Social Services are not the Childcatcher (FFS)

[LoopyLoopsPussInBoots]

(Thread about so many threads)

AIBU to think that if you have concerns for the welfare of a child, you don't assess the situation yourself, you let the professionals know so they can evaluate the situation?

I know contact from SS can be daunting and worrying for a parent, but the fear of upsetting an adult, or the fear of repercussions on yourself can NEVER trump the fear of welfare for a child.

Social Services will not just wade in and take children away without very compelling reasons to do so. Please don't be scared of calling them if you think a child is at risk of abuse, whatever form this may take. Don't 'wait and see', don't try to sort it out yourself, don't ask a million people for advice and do nothing, ask the trained and experienced professionals to do their job and assess the situation properly.

FFS!

A nice side-effect of all this is that my disabled son is apparently entitled to practical and financial help from Social Services (because they're not all evil child-catchers) but strangely I don't want to go anywhere near them again.

There are many parents on the SN children board who have had their requests for help turned into spurious CP / Safeguarding investigations in order to put them off asking. It's a fucking outrage.

Agree very much with onagar.
It does seem unrealistic and quite naive when posters effectively say 'chuck in a report, then you'll have done your duty' or whatever, without considering what are likely to be the real effects of hastily thought out, possibly anonymous reports on overstretched Social Services.
I'm sure it's well intentioned and posters seem to think it courageous, etc.
It just doesn't seem very well thought out.

But the problem is that every time a child has died that is not known to social services, it always comes out that others had concerns, but did nothing.

noir,
who appoints and pays the guardians though. i ask because I have a friend who is an independent deprivation of rights assessor i.e she assess people to see if it is right that the council put them in a home against their will etc. As much as I love her i find this a bit dodgy as she is in fact a social worker for the same department and is paid by them, the deprivation of liberty role is just a side role she does when they need to show they have had they claim looked at by an independent person. She trained as a social worker, and did a course lasting two or three weeks to gain the qualification for the deprivation of liberty role. I really do not think this is independent, but this sort of thing would be far easier to question in an open court than a secret one.
And social workers should be prosecuted for making mistakes just as in other fields. And if they mislead a court, child, or parent then they should also be prosecuted.

Yeah, Kelly I take your point about your friend's post in adult services. Whilst Guardians are all social work qualified and will have worked for Local Authority's in the past they are employed by a totally separate body and are not managed by the Local Authority in any way. They have no qualms in going against the Local Authority social worker and in that sense are totally indepenent.

Some social workers feel undermined or offended when Guardians oppose their plans but personally I think its better that a child's future is decided by this level of scrutiny and examination than simply being based on one social workers evidence.

I also agree with you that there is a big issue about transparency, again for social work to be taken seriously (and for some of the good work we do to be appreciated) the public need to know more. Im not sure how we go about resolving that but I do agree it needs to be looked at. Social workers should have nothing to hide, no professional should.

This thread is really interesting, its helpful to be reminded of the reasons people don't report to social services as obviously social workers are consumed (and at times overhwlemed) by the stuff that IS getting reported.

I had the fear of god put into me when DS1 had an accident as a baby. The accident resulted in a month in hospital. It was only as we were leaving, one of the nurses said that I "wasn't to worry" as all of them had told SS that I was parenting well. SS hadn't contacted me, and I was in the hospital with DS1 the whole time, so presumably there was some kind of clandestine surveillance occurring. I was left terrified, as on the inital admission to casualty, one of the doctors had said that my "story" (or as I knew it, the FACTS) didn't make sense, and that my child had been "thrown against a wall." He hadn't. My considered and reasonable response to this accusation, made while my 10 month old baby was still being stabilised in resuscitation, was to faint.

So not even any contact with actual SS, but I still have a deep and abiding mistrust of the way powers are used and accusations are made.

Its probably also worth mentioning that the average lifespan (career-span?!) of a social worker is only 8 years, quite often because social workers share the frustration of the public/ clients. There is a lot of stuff on this thread that makes sense to me and I'm not gonna dismiss it just cos its a thankless/tough/low status job.

Thanks noir, that is really interesting.

noir - to what extent do you think it is a problem that experienced social workers are promoted out of casework?

Also, what do you think would need to happen to reduce the high turnover?

Is there an extent to which the stressful nature of the job makes a high turnover inevitable?

Being promoted out of frontline pratice is a major issue for child protection social work in the UK and one that is hopefully being addressed by the Munro Review. An experienced social worker has nowhere to progress to except management or laterally into other kinds of social work (disabilities, youth offending etc), either way they are taken away from front line child protection work so what we're left with is a workforce of young, newly qualified to moderately experienced workers. It is a crying shame that we lose so many skilled, experienced workers.

I think a high turnover is inevitable to an extent, nobody can deal with abused children (and the associated aggressive, confrontational families not to mention the aggressive and confrtonational professionals!) for 25 - 30 years without either suffering some kind of secondary trauma themselves or becoming very very hardened.. but surely we can manage more that 8 measley years?!

I think in order for it to change social work needs to become respected profession like it is in Ireland, Canada, Europe.. but in order for that to happen all the stuff in this thread needs to happen: more accountability, more transparency, for less mistakes to be made. Social workers have to acknowledge their faults and be proactive in addressing them, in my opinion they (we) need to keep up to date with the latest research and models of best practice, they need to read Serious Case Reviews, take on board complaints/ criticism, say sorry when they get it wrong, constantly reflect on their practice and want to improve through continual learning and development. A surgeon doesn't just qualify and go 'ok im set for life' they need to constantly update their skills as the stakes are too high to get it wrong.

Mskeith: READ remarks, THEN comment. If, despite several clear explanations, you still can't grasp the simple difference between THE and A, ask a grown up.

Are you with me yet or do I need hand puppets and flash cards?

Thanks again, noir :)

Great to know there are people like you thinking about this stuff and in a position to make a difference.

MrsStephenFry, do tell me, are you a social worker?

Perhaps you are going to tell me I can't read either, but you may notice a slight difference between your original post:

Personally, I think your original point rather silly, whether 'the' or 'a'. If someone believes that the social work system, as a whole, is not a Good Thing, why would they want to become part of it? I imagine most people would rather feel proud of what they do. Including social workers, who presumably think that they do a good job - or if they don't think that, they leave. And no, it would not be a usual response to think that 'social workers are a Bad Thing therefore I will join them to improve them' - for a start, that would be highly unrealistic.

Brick wall + head= me @ stupid responses. Give me strength.

OK Mrs Fry, just point out where the 'the' is in your original post.

Or you could just apologise and accept that you were talking nonsense?

In many cases social workers do invaluable work.

But the thing I find a bit worrying about the refrain 'Don't get involved, call SS' is the way it professionalises the enforcement of social norms, and in doing so disempowers communities by implying that no-one is capable of moral judgement unless they have some kind of officially-sanctioned training in humans' interactions with one another.

There's this prevailing sense that we have no right, as individuals, to make a value judgement about how well or badly our neighbours are behaving, but must leave it to the professionals. I think while in specific cases it may be easier or even better to do so (for example if there is violence involved) looking at the bigger picture the tendency to abdicate responsibility within our communities like this is corrosive to any sense of social cohesion or shared moral values.

Basically we're saying 'No, you haven't got the right training, so you don't know how to tell the difference between right and wrong in the way your neighbours are behaving. Leave it to the professionals.' Every time we do this, more of a community's capacity to regulate itself through social norms gets eroded, and replaced by an intrusive, ever-growing bureaucracy that we're then powerless to do without, as we've forgotten how to look to one another for a sense of what's appropriate and acceptable.

LadyITR, quite.

The Fran Lyon case highlighted a particularly bad bunch of over-zealous penpushers.

Sadly they are the ones that get the publicity (quite rightly in that case) but it also taints the brilliant work done on a daily basis by the all too few, overstretched good ones.

OP YANBU.

In my experience (rather then just knowledge of one incident, or what I've read in the papers), SS do not just sweep in and snatch children, it's a long drawn out process and parents are often given lots of help and support in the meantime.

No one involved in the decision to remove a child is happy about it, but we absolutely have to but the child first, the horror stories occur when this doesn't happen.

It worries me that there is such an anti-SS view on MN. At least one thread on here fell very close into abetting a mother hoodwink the SS and that made me feel very uncomfortable.

at mention of "adoption targets", because children languishing in the care system or boomeranging between crap parents and foster care is soooo much better? No, I don't think so.

Do any MNers really imagine that Social Services really do 'sweep in and snatch the children'? I think MNers are rather less credulous and naive than that, really.

OP, in the field and context that I live and sometimes work, social services have screwed up lives.

They certainly messed up my family's for quite some time and I would think very carefully at imposing a bunch of ignorant egotistic liars on another family.

haven't read all the posts, but I am a foster carer and my own experience has been that I have yet to meet a social worker who has removed a child without very good reason (and even then it is the judge that decides). If anything, the ones i have met have been far too liberal and into protecting the parents rights and should have removed children long before they actually did.

I will admit I havent read the whole thread, quite frankly its too long and i feel rather poop today!! However, I have experience with ss, and the person who called them on me could have done more to help me/get me the help i desperately needed. As for my sw, she asked why I have toys in my lounge, and said they shouldn't be there Makes me wonder how much training she has recieved, or is she just massivley lacking in common sense?

Other than that, on the whole, I think they do provide an invaluble service, but personally wouldn't call them unless I had serious concerns, that I genuinly couldn't help with.

'I've also found them less than supportive when I had involvement with them. In fact from a financial and mental health POV they made things ten times harder for me.'

I second that.

So.... there are some great SWs, clearly Social Services provide an invaluable service, but everyone knows that many people have had negative experiences, mistakes are sometimes made, and seemingly there's huge variability in terms of how skilled or experienced or adept social workers are.
And obviously, if you're in the uncomfortable situation of wondering whether to report something to Social Services, you're unlikely to know who's going to deal with it or how. So you need to be as clear and accurate as possible if you're reporting.
Which is probably why posters ask on MN whether and how they should report.