Dd arrested. Again. Any police about?

[chaingangmam]

NC for obvious reasons. She's been arrested for theft. This is the second time in the last year. She's 17. Lives with her dad. She was arrested a significant distance away from home but still within our Force area. She's been taken to the main police station local to us.
Last time she refused a solicitor and she ended up with some kind of community disposal where she worked with the youth offending team.
Now she's been arrested again and is likely to be dealt with more severely which is what she needs. I don't want to go into all the ins and outs but she has mental health issues and a long history of problems with school suspensions, threatened expulsions, failed fresh starts. I'm doing everything in my power to get her the help she needs but she regularly disowns me so it's hard to get her to engage.

What is likely to happen this time? Will she be kept at the police station all night? I'm assuming so. Her dad is all for letting a duty social worker attend the police station instead of him. Is that a thing? It will be tomorrow now anyway and he's not sure he'll be available. Can parents refuse to attend?! I wouldn't have thought so. Ive told the arresting officer she's to have a solicitor this time. She freely admitted it last time and this time was caught red handed having stolen from more than one store.

Bit frazzled and upset so apologies if not making sense.
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What on earth do you think you can do for her, op? She's beyond your help.

@StarlightLime I've gone with her to the GP and got her a referral to psychiatry.. I've been in touch with social services and other agencies to get her help. I can look back and know I did everything I could for her. I can't give up on her even though sometimes I feel like doing so. She's still my daughter and I love her and want to help her. I'll never excuse her behaviour but she needs help to get the help she needs.

@lljkk lloyds

"fwiw, my dad worked in criminal justice system & was often urgently consulted by friend or family when someone got arrested. His very 1st response, every single time, was "Leave them in jail for 3 days""

I take it you're not in the UK? Otherwise this is total nonsense.

@chaingangmam Giving up doesn't mean you stop caring; it means you stop trying to make them care when they obviously don't.

Sending virtual hugs xx

Edited. I can spell but I can't type 🙄

If both parents refuse to take her in and she's a minor, is SS obliged to find her accommodation as she is under 18? Perhaps emergency foster care or temp housing while housing gets her to the top of an emergency housing list as she is a vulnerable person.

It's not up to the arresting officer!

Well I don't know where she spent last night. She said she'd go to her dad's today and hopefully she will. Social services have been useless the entire time they have been involved which is on and off for 10 years now. They do assessments, identify that her dad needs to do things and that his communication is piss poor and then say no role for social services needed. A judge said he needed to go on a parenting teenagers course but he was too busy to go. He works a normal week but shifts and the course can be done online but he didn't do it. She's not in college or a job or training, she's just hanging around with people who talk about pleading guilty like it's as normal as buying a loaf of bread. I'm so scared she's going to end up dead because of the risks she's taking and people she's hanging out with.

I'll phone social services today and see what's happening there.

I'm hoping the court will order some counselling and that she does some community work and gets back to college. Of course the more she behaves like this the less likely she is to be accepted at college. She was kicked out of the last one due to her behaviour.

The police are out looking for her because she won't say where she is. The more she does this the worse she's making it for herself. She's not listening and everything is her dad's fault and she's not taking any responsibility for her actions. That's not going to look good to the court either.

Oh blimey, you must be at the end of your tether with both your daughter and your ex!
At the end of the day, you can advise her and try to reason with her until the cows come home but if she refuses then she refuses 🤷🏻‍♀️
I feel for you. I really do.

I have a banging headache and am mainlining jam doughnuts.

Sorry for the delay in replying @chaingangmam. As you said the first matter was an out of court disposal then the heavy likelihood is of a referral order at court.

A referral order can be 3-12 months (although youth offending team never recommend 12 months, and the higher end of the scale is usually reserved for more serious offences). The court will hear the details of the offence(s) she is charged with and will hear from the youth offending team with their recommendation.

At court your daughter should be asked about the offences and you should also be asked if there is anything you would like to add. Please use that opportunity to express your concerns about her.

The court will set the length of the referral order but does not set what is contained within that. There is a referral order panel which the young person and usually a parent have to attend. At that panel meeting the detailed programmes that the youth offending team recommend will be agreed between them all and a contract will be signed. The referral order does not start until that contract is signed which is likely to be within a couple of weeks of the court date.

The elements agreed at the referral panel may include things like consequential thinking, peer pressure, drug work, knife prevention etc. But as I say these are set at the referral order panel with detailed input from youth offending rather than by the court itself.

The difference between the work she previously did with the youth offending team and the referral order is mainly that the referral order is a statutory court order and for some reason these seem to have better success than the young person voluntarily working with youth offending.

i hope the above is useful.

@JustanotherJP thank you, that is very helpful. When I was DD's age I had a friend who later became a circuit judge and I'm saddened to know Dd is what he called a toe tag 😩 I've chatted to her today and she's no remorse, not accountability at all.

Good luck @chaingangmam. I often feel for parents we have sitting in the back in youth court, it’s a hard place to be as we know there is so much anguish before they come to us.

Thank you. She's talking to me and she's happy I've not bollocked her but that doesn't mean I'm not very upset with her and the situation. I'm appalled and can't believe my baby is a criminal. I just keep hoping she'll turn out ok after she comes out of this horrendous stage.

Op, this sounds like such a difficult situation. I wonder as a pp mentioned above, do you think your daughter may be autistic/adhd and has a problem with impulsive behaviour. I am not excusing what she is done, but maybe it goes some way to explain her risky behaviours and there are different ways to support.i have a dd with different risky behaviours and I understand how stressful it is. She did spend some time in a tier 4 setting, which was frankly horrible!

I totally get this; my point was that there really is nothing above and beyond this that you can actually do.

She's choosing to behave like this, so galling as it may be it's not within your gift to change it.
She'll be an adult soon, maybe the shock of being treated as such by the authorities may have some impact?

If she won’t listen, let her get on with it. Tough love.🙂

I'm exhausted with it all and have now gone down with the virus ds has had all week and feel rotten.
She's got to do work for me this weekend to earn something from her dad (an event that's been booked for months) because he won't cancel it. Then she will have to jobs for him. I'm hoping to keep her more occupied but if it starts impacting on me or ds, particularly ds, then I'm not doing any more. I've had social services on the phone today because they never seem to have her dad's number. I've given it to them. Again. Being at work isn't a get out of erm, jail (!) free card for him. My work is more flexible but I have no one to take over if I can't go. He's got a whole team plus agency who can cover. Mine is just me. Plus, I was an unfit mother according to him not so long ago.

She's not a criminal, she's young probably unhappy, and making bad choices, that doesn't define her, doesn't mean she will always make bad choices. Continue to love her and disapprove of her bad choices. And also make sure you look after yourself. I found talking about my son's bad choices made it not a secret for others to gossip about

She was back stealing yesterday from Tesco and yes she is a criminal. She's been shoplifting for about 4 years I've been told. I agree she's very unhappy and making bad choices but she has to take responsibility for her actions which at the moment she's not. It's all someone else's fault. Attacking someone at school was retaliation for that person bullying her but the person wasn't doing anything at the time and someone else threw her on the floor do Dd could kick her repeatedly. She claimed self defense. Rubbish. School kept her enrolled to give her the best chance of GCSEs instead of expelling her. She's been making poor choices for years and everyone has bent over backwards to help her to no avail. I'm pretty angry today.

Sorry, op, but she sounds irremediably vile.

She won't go to prison, there's no space there.

I know she won't go to prison. Well unless she keeps being arrested. She seems to enjoy the attention.

@StarlightLime when she isn't being vile she's actually lovely. She's very bright (not so you'd notice with her actions or GCSE results though), funny, creative, very talented in one particular subject area, will help her friends as much as possible, she's caring, loving and beautiful. Sadly, she lets the awful side of her through more often than the lovely.
I've seen her this weekend and not an ounce of remorse about her behaviour which is very disappointing. She has a plan for her future though and it's a good plan although not very realistic. She's in a better place than she was a few weeks back and seems more ready to accept help and work on herself. I have to hold on to the hope that she'll turn out ok. She's still my little girl under all that vile and sadly has a lot of trauma to work through.