An unreasonable moan about my new social worker? Or is she really just a pain?

[Kewcumber]

In their wisdom, my council has decided that a different social worker will write DS's court report for his UK readoption. So previous slightly flaky but lovely social worker who turned up and said "OOh, isn't he lovely, he's doing so well, you're doing so well, do you need anything? Bye." has been replaced by efficient highly experienced SW who leaves me feeling inadequate.

She comes for 60-90 mins at a time (last one used to be in and out in 20 mins unless we got chatting). Second appointment this week and she described him as having "special needs" - now I know all about the "all adopted children have special needs" and do agree to an extent, but I don't think she meant it that way - she was referring to his development (which everyone else thinks apart from his slow speech is absolutely normal). She is insisting I ask GP to do all the extra tests recommended in the BAAF children adopted from overseas medical leaflet despite the fact that we have been home for 15 months and there is patently obviously nothing wrong with him medically. She wants me to go on a special one day course on medical problems of children adopted from overseas - HE DOESN'T HAVE ANY MEDICAL PROBLEMS!

She wants me to ask GP for speech therapy now (aged 2.4 months) whereas I think waiting until his 30 month check will give him a little more time to see if his speech is genuinely delayed or if its just a little slow, and I can't beleive that the extra couple of months at his age will make much difference - will they even offer SALT at 2.4?

Her approach seems to be that every possible problem any child adopted from overseas has ever had is a probability in DS's case.

Right at the end she made a token "oh he is lovely and you are doing so well" comment just as she was leaving. I think its paragraph 11 on her checklist of what to cover with adoptive parents. I really don't need her to say that - I'm his mother, I feel like his mother, its way past the point where I need a social worker to point out the potential problems. I deal with the real ones as they arise.

Grumble mumble mumble - she's doing my head in.

Am I being unreasonable?

is she really in a position to 'insist' you do anything? if not it sounds as though she is overstepping her role. how very annoying and undermining.

no she can;t really insist but she's writing the court report on DS for the readoption so I'm trying to stay in her good books but it will takes a few months and I'm not sure I can take it for that long...

She lovely and all just, well, annoying.

Are you still with your horrible gp or do you have a reasonable one now? Could you make an appointment for ds and list what your SW says, but say that you don't think there are issues with any of it. If the gp agrees with you then I bet the SW will back down (they usually treat medical opinions as some sort of infallible truth).

Unfortunately I think you will have to grin and bear it.
I couldn't wait to get ss etc out of our lives after our children were living with us but it had to be. It wasn't that they weren't nice but JUST- well, as you say, the children felt like ours but still having ss coming round made it feel like they were someon'e else's.

And you've already had a bellyful of meetings/reports/checks etc etc.

Once you get the readoption out of the way, it'll be great

grrrr. i hate having to stay in people's good books, no fun at all.

maybe you could say something to her like 'i am finding your visits quite challenging and difficult. i really appreciate your advice and information but really just telling me once is enough. anymore than that and it feels as though you are undermining my position as ds's mother'.

any SW worth her salt will relish a disection of her interactions with you - if you can bear it(i am a SW btw).

My dd was adopted at 9 months in this country , she is now 5.5 years and never shuts up , however unbelievable to think now we had speech delay , no speech at 2 years, no babble as a baby , i think she just thought i dont need to talk i have a wonderful smile thats all i need !!

We had speech therapy which i wanted but in hindsight was a waste of time and energy , so much was just common sense, it was group work course for parents/ carers , children stayed at home , and basically centred round ways to stimulate your child to talk, encouraging lots of one to one time.

If you feel as his mum all is well, and i am sure as a much wanted child he gets all the attention he needs dont go down the speech therapy road, it will come whrn he is ready. I think want got my dd going was being at preschool and seeingothers her age chatting away and wanting to join in.Initially she was turned down for preschool as she was not potty trained at 2.5 years, however the reconsidered as they felt this was not pc regarding equal opportunities.

Arrgghh to social workers , look forward to the day they will never darken your door again!!

thats really interesting Magge - DS is 2.4 and is saying single syllable words, some very understandable, some incomprehensible and will string two words together occasionally but not often. His few 2 syllable words (mummy) have been shortened to one (my) when his vocab expanded. SW worker says in her experience that this is not normal and that children adopted from overseas either don't speak at all until very late (like your DD) or speak normally.

He is also doing pretty well at potty training privided I wee at the same time as him! He can stay dry all day but will not poo (however very early days as we only started a couple of weeks ago).

I do think his speech is delayed but I'm not at all sure that SALT will help at this stage - his walking was delayed as well and I felt then it was all a matter of confidence. I think his speech will probably be the same and when he gets more confident he will be fine. And if he isn;t then I think a few more months won;t make any difference.

Annoyingly if we hadn't been forced to change sw I would probably have a court date by now as I was told to wait until we had seen her a few times when I was on the verge of applying. I was already late applying as I was waiting for the results of a brith parent search.

Repeat regularly "This too shall pass"

Bran still with horrible GP but I see another doctor at the practice so thats a possibility - another thought was to discuss the medical issues with HV at his check - would a SW accept the word of a HV?

and he talks plenty just not understandably and only single syllables. I wonder if a SALT on here could tell me how delayed that is?

I have just come across this and while I'm not an adoptive parent I do have an SN DS. I think that you probably know best about your son, but would advise that staring the whole SALT process now may be worthwile - the waiting lists tend to be huge (I know they are long in Richmond and I'm assuming that's where you are from your name!!) It may be that he doesn't need it but he's unlikely to be seen, even for an assessment, for a good few months and in that time he may have progressed, but if he hasn't then at least you are 'in the system'. Hope that makes sense.

Moondog could probably help with telling you if that is delayed or not - she's often on the SN board.

thanks Hairy - are you local too?

The speech stuff is actually the only thing I agreed with her on and it was me who told her that I thought his speech was delayed not the other way around!

Kewcumber this is completely unrelated to your social worker problems but there is a really good book about encouraging children to talk in a very gentle way - I have forgotten the name of it but I've seen it mentioned on mn before. Maybe it's worth having a look at? I am going to go and dig the book out now so I can tell you the name, it's a really interesting book.

We're a couple of boroughs away but I have a lot of friends with SN DC in Richmond borough and attend a few groups there.

Here we go, link and everything It's called BabyTalk and it's absolutely fascinating, imo. Apologies if you've seen/got it already but thought it was worth mentioning

I think often they just want to you to take action that they can document to show you are aware of possible issues. If you go to the gp then you can go back to her and tell her the gp has advised the your ds is developing normally for some of the issues and that you should wait until xx age before further testing for other issues, then she can document the action and everyone is covered against any questions that might be raised by an over enthusiastic judge/SW manager.

FWIW, I'm a HV and have been involved with families completing overseas adoptions. TBH it sounds like she's really thorough which is quite difficult for you if you've previously had a SW with a more laissez faire approach.

SW's usually take a lot of notice of what HV's say and so I'm quite surprised that she didn't suggest that you raise her concerns re your dc's speech with your HV in the first place. Does your HV see you regularly? We always kept in quite close contact with our families in similar situations so that we could support them and help to make the adoption a success which is what everyone wants it to be.

In any case, I'd call your HV and ask her to come and see you at home on the basis that the SW has raised a concern about his speech and take it from there. She might feel there is no problem, or that there is a minor problem that she can give you advice for or otherwise she can refer you to a SALT. She may even be willing to do a comprehensive assessment looking at all aspects of your DS's development which is useful either in demonstrating to your SW that there is clearly nothing wrong which should bring an end to her comments or that he is having some problems that can now be addressed.

It is worth staying on the right side of your SW not least because you need her to say nice things about you when she writes her report. Therefore, always appear willing to seek and accept support (even if you can't see a problem). It won't be long before the process is complete and you can do things your own way.

Good luck.

The Baby Talk book is very good

No adoption experience but DS was slow to talk and is still behind his peers
HV referred us for a hearing check where all was fine and they said he didn't need speech therapy

Kew, presumably your social worker is not qualified in the field of speech and language therapy, nor does she have a degree in child language acquisition, so is clearly pushing the boundaries of her expertise by pontificating on the language development of children adopted from overseas.

FWIW, I've had one early talker (complete sentences well before 2nd birthday), one average talker (telegraphic sentences at 2) and one late talker (not putting two words together at 2, pretty much only said 'Byebye' until just before her 2nd birthday. She is now highly articulate and won't shut up.

All these three were fished out of the same gene pool, so who knows what was going on? Normal children's speech (even speech at the fringes of normal development) may span the whole range from freakishly early to borderline problems, and any child may be at different points on that continuum at different stages in their development. With children growing up bilingual you're effectively doubling the range of possible variability because of the two language factor, and I would have thought you'd get some similar effects with children switching from one language environment to another.

It's complete nonsense to make blanket propositions that children adopted from overseas will either talk early or late. It is perfectly possible that your ds maybe entirely within the normal range of development, but your SW is certainly not qualified to assess this. Frankly I doubt if even an SLT would give you a definitive answer at this stage. Short of talking to him a lot and giving him lots of chances to use his language, there's probably not much intervention you could do atm.

A further thought is he clearly right-handed, or is he lh or still ambidextrous? Handedness is linked to language acquisition my early talkers were strongly RH from an early age, my late talker LH (and still is). Brain wiring and speech are hugely complicated and still little-understood areas -- it really pees me off that the world and its dog thinks it knows all about it purely on the basis of being able to talk themselves.

Grr on your behalf.

icecream - I think I've gone from one extreme to the other with these two sw's. I think it a wearing process generally but not helped by trying to impute problems that really aren't there. Anyone who has met my DS will tell you that he really doesn't currently have any problem with the possible exception of his speech. I know that may change but I'll deal with that when specific problems present themselves.

The focus on medical problems seems bizarre to me for a child who is patently obviously extremely healthy - he was a 26 week premmie with institutional delays and is now completely caught up (he saw a paed who gave him a full developmental assesment 3 months afetr coming home and he had caught up all his institutional delays then).

HAve only seen a HV once and that was becasue they were copied on the pards assessment and hadn't realised DS existed!

Think I will call the HV and ask for an assesment.

Sounds like a right PITA Kew.

Just want to echo what others have said about talking - in my extensive experience of being battered by caring gently for 2 year olds, I have noticed that as vocab increases, pronunciation can sometimes slip, stammering starts, syllables get dropped. I'm not a SALT, my only experience is in childcare, I am qualified for almost nothing but what you describe doesn't sound very unusual to me.

Is your SW young or recently qualified? She sounds very keen to do everything by the book, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but being so thorough must be highly tiresome for you, and she does sound a bit unimaginitive.

I remember your 'my beautiful boy passed his MOT' thread.

If GP is an arse, is it worth changing practices?

the thing is - I know she means well and a lot of what she says is true - just not applicable to us. I took custody of DS in Dec 06 I suppose I just resent having these conversations still. No way around that I guess. She really isn't bad by many standards and in fact as a home study SW would be excellent. She just leaves me feeling a little inadequate - can;t put my finger on why. (And I'm bored with cleaning the house in a rush on a Friday morning!)

Will read the babytalk book though.

I would love to WT but its the only multi-GP practice in the area and therefore has better sevrices. I do see other GP's in the practice now and two of them seem very pleasant so I just try to see them.

To be fair that particular GP was an arse because she didn't approve of me, no reason to beleive she isn't a very compteant GP.