Do social workers and the courts get it wrong sometimes? TW child abuse.

[Monthlymusing]

Obviously we know they get it wrong in that they tragically miss cases of abuse. This is about the other way round. Inspired by Marten and Gordon trial (please don’t discuss this specific case as it’s on going) I have fallen down an internet rabbit hole about the parents who truly believe that social services are out to snatch children from loving homes. There are thousands of them. Networks of people who help and advise people how to escape SS. There are open FB groups where parents share horror stories. I came across a ‘documentary’ on YouTube that was quite well presented, although I realise as a sane person, a good bit of anti ss propaganda. They interviewed many ‘middle class’ sorts of parents who all claimed their dc had been taken on imagined or fabricated allegations. One couples child had then tragically died in foster care, which made them feel vindicated as they had raised concerns the child wasn’t being properly cared for. The allegations against them were very extreme, almost unbelievable and involved family SA. This was quite some time ago but they have been very public about their case. They are actually in my LA, which was graded as inadequate for SS.

My thoughts are that if SS have concerns they are most likely correct and there are many parents getting away with abuse and hardly any wrongly accused to the point of losing their children. But like the police, presumably in a very small number of cases, it stands to reason that they sometimes do get it catastrophically wrong. Or are there enough ‘layers’ and enough professionals on each case that this is basically impossible?

Parents do have the benefit of legal representation including barristers in court. They aren't defenceless.

Are you saying it was a medical expert who made the wrong call, and that social workers based their decision on incorrect evidence?

It isn’t a criticism as such @MiltonNorthern . I’m not sure of any alternatives. But let’s not pretend legal representation means they’re in a position to put together a detailed and articulate response to the social workers’ reports.

Yes. As confirmed to me by my final social worker when I was coming off a child in need plan for my DD. He said I should never have been under social services in the first place and that social workers needed to learn to listen. He got my signed off their system as quickly as he could.

He was a very experienced social worker who had just returned to England after setting up a child protection unit in Australia.

Also confirmed to me by my solicitor at the time, who worked in social services cases, and some mental health workers who were incorrectly sent to see me on social services request "This happens all the time", were their words.

Independent psychiatrist also said to me that I was nothing like what had been written about me by SS and wrote a positive report on me which contradicted everything they had been winging their way through making up. If something didn't fit their box, they filled in the blanks themselves with their own versions of the truth.

I've asked for Early Help recently, as my daughter has ND issues, and wanted proper support from her school with it, and her report had things copied and pasted from SS from 5 years ago which were contested in court as untrue. And when I say untrue, I mean completely factually untrue. Things they had invented about my past from even before I had a child or was known to them, or even in this country.

The social workers sought the opinion of a Dr who had never met her, and then ran with that. Instead of, you know, speaking to the Drs that did know her.

There is also the Ashya King case

U.K. SS argued he was being neglected when his parents took him out of hospital in the U.K. to access proton beam therapy in Prague.

His parents were arrested in Spain and he was taken to hospital and not allowed to see them.

www.christian.org.uk/features/ashya-king-cautionary-tale-state-interference/

(Biased website but the details are true).

The high court eventually ruled his parents were entitled to access proton beam therapy and it is now offered on the nhs.

@catmomma67

Of course no one is going to remove children because they have not been to a museum. The issue is where training is lacking people lean on their own lifestyle and experiences as what makes up a whole and good childhood.

It's reflected in the fact that families with SS intervention and particularly those with intervention that includes removal are those from lower class backgrounds. Often differing to the backgrounds of social workers.

They have to do lectures and training on recognising this bias and it's written into the practice code, because it's so common for people to struggle to put it to one side.

For example I've seen cases where people evidence neglect because a child has never had a birthday party. Didn't matter that mum got a card and gift every year despite having no money - social worker thought it was necessary for child to have a party for it to not be neglect. Similarly things like missing out on holidays or not having access to new toys were evidenced as neglect (which of course is not neglect!)

Nobody is infallible, mistakes can be made. But of the "SS TOOK MY KIDS AWAY TO SELL!!!1!!1!" stories I've seen over SM/tiktok the reasons are almost always very clear. One that keeps coming up, her husband (who she married at 18 and he's a solid 20 years older so was already questionable!) is in jail for child sex offences. She'd get pregnant, tell SS he wasn't around, they'd find he was, took the baby, she got pregnant again... rinse and repeat.

most I've seen is where the mum can't be trusted to stay away from someone not safe to be around them or their children.

That's exactly what it does mean though. Parents write statements with the aid of lawyers that are both articulate and detailed. Lawyers are skilled at taking what parents say and turning it into readable evidence.

SS primary job in this context is to protect children, physically and emotionally. It is not to protect the rights of the parents.

As previous posters mention, unfortunately some parents are unable or unwilling to recognise that they are putting their children at risk and are not willing to seek support to improve the situation.

I'm a secondary teacher and have seen far too much, in terms of the abuse and neglect parents can inflict on their children.

This is going back 30 years, but my mum did know a lady who was ironically a Dr herself who had her young baby removed because it was thought she had harmed them. It was found in the end to actually be a birth injury. I Would presume this is a fairly freak incident?

However from what I’ve seen of these groups and websites it’s more to do with the circumstances of older children. There was a legit news report on PFI linked from one website. I mean just how do you ever truly tell with something like that? It It said that 75% of LAs had investigated at least one case of PFI and most were cleared of it, but it’s clearly not that uncommon to suspect parents of it. It also said that many of the children of parents accused were disabled, so presumably it’s even harder to know.

Goodness, unsure what Local Authority’s you’re referring to, but that is certainly not my experience. As a social worker of 14 years, most of my colleagues have also come from working class backgrounds; some middle class at a push. I have never seen a colleague judge a family for their employment (or lack of), lack of access to experiences or new clothes. We have too many cases to be focusing on things that are not impacting on a child’s safety. And then if any of my colleagues did think these things were indicative of neglect, they would quickly be talked down by a manager or other multi-agency professional. Most CP social workers are working with severe deprivation and are looking for ‘good enough’ parenting - visiting museums does not constitute that

Nobody denies this, but the question is a lot the courts getting it wrong. The majority of cases are legitimate, but a small number are completely misinformed/false, or the action pursued was disproportionate. Mistakes happen in every field, and SW is far from the exception as we've seen in the news. We don't hear about non-fatal mistakes.

Correction: The question is when social work team or the courts do* get it wrong.

Not whatever I said, there!

*I think that's something many people miss, being in the care system and being adopted can be as traumatic or even worse than staying with biological family. Adult adoptees have higher suicide rates than any other group of adults (4x the norm I believe) and a big part of the issue the trauma that comes from being adopted.

Adoption should not be heralded as a gold standard or a solution. Especially when at the moment adoption seems to serve people's need to solve infertility and rarely is child centred and meeting the needs of abused/neglected/trauma experienced children*

Can you provide a source for that statistic please, I’d love to see research that says my children are 4 times more likely to take their own lives having been raised in a loving home as opposed to continuing to be starved and abused by their birth parents.

Of course adoption is a trauma, no one involved in adoption - professionals and adoptees would say otherwise however it is the lesser of many evils. Kinship care and guardianship are always considered first when children are removed but isn’t always possible or safe.

The vast majority of children removed do return home to their parents, or are placed with kinship carers. Just 1% are placed with prospective adopters - a tiny proportion which reflects adoption as an option of last resort.

I don’t know any child removed from their family because they haven’t been to a museum or had a birthday party. Apart from anything else all child protection assessments are multi-agency at every stage of the process. An assessment made on that basis, with no clear risk of significant harm, wouldn’t make it through case conference. Yes we all have our biases but significant harm is the threshold for social work involvement on a statutory basis, and that needs to be evidenced.

A two year social work course is a Masters level qualification, people training through that route need an under grad degree and experience in a related area of work. Otherwise it’s a four year degree(where I am) @SWStudent i assume you’re currently in training, which makes your apparent lack of understanding interesting.

It isn’t designed to be ‘fair’ for parents.

It’s designed to protect children from serious harm- which it does, albeit imperfectly.

It isn’t possible to have a system where mistakes are never made because sw are human, and the people they work with are human- so by definition it’s complicated.

The threshold for removal is so incredibly high however, the focus is so firmly on keeping children with families wherever possible and the resources to actually do the work are so woeful that the mistake of not removing, or of returning children, is far far more likely to happen.

I lost my sons half of the time unjustly; it wasn't SS that took them away, however. Only 3 and 6 when it happened and the bond that should have been so close has been irreparably damaged. They're 13 and 16 now. The family courts are appalling.

Looks like people are taking PP's museum comment out of context and misunderstanding. Of course it's not the sole reason for removal, that would be ludicrous. However, trivial 'reasons' can be added to the stated reasons for removal in addition to more legitimate concerns.

Court would intervene here in almost all cases, but these can still be found on official documents submitted to court.

You have misunderstood your training to really quite a worrying degree, and don’t appear to have understood your placement practice either.

Either that or you’re not actually a trainee SW and are just on a mission to spread misinformation and anxiety.

It's reflected in the fact that families with SS intervention and particularly those with intervention that includes removal are those from lower class backgrounds. Often differing to the backgrounds of social workers.

Most social workers I know are firmly working class, and a significant proportion have been through the system themselves. Removal of children from “lower class backgrounds” generally reflects the impact that trauma, significant mental health issues, poor parenting experiences, poverty, substance misuse etc have on parenting capacity. Nothing to do with not getting a birthday party, everything to do with squalid living circumstances, lack of absolute basic needs being met and lack of capacity for change.

Indeed. Someone needs to redo their systems analysis module.

Yes they get things very wrong. You get someone with a god complex in that position, that no one will question, and they can make absolutely terrifying decisions.

I've seen it first hand. Nothing to do with children being taken away, but just plain crackers decisions that caused harm to children. I'm speaking from experience, but I don't wish to dredge up the details. But I will repeat that it's nothing to do with children being taken away from parents.

It's so incredibly dangerous to assume that because someone is a social worker that they're always making the right decisions. I've seen some very scary and illegal things happen. And there was no comeback for the SW at all.

For example I've seen cases where people evidence neglect because a child has never had a birthday party. Didn't matter that mum got a card and gift every year despite having no money - social worker thought it was necessary for child to have a party for it to not be neglect. Similarly things like missing out on holidays or not having access to new toys were evidenced as neglect (which of course is not neglect!)

I assume you challenged those assessments on the basis of anti-oppressive practice which, as a student, would be expected in any practice placement? And had that challenge recorded? Raised it in supervision? With your Practice Educator? Social workers have an ethical duty to challenge poor practice so given you’re representing it so strongly here, I assume you equally strongly challenged and advocated a more measured assessment.

I live on a very large council estate and often hear this. I am 100% sure on every one I've heard of, of people I know off, that the kids are better of in care.

I used to work for social services. Nobody is removing children because they aren’t taken to museums.