If there are any social workers online, may I ask how many injuries is too many?

[Blueradiators]

Sorry to start another thread about this case and I promise I'm not being goady, I am just having such a hard time wrapping my mind around what had happened to baby Preston, and others before him.

They all had multiple trips to the hospital with injuries and I would like to know if there is a number of injuries that is tolerated, or is there a cut off point at which you officially become concerned and involved? I know kids will be kids and injuries happen etc but what are the guidelines that you're following? It can't be just injuries being "unexplained" because those bastards told convincing lies, clearly. So what's the yardstick?

I have a 3 year old and he's been to hospital twice. One time he fell while learning to walk (right in front of me!) and hit his head on the edge of the coffee table. Got a huge lump on his forehead. I was distraught, took him in, all was ok but we were referred to social services, who called the following week to talk to me. I didn't hear anything after that, and he hasn't had any serious injuries since, but the experience put the fear of god into me and I might have gone overboard baby proofing the house after that.

The second time he had an allergic reaction to nuts and that didn't warrant any concern or SC involvement.

There really is just no point speculating on this. Things were clearly missed, exactly who and what occurred will need to be laid out in an inquiry and then we will have all the information.

I’m not a social worker, but I have done safeguarding training and work with vulnerable children. Just one injury that’s highly suspicious and does not seem accidental, for example grip bruises on the arm of a small infant would be enough to warrant further investigation. However, some children are particularly accident prone. I work with a lot of autistic children who can be uncoordinated, impulsive and often have a high tolerance to pain. So it might be expected to see more injuries on them, but the types of injuries would be obviously accidental, bumps to the shins are not generally caused for concern in a mobile child. Judgement needs to be used rather than just numbers. However, both the numbers and the quality of the injuries sustained by the child that you’re talking about means it should’ve been investigated further.

I'm not speculating, I am asking what guidelines are social workers working with? Is there a specific number? A specific number over a certain time period? Etc

But you know there isn’t a specific number? You were spoken after one accident, presumably that conversation didn’t raise any flags, so you weren’t spoken to again. If that conversation with you had raised red flags (or I assume if hospital staff had raised it as a serious concern etc), presumably they’d have got more involved. It’s based on the specific details of individual cases, not a “two broken bones are fine but three is an issue”.

We were referred last year for one 1cm bruise. It was apparently in an unusual place. The response was disproportionate and really shook all our confidence. They were originally going to put DC in care while they investigated (which apparently isn’t traumatic for kids at all 🙄). We didn’t do it, but because we hadn’t done it, and didn’t even know he’d had a bump, we didn’t have an explanation ready for them. Which is the main flaw in the current system. We then found out it was from a game at school that he’d been playing. But even after we told the SWs that we’d got to the bottom of it, we weren’t believed and still got subjected to the full S47 because they had started it. I’m sure all the usual suspects on here will say “better false accusations against parents than that we miss a single case of real abuse” but a 100% success rate is unachievable and the main lesson SS need to learn is that we need to stop this being such a witchhunt because, like a real witch hunt, the methodology is fatally flawed and the process is crammed with biases as the Baby Preston case proves (and so many others). Real normal families are demonised and so much SS time is wasted with absolutely non-issues while these outliers still get away with it until they kill a child. And unlike the police, you’re not innocent until proven guilty in the eyes of SS. It’s not working as-is.

I agree with this

I was an accident prone kid and my parents had SS visits in the late 70s due to my hospital visits. I just had no fear and would launch myself off things and break bones! DS was exactly the same but never got flagged - we have both broken many bones! We are both dyspraxic too so we can fall over air!

These evil men showed video evidence to cover themselves in one instance. They were calculated and evil.

From what @BirthTraumaNChas said, I sometimes feel that those who seem to comply are more rigorously checked whereas those who are more confrontational are often not. Many have said on previous threads that the threatened violence towards social workers poses a problem in terms of trying to access children and ensure they are safe. The path of least resistance when dealing with a heavy caseload and all that.

There is no right answer. Too cautious, children (normally more marginalised families) are taken into care and traumatised. Less cautious, children die.

Being a SW is thankless and soul destroying, which is one of the reasons I no longer do it. You hold incalculable risk, for too many familes, while being hated by everyone.

People think that poor boy is a one off. But SWs have huge caseloads full of children who could be him. Or not. And SWs are relying on reports from people who are almost all lying.

If you want to help, don't point at SWs and feel like your job is done. Volunteer. Be active in the lives of children. Get trained so you can raise flags. In every single class in your kid's school there is a kid who is suffering. The smelly, violent bully probably. Make friends with that family and offer support. Report concerns if you have them. Or not. But if you won't, don't expect SWs to be able to save every child.

SWs are also so deeply reliant on the views medical professionals will put in writing. If a doctor says it is non-accidental, then the council literally don’t have the legal threshold to do anything further. People don’t understand this and place all the responsibility (and blame) on social workers.

As a PP has said, it’s not to do with the number but whether they are deemed to be non-accidental or inconsistent with a caregivers account of how they were sustained. Only a consultant paediatrician can give a view on this - never a social worker.

if however there were a pattern of frequent but plausible injuries, this might warrant further exploration but there is no set number.

It’s a complex assessment. How old is the child, how mobile are they, where is the injury, what type of injury, is it likely to be non-accidental, is there a pattern of injuries, are there injuries that should have been seen by health care professionals but hasn’t been, is the explanation reasonable, does it fit the injury, is there discrepancy between what the child says and what the parent says, are there any other concerns for the family, are they known to social workers.

Its very rare that a one off injury, that is consistent with the explanation given, and is consistent with an accident would merit more than a phone call from social work if that, we simply don’t have time to follow up every single accident or injury and most don’t need follow up.

If, for example there was an injury to a non-mobile infant, it would be followed up, most areas have an infant protocol for under 1s, a toddler might have multiple bruises learning to walk so that would need a different assessment, a school age child might reasonably have a couple of broken bones if they’re active or involved in contact sports so that again needs a different approach.

We take a lot of stock in what medics tell us, ie if the injury appears non-accidental or is inconsistent with the story of what happened. It’s not an exact science though, parents lie and hide things. If we could tell who was lying or not life would be much easier but sadly that’s not in our gift.

Not the path of least resistance, it is sometimes simply not safe for social workers but they still need to turn up. I’ve had workers locked in houses with violent men, threatened in their office car park, followed home, stalked on line, threatened in their office car street. Every children’s social worker I know has at least one story of being threatened or attacked at their work, sometimes the fear and stress takes them off sick or completely out of the profession. Social workers have been killed in the course of their work.

It’s very easy to sit at home with a cup of tea passing judgement on social workers, but 3 years training and you could come and do a better job. There are lots of vacancies…

This is true, it's the same with vulnerable adults. If the doctor says they aren't physically unwell, we have to assume their decline is due to being unable to cope independently

Has anybody heard of common sense? You can’t teach it but nobody seems to have very much of it these days; I do worry where it will all end and bet ChatGPT could have got a better outcome after the first trip to hospital than the current lot.

Have you forgotten Baby P? His paediatrician failed to spot he had a broken back.

I had no idea. Thank you.

I've seen lots people say there were multiple hospital visits but these weren't all for injuries. From what I've seen

visit 1: suspected seizure, unusual bruising noted. A suspected seizure probably wouldn't trigger any concerns. You can't whip a child away for one incident of unusual bruising

visit 2: high temp, being unwell, nothing at all sus there. Unusual bruising noted but explained as P pulling a toy box on his head with a video shown to staff, therefore all appeared fine.

visit 3: fractured arm - absolutely should raise concerns in a child so young but you can't whip a child away from its family for that as it could also be completely innocent

visit 4: he was dead

i don't think there was much to flag. Ss were aware and did visit but where do you draw the line on removal? How do we balance protection vs trauma for unnecessary removal?

The fractured arm was explained that the baby had been standing in his cot and started to fall, the dad caught him by the arm and the baby twisted breaking his arm. Not an unusual type of incident and the doctor felt the injury was consistent with the description.

You can remove a child due to one broken bone but there would be circumstances surrounding that. The injury in and of itself isn’t the deciding factor.

Not a social worker but a health visitor, came to my home unexpectedly many years ago to do a report to social services when our little boy first came to live with us. Unfortunately, she started off on the wrong foot with him by not looking at his new toy when he asked her to, this put him in a bad mood and then he started shouting at me for saying no to another ice pop (he'd just had one) and she reported back to social services that I couldn't handle him and he didn't seem happy. She'd actually just caught us on a bad day but I was devastated and she had to return to do another visit and report which, thankfully, went much better and we were allowed to adopt him (he's now a strapping man in his mid twenties, tells us he loves us everyday and still lives at home, so he definitely wasn't unhappy with us). At the time, I was annoyed that she could have put a spanner in the works with his adoption but now I think where on earth was someone like her when poor little Preston was being assessed. We need more people like her in these jobs, people who aren't afraid to speak up if they have any doubts. Preston deserved better.

Completely agree. The most traumatising thing ever for my family - for basically nothing. A non issue.
I invested hours afterwards using the complaints procedure via the government ombudsman, it went to mediation, disciplinary action for the social worker involved and a written statement from social services exonerating myself and my husband, I will not stand to be accused and intimidated in my own home. I don’t care who says they have every right to investigate. Scum of the earth as far as I’m concerned.

Yes but SW aren't legally allowed to challenge medical opinion

My dd3 was highly accident-prone - three broken bones in the space of one school year when she was about 5. One monkey bars, one skateboard, one bike accident, plus a couple of other incidents that required wound glue/stitches.

On one of these visits to paediatric A&E i was chatting with the mum of another child from dd's primary school, who had been given the safeguarding third degree about her son's injuries, whereas despite my dd being such an A&E frequent flyer, I never had that sense with us. We concluded that it was because her child was quite shy and reluctant to talk to strangers, whereas my dd was the kind of child who would tell her entire life story to anyone who stood still long enough. That personality difference meant that the medics could get a confident sense of how dd's various injuries had come about in a way that they couldn't with the quieter child, hence needing to probe further.

And god forbid there was actually something wrong, and god forbid your child ended up a tragic statistic. Because people who are innocent look and sound exactly the same as people hiding harm. They say the same things, fight just as hard, complain all the way to the ombudsman, and end social workers careers. Sadly we don’t know who’s being honest and who’s about to kill their own child - they don’t wear signs round their necks. So how do you suggest we protect kids when dangerous parents don’t present as overtly dangerous?

Because the same people saying “there’s nothing to see here, scum of the earth” are the same ones saying “how did they miss it, lazy, useless shysters”.

As others have said, it's not the number of injuries but the nature of the injuries, the age of the child, the explanation as to how the child was injured. Social workers are human and will make mistakes - it's not an exact science in any respects. It's such a huge responsibility and they have massive caseloads and are understaffed. It's right that in the event of a tragedy such as this that there is a complete investigation into what went wrong and how procedures can or should be changed to try and prevent future deaths like this. But I think there will probably always be some cases that slip through the net 😔