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?

ive worked with this age group all my life, and most 15 year. olds would not be mature enough if certain difficulties occurred
of course there are exceptions. and maybe Oscar is. one of them....there is always the. element of good or bad luck too.
I'm sure ka is a good. mother but I find her somewhat arrogant...her. public. stance puts pressure on others, and if were advocating parental power, then heaven help some children, whose lottery in life is bad enough anyway.
I think people who post here are thoughtful, but would you really like carte blanche to be. given to all parents....

16 year olds can live on their own, but nobody would think it is ideal. At 16 year olds Social Services could legally apply for a care order, although in practice they are unlikely to.
Similarly no one would think a 16 year old leaving home to have a baby is a good situation and great parenting.

Although he's reported as 15 the son has finished year 11, done his GCSE exams and is now 16.

So we're effectively talking about lads who not many years ago would have been navigating the world of work.

WTF are parents doing nowadays if their 15 year olds are incapable of independent travel? When I did it, there were no mobile phones, no GPS, no Internet, no plastic money. The world is so much easier to navigate now. Communications are greatly improved. Teenagers should be capable of independence and responsibility by the age of 15 if they are parented properly.

My dd is the same school year. Personally I wouldn’t have wanted her to go but then she hasn’t been equipped with the requisite knowledge to be able to go and I presume the boys have. I took a trip to the south of France with friends aged 17. I seem to remember taking a coach. I don’t recall where from, probably London, we may have been dropped there or taken the train, either way we were well equipped to know how to do all of this by then.

I think the end of year 11 is a little young for most people because we have to be able to fend for ourselves and look after one another if things go wrong. The end of year 12 is better, we grow up such a lot in that one year. Otoh my brother went off 100 miles plus away cycling and camping with a couple of friends for about 5 nights age 14 and he definitely wasn’t the responsible one out of the two of us.

Why on earth would SS waste their time on this???!!

Load of nonsense!

She's not "worshipped on Mumsnet".
Why do people post such silly things?

It was only a phone call ffs to check a few things over, SS are dammed if they do and damned if they don't especially with that absolutely infamous acronym.

I don’t think SS will care because he came back ok. If there had been any kind of Jay Slater type incident then yes they would and I would consider an investigation appropriate. If she hadn’t put it on SM no one would have had an inkling

I live outside of London and know parents who literally drive their kids everywhere, even when it's on a direct bus/train route. I know kids of 16 who have never been on a bus, whereas my dd has been sorting out her own travel since 13 and knows her way round the local public transport system far better than me.

Oh come on this is all an attention seeking act. Had she said he’d gone after his GCSEs no one would have battered any eyelid. It’s because she said he was 15, and she probably did that to get the publicity.

Well said - just what I was thinking. There's a vast amount of resources and information available instantly now that we never had before. If, for example, your kid runs out of money, you can send them funds in seconds, wherever they are.

If your fifteen year old kid has no idea how to do basic everyday things alone, I think you've failed as a parent.

The report stays on file forever, even if it's found to have no substance. I'm not surprised she's fuming. Literally anyone in the UK can report anyone anonymously for the most serious acts of neglect and abuse of children, with no consequences for the 'informant' even if they're groundless. It's a bonkers system really.

It is completely attention-seeking. Since she's wealthy and the children her child was with probably also have wealthy parents, I hugely doubt they were doing much interrailing beyond the odd train journey, and they wouldn't have been slumming it in hostels either. They were probably getting lots of lifts and staying in the holiday homes of various relatives.

Her son isnt mature enough

Well, since he went and came back safely, arguably he is mature enough!

I was recently on a train sitting near a group of girls who looked about 17. They were asking each other if they had ever been on a train before!

So it is fine to go on holiday and leave your 15 year old alone in the house?

Yes.

But would you really be this nonchalant about it if it happened to you?
As KA said, the thing that really upset her was that they now have a file open on her, and any subsequent referall would need to be followed up. So it would only take another person who thinks they know best, and she would get another visit. These kinds of things can be seen as inconsequential, but they can also have serious consequences for people’s lives. Even in the best case scenario it would be horrible to know you have this hanging over you.

Although, I do think she was foolish to tell the world via social media about her child’s activities! Not sure why that is necessary and it opens you up to criticism and random strangers reporting you.

This.

Waste of social services time and each child is different. The relaxed ability to allow your 15 year olds to do this comes from having money, imo. If you know you can drop everything and go and save them, or wire them a load of cash, then the risk is fairly low. They can read timetables etc by 15.

I’d never let my 16-year old do it though and I’m amazed so many parents do. Whole other world out there.

Well it was a totally unecessary phone call from interfering busybody with nothing better to do!

I'm not apportioning blame to SS but to the dick who called them!