SW has written our new PAR to fail panel :(

[AdoptionWoes]

More adoption woes unfortunately and I would be so grateful for some sage advice. It might be a long one.

So a few months ago we were due to go to panel and panel refused to see us citing issues with some elements of our PAR, some of these issues were a bit odd and even our SW said she was confident these were included but we just need to tick the boxes and proceed.

During the revision of the PAR process things have gone from bad to worse with our SW, she has committed a data breech and the LA has had to self report to the ICO for telling references information from our individual meetings which we did not consent to being shared or want them to know. She has also received a complaint from my mother, as she reduced her to tears during a third reference call and made her feel extremely uncomfortable, during this time we also put a complaint in for some very negative and pretty nasty comments towards me which our SW said to myself and my husband separately.

It seems that the way she has processed these issues is to be retalitory in her assessment throughout the PAR, lets just say I wouldn’t approve us to adopt a cat after reading it.

Its clear to us anyway this PAR has been written to fail at panel, there is no other way to read it, especially as she almost said as much during our final call when she told us she wasn’t recommending us for EP (whereas before she recommended us for both) as she had ‘evidence’ but she has no evidence to not recommend for regular adoption. Her manager has been supervising this entire time as well.

She has gone through and added very negative SW analysis sections, for parts where previously she was positive, for example during our initial discussions around EP (10 months ago) I said my initial concerns around EP were I only get 12 months adoption leave and I was initially concerned about that (with the first 6-12 months potentially being taken up with contact visits etc. and not being able to properly enjoy that time) but I had arranged with my work to take 2 years off instead which resolved that issue. In the original PAR her comments were positive, that I was brave to be honest with my feelings and I had worked out a suitable solution. In the new PAR her comments are twice as long and she has said ‘although brave for being honest its clear (Adoption woes) will struggle with the needs of EP and the mundane elements of the contact arrangements’ which is absolutely ridiculous as we hadn’t further discussed EP since the other PAR was rejected as it wasn’t in the panels questions.

Another example is we have a young nephew who is a child from a trauma background, and we have a lot of contact with him and look after him alone, overnight etc. during the first PAR this was apparently great as we had experience with using TP with a younger child and that it shows our ability to communicate to children who express challenging behaviours. In the new PAR its ‘although good experience (our names) haven’t had the full experience parenting a child who has suffered trauma, (nephew name) is only 6 so they haven’t experienced any of the key stages where a child is bigger and more physically forceful’ she even put ‘could they cope with an angry teenager?’ With a bloody question mark!

These are just two examples but its riddled with them, the original PAR was 31 pages, the new one is 72, her comments read as if she hates us.

There are several areas where when we put the original comments next to the new ones you can see the difference in tone and content, its actually pretty transparent and I am shocked she is able to put so much conjecture in there as well.

What options do we have? We have a second opinion booked in, but we are really concerned that this PAR has been intentionally written to fail as I can’t think of any other reason for them to write some of this stuff.

I remember your previous threads.

I experienced something similar- a report was written by a SW in a service that had repeatedly been terrible, where if you read it, a) you wouldn't recognise me or my family, and b) wouldn't trust me to care for a house plant, let alone adopt children.

It made me doubt everything I'd ever seen that was the slightest bit subjective about birth parents.

I had to walk away in the end, I didn't have the strength to fight on, and have children already that need me. (adopted and birth) It's incredibly difficult.

I would certainly ask for a second opinion, and a revision of your PAR. The PAR is what family finders look at, so you need it to be positive, even if that means pushing and pushing. Strength to you.

Wow that sounds horrendous and incredibly stressful and unfair. I have no experience at all so can't help but I was interested to read your post.
It does sound like you need to try and pause going to panel and get someone else to do a new report...but I have no idea of this is possible.
Sorry for you

Good grief that’s not ok at all - I don’t have time to respond fully but I’ll pm you with some suggestions of a way forward.

If they can write that sort of nonsense doesn’t it make you question what they do to birth parents much less able to fight their corner?

@farfallarocks

Yes. I wish it didn't. But yes.

Oh I know @farfallarocks, we’ve got to reach those quotas somehow .

No one mentioned quotas.

I'm sure you're a great social worker. But the system is underfunded, and there are bad apples, and some of us have experience of poor practice.

And yes, that is hugely concerning where birth families are concerned.

We're allowed to say that, without being put in the "social workers steal children" conspiracy box. I think we should have concerns about what's happened in recent years with the service under so much stress.

I’m not saying the system is perfect but if anything the stress the system is under means children are left in dreadful circumstances for far longer than they should be - it’s incredibly difficult to remove a child from their parents (as it should be), thresholds even to start child protection investigation are higher than I’ve even known them to be. I’ve not yet come across a child who was removed when they shouldn’t have been - but know many parents who would deny that.

I'm not disagreeing.

But when you've read a report about yourself that is full of subjective judgements, and half truths, it makes you question the quality of other reports.

I haven't said I believe children are being removed wrongly. I'm saying my experience has made me question what's written in reports. That's not the same thing, and I feel shouldn't be dismissed out of hand, and defensively. Poor quality practice threatens the public perception of the profession. The same is true in my own industry, poor practice reduces public trust.

So I don't doubt my children should have been removed.

I do wonder about the more subjective parts of the paperwork, though. That's uncomfortable, because I want to give my children accurate information, that is fair to BPs.

That's not about "quotas", it's about trusting the integrity of the profession completely. I had complete trust (perhaps naive) before this.

I’m far from defensive, if you read my previous posts you’ll see I’m pretty direct about the kind of poor practice as described here and actively support people to try and find a way through.

This comment doesn’t it make you question what they do to birth parents much less able to fight their corner? did strike a nerve with me. It smacked of social workers preying on poor, vulnerable families who aren’t able to defend themselves.

Social workers aren’t trying to do anything to birth families, child protection processes are very tough for parents, there’s no easy way to say you think their child is unsafe in their care and there’s no easy way to hear that message either.

Of course there will be subjective comment, we’re people working with people - it’s part of our role to form an opinion about someone’s capacity for parenting now and in future which generally means talking about very difficult, distasteful, distressing stuff which parents often find too hard to acknowledge.

It’s also hard to be objective when you’re leaving children in a home knowing they won’t be fed, won’t have a bed in that house, knowing they’ll witness or be subjected to violence but you don’t have enough evidence to remove them. Harder still when you’ve worked very hard to keep the family together, or you’re trying to safeguard remaining children after a child has died as a result of poor care. Those reports are scrutinised by colleagues, other professionals involved with the family, multi agency decision making groups, the court, lawyers and, where I am, an independent panel of volunteers - before they even get to the question of whether a child should be removed. We are professionally and legally accountable for their content, because it’s a statutory process.

It’s a hard job with complexities most folk are privileged to not have to deal with. Given the level of scrutiny, I’d be fairly confident the information in your child’s report is as accurate as it’s possible to be given the human nature of the work, the level of engagement or otherwise from families and the limits of the legal framework we work within.

Adoption reports are slightly different because it’s such a subjective assessment, and such a wide variety of agencies with very different thresholds, organisational culture and assessment criteria, so more lee way for someone to go off piste.

I have no issue talking about poor practice, I have every issue with the comment made by @farfallarocks.

I don't think there's anything wrong with what @farfallarocks wrote. Yes- our experience made me question.

You're the one who jumped to the idea that anyone saying there can be flaws, mistakes, or poor practice must be a conspiracy theorist ("quotas"). I don't think there's a conspiracy, a conspiracy would be organised. Instead, there is chaos. And I suspect children are being let down in various ways. But this isn't helpful to OP. Whereas I think @farfallrocks' comment was thought provoking, as I have thought the same. No conspiracy nutters here.

I don't think there's anything wrong with what @farfallarocks wrote. Yes- our experience made me question.

That’s ok, we disagree. And yes it’s probably a good idea for me to leave it here rather than derail the thread further.

This is what I would be doing in your shoes:

• go through PAR and highlight your areas of concern, particularly where you can demonstrate that the PAR has changed from positive to negative
• write a letter outlining your concerns (give an overview and then attach highlighted reports, both + and - copies to act as evidence of your concerns).
• Say that you are unclear on the justification for the changes in the report and concerned that it will mis-represent you at panel. Ask for the report to be reviewed independently of your SW.
• you may want to raise the question of whether this SW is the appropriate person to take you to panel and whether you might be assigned another SW to review the report and take you to panel following this
• ask for a response in writing outlining the steps that will be taken in response to your concerst. You could ask for a meeting with your SW's manager for them to talk you through it if you'd like.

Personally I wouldn't share about the back story of why you think the SW might be including all these details now, I think it muddys the waters. If she's being inappropriately negative it will be clear to her manager and asking for a review by the manager should lead to them taking out anything inappropriate anyway.

If you don't get a reasonable response then escalate to a formal complaint

op here - Apoloigies for the radio silence, couldn't get logged into my mumsnet account so had to make a new one.

Thank you for all the really helpful advice and guidance, we have gone through the complaints process to no avail, even after we contracted 4 independent social workers to review our PAR (all of which said the same as us, that it was awful, one even said it was the worst 'recommended for adoption' PAR's they had seen) the team manager and department head at our LA were dismissive of our concerns, refused to change the PAR, they also refused to give us a new SW to repeat stage 2.

After over a year and a half we have decided to call time on our adoption journey, and start ivf. Its a shame as there is a child or children out there in a foster placement who could have a permanent home right now if our local authority had done their jobs properly but here we are.

I'm so, so sorry to hear that woes, what a heartbreaking outcome for you.

I appreciate that now is probably not the time as you give your emotional energy to the IVF, but this would be something that the Local Government Ombudsman would investigate if you ever felt that you wanted to take it further. Wishing you all the best with IVF

I'm so sorry AdoptionWoes that is so tough. may I wish you all the very best with your fertility treatment. Please do update us if you wish to.

I’m so sorry to hear this. @Jellycatspyjamas unfortunately a good friend recently had an absolutely awful experience with social services. She is wealthy and has the support of her school headteacher and nursery staff as well as a top notch barrister. Without this I dread to think what would have happened to her kids. Complete and utter fantasy report from a social worker which the judge thankfully threw out of court. I don’t believe I quotas but I believe on people doing their jobs really badly I’m afraid!