......
It was a serious situation as well, that could be proven repeatedly.

Apparently they need to have multiple reports of its just from members of the public/anonymous 🙄

Yes and yes something did happen. Can’t go into detail. Sorry to be vague! But they do act on information in my experience.

Nothing. Two very small children were being left alone in a the house next door to me.

SS told me that there was no record of children living in that address, so I must be mistaken.

I really wasn’t, and they definitely lived there!

Same. I can’t fathom it. Putting DC first is engrained in everything I do, as a mother. Like most others.

Something happened - eventually. All the reports were made by professionals, including a social work student in their final year. The oldest child would have massively benefited from intervention when it was first reported. Instead it took years and there was now a younger sibling involved that had incredibly problematic behaviour due to the same neglect the older sibling experienced for years.

All of this was preventable. The parents had money to support their children and bring in interventions but just for didn't care. Happy to mostly ignore and occasionally yell at their children. Both children were incredibly sweet. Really tragic outcome all around.

I agree. I understand that some women's choices to get away from violent men are limited and curtailed, often by those men.

But for SIL that wasn't the case. She's actually just not a very good mother. So, TBH, I wasn't all that surprised that she was still seeing the violent man. I was more surprised at MIL and FIL who knew it was happening and did nothing. MIL and FIL bumped into the violent man once and didn't say a word about the way he'd treated their granddaughter because, and I quote they "didn't want to be rude". Fucking cunts. All of them.
FIL revels in his old school masculinity - work hard, provide for your family, do anything for your kids, protect the womenfolk, family's everything etc. But when his granddaughter needed him he did fuck all. Cunt.

Sorry, I'm still very angry about it.

Many years ago I took a friend's young DC after discovering her unsupervised at home. I was surprised how little SS seemed to do at the time (basically left her living with me until I managed to track her grandparents down)

She later told me that, unbeknownst to me at the time, they were already involved in my friend's life and continued to be off and on for many years thereafter. My friend did manage to get clean, keep her DC and get her life back together again, but I do wonder whether they'd have intervened in a different way had she not been middle class, wealthy and highly educated...

From another perspective, I had a neighbour with MH problems who went through phases of knocking on my door to tell me I was neglecting my DC (and my pets) and that she'd reported me to SS (or RSPCA) I never had any contact from SS so either it was part of the delusion or she was such a frequent flier that they just ignored her!

I think people should report concerns that have some foundation, things you've witnessed first hand, or a child has told you for example, but not just rumours as they may be untrue. If you're in a position with safeguarding responsibilities you have a duty to do something, and to try to establish if rumours have any basis before reporting.

But anyone reporting to social services, the Police etc should know not to expect to be told the outcome. That is the families private business, and rightly so for child protection reasons. A lot more might happen than anyone would ever be aware of, even if it looks like nothing has been done.
I know everyone likes 'closure' and to feel they've helped, but that isn't how it works. Report because it's the right thing to do, and accept that's the end of your involvement.

I agree with this. I only know the outcome because it was a family member that I reported.

I reported my sister-in-law.

She was involved with an abusive man. Police and SS got involved after a particularly violent night.

SS told SIL that if she broke it off with him, they'd drop their investigations. SIL told SS that she'd broken it off. But she didn't.

All DP's family knew that she was still seeing this violent man and bringing him into her home with her daughter. They all did diddly-fuck about it. So I called SS and told them that SIL was still seeing the violent man.

I had a very similar situation to this and despite it being reported to SS by another government organisation that they were still seeing each other, nothing came of it.

Thankfully something else happened that forced her to end it and he moved on. But he moved on to his next victim, beat her and left her for dead and this was witnessed by other children.

It was crap really, simultaneously grateful it wasn’t the kids I knew but also knowing that it could’ve been prevented. This was not the first time it had happened, there was a huge history of violence against women.

The woman he assaulted had no idea about that and because he started out being charming and giving her the fairytale, she had no reason to check until she was in too deep.