Kirstie Allsopp reported to Social Services

[Eastie77Returns]

I know she’s worshipped on MN so will don by hard hat now😅 I think reporting her was absolutely ridiculous but I do question the wisdom of letting her 15 year old son travel across Europe on his own (well with friends). She mentioned lots of kids do this after their GCSEs. I think it’s usually after A Levels?

Its quite normal for 16 year olds in my country to move out and live in their own accommodation (not anything like university halls, which don't exist here, but shared flats with other students or bedsits on their own) to go to high school in a different town or city. No fairly protected environment, they have to take care of themselves and they manage. Or if they go to vocational school they might get accommodation owned by the school but its still nothing like halls, no staff around.
Its also become a thing for 16 year olds to come here from Vietnam and some other countries in that general area to go to high school here (they do get support to come and some support in the beginning to help them adjust to a new country). Travelling across the world to get here and living for years away from their families and by all accounts, thriving.

Is this actually true nowadays? It most certainly didn't used to be in my day! There'd be a porter somewhere if you'd lost your room key but you had to go to their "lodge" (office) and no other staff "about" in halls, ever.

I've brought my children up outside the UK and as I said it's perfectly legal for a 15 year old to be living completely alone in their own privately rented studio flat (bedsit) doing an apprenticeship (with vocational college) - there's even means tested maintenance grant type funding available from this age - parents remain legally responsible for their offspring until they either complete a vocational qualification or degree or turn 27... but don't legally have to live with 14-17 year olds, and it's possible to have finished the full time element of the compulsory school years before your 15th birthday for a summer born.

No amount of money can fix it if a child goes missing, or drowns, or falls, or any number of other things that can happen when a 15 year old is sent on holiday with no guardian.

It was only recently that 2 13 year olds walked to the beach at sunrise and there was a huge fuss about "what if they decided to go swimming and drowned".

These boys are a couple of years older, have access to alcohol and drugs and no-one to tell them no, and are travelling to multiple locations where they could easily be on the beach at 4am, and yet no-one seems worried that they are going to end up in the sea because they have lots of money and have probably been on a lot of nice holidays so they can be trusted?!

@MrsSunshine2b do we actually know what their itinerary was?

Is it the same people though that are fine with this but have issues with the 13 year olds walking to the beach? Or is it more likely that people that are OK with this situation are also OK with that other situation? I'm fine with both situations at least, I'd be fine with my 13 year old walking to the beach to watch the sunrise (as if she'd ever get up that early willingly)

Her son and his friend probably stayed in nice hotels with parents organising it in advance due to being under 18 years. I doubt they slept rough, wild camped or stayed in hostels or any places that didn’t need an ID document. Trains could have been booked in advance as well. You might need a parental authorisation to enter the European area if you are an unaccompanied child together with an travel plan, health insurance and a return ticket?

I have no idea how or why this happened but I completely confused KA with Claudia Winkleman😳 I was thinking of the latter when I wrote she is worshiped on MN as I’ve seen so many adoring posts about her. My bad!

I'm more fine with 2 girls walking around an area they know well on a coast they're familiar with than I am with 2 16 year olds being left to travel around for however long. My SD is nearly 15 and gets the train to us from her Mum's and back again, it's about 2 hours, and she was recently stopped by a "safeguarding officer" who called me to ensure I knew where she was. We've been told by multiple people that we're too lax (by her Mum for example) because we let her travel after dark in winter, knowing that an adult meets her at the station and she's contactable the whole journey with 1 (occasionally 2 on Sundays or bank holidays) change. The idea of sending her on an unfamiliar trip, with no-one checking she made it to the right place or knowing where she is for sure at night is ridiculous imo.

No amount of money can fix it if a child goes missing, or drowns....

Teenage boys drown every summer in the UK, in rivers and canals close to their homes. Should they not be let out without a guardian? Teenage boys and girls are killed every summer in car crashes - yet the popular view on MN seems to be that all young people should learn to drive as soon as they turn 17.

And I daresay most teenage boys know how to get their hands on alcohol and drugs in their home townss if they want them, and don't necessarily take any notice of their parents telling them no.

Its entirely possible that the two teens kept regular contact with their parents by phone, letting them know when they had arrived at their destinations etc., and letting them know when they're in for the night. Sure they could send messages saying they're in and then go out and anything could happen but that could happen back in the UK too. God knows I snuck out of the house plenty of times as a teenager after my parents fell asleep.

Your SD getting stopped by a "safeguarding officer" seems insane to me, unless she appeared lost, distressed, or confused to the officer. Or looks young for age perhaps.

Any of those things could happen at home.

I spent the summer holidays after GCSE results camping in the south of France with friends drinking rosé and had an absolute ball. No one reported my parents 🤷🏽‍♀️

No they couldn't. If we arrived at the station to pick up SD, knowing she'd text us 2 hours ago to say she was getting on the train and again after she changed trains 45 minutes earlier, and she was not there or answering her phone, we'd immediately know where she'd been in the last hour and be able to contact the last station she'd been at and get CCTV, and the last known location of her phone. There's a good chance that if she'd lost her phone, fallen suddenly ill or got lost we'd find her very quickly.

She wouldn't be tempted to go off with someone she'd just met because she'd know she was on a short timescale before it was noticed she was not where she was expected to be. If she was offered alcohol or drugs she wouldn't take them, I'd hope because she's got more sense, but if she was having a silly moment, because she would know we'd know as soon as she arrived.

There would never be a long period of time where we weren't in touch with her because by night time she is at home in her own bed.

Unless KA was texting with her child every 45 minutes, (in which case it's hardly worth letting him go and he'd be so sleep deprived as to make the whole trip torture) if he was to go missing it might be 12-24 hours before she even realised there was a problem, by which time, he could have been anywhere, and anything could have happened.

This is not anything like sending your child to stay with a relative where they get on a plane, are in sight of the air stewards/stewardesses for the whole journey and then get off to meet another responsible adult a few hours later. This is a child completely unmonitored.

She’s certainly not worshipped by me! Never could stand the woman - to me she always came across as smug.
But IMO she has every right to resent SS poking their noses in. You’d think they would have hundreds of better uses for their time, especially when they frequently complain of being understaffed and so very hard-pressed.

@MrsSunshine2b "No they couldn't."

This is just getting silly now. I'm sure plenty of bereaved parents could prove your statement wrong!

They couldn't go missing for a whole night without anyone noticing, unless the parents are really not paying attention. Most children under 18 would be reported missing within a few hours, giving them a much better chance of being found.

I can't believe you are trying to argue this point.

Let me spell it out for you. 17 year old crashes car into ravine. 14 year old falls through ice into a waterway. They could be knocked down crossing the road. They could bunk off school and take contaminated drugs. Yeah, sure they'd be noticed missing but sadly it does happen that it's too late when they're found.

Are you actually trying to say that no teens ever come to a tragic end in the UK?

Interesting....

Yup. There's loads of posters here who would be quite happy to keep their kids locked away in their rooms, where far more harm can befall them.

My kids are trying to break out of their room this very moment, but I have added extra locks.

I used to really like Kirstie even though I disagreed with her approximately 80% of the time. I now think she’s deliberately click baity which is fine when you’re opining about washing machines in kitchens or school homework policy but not fine when you’ve included your 15 year old son in it.

i don’t really have an opinion about the 15 year old interrailing, I currently don’t think I’d let my 15 year do it next summer but I can see how you possibly would, especially a child who is presumably used to travelling and has access to whatever money is required. I also don’t think social services are going to be wasting huge amounts of time on this but suspect if they have a report they have to do some form of follow up?

What I have problem with is the scrutiny she’s now subjected her son to. I can’t believe he’s enjoying this or it’s in anyway good for him. His parents chose to let him do it, he’s come back safe, great. Just maybe leave it at that instead of invading his privacy and making him into a slow news August talking point. That’s the parenting decision I have an issue with.

They can if they sneak out of the house after you've gone to sleep, as many teens do.

Why dodgy hostels?
DS has just returned from interrailing and the hostels looked great. All booked via an app, group chats and they looked really good.

i grew up in the 80s when supposedly there was much more freedom for children. However I certainly don’t recall children going travelling without adults after GCSEs. That would have been after A levels or even after uni. I have to wonder if the reason this seems different is because parents are more likely to be able to fund their children’s travels now whereas I and my friends had to save every penny which took a few years of work taking our other costs of uni etc into account.

I also wouldn’t necessarily trust that age teens knowing the sort of scrapes I got myself into at that age even when not on such long trips. Ie pretty serious alcohol poisoning, sexual assaults, being robbed, locked out overnight, the list goes on! None of which I would have confessed to my family…
and yes I was away from home working throughout my school holidays from 16, using the trains and tubes and moved out as soon as I could to live independently in London. To me that is very different to travelling in many countries as you are in an everyday routine.

But all of these things could happen to anyone at any age? By 15 I was just as capable of avoiding harm as I was at 23. Id say at both ages I was a bit less responsible than now, but perfectly aware of the risks of water, in fact I think I was aware of that from about age 8. If your kids are idiots don't let them out but maybe a bit more freedom a bit younger would have helped them learn.
I went to Paris with friends aged 16. Parents would have been angry at some of what we did (drinking mainly), but honestly we were as sensible as any other age, and we had a great time, learned lots of french, did some cultural stuff and generally had some good life experience.