To wonder about all the press on Social Services taking children away?

[goldbracelet]

From good families and parents for no good reason. It is media hype or is there truth in it?

Talking with friends recently, some say they are careful about what they say to the GP for fear of what goes down on record. For example, they would think twice before saying something along the lines of, "I'm finding it hard to cope with my young children while sick with flu (or whatever illness)".

Amy social workers out there who could comment? Is it true that 95% of children are never returned to their parents once removed?

Scary. I can't believe this could happen.

Ok - it looks like people are posting their own experience so here's mine.

I am 14 weeks pregnant. Both dh and I are in excellent health. We have high IQs. We have perfect family histories health wise. Dh is an ex sports international. I have never smoked or taken drugs. No alcohol consumed during this pregnancy. Folic acid taken from 3 months before ttc ing. Excellent diet.

Basically if you were looking for a child to adopt to order you would take my unborn baby.

At 6 weeks pregnant it looked very very likely I would miscarry. Very likely. We were sent away for two weeks to see what happened and then brought back to re-scan. During those two weeks I grieved for my lost baby.

And then we came back and the baby was fine. I, on the other hand, was bit of a mess. As far as I was concerned my baby was gone. And all this was just prolonging the agony.

Went to my booking in scan at the midwife. Tried to explain my mix of emotions. She was lovely. Made me feel better.

Anyway, today had my scan and so got hold of my notes. The midwife had written "Planned baby. Delighted. Very distressed over PV bleed. Concerned about future bleeding. Husband supportive."

So that is my experience. I went to a medical professional for support. I got it. She didn't try and steal my child.

It is only one person's experience but I wanted to post it - just to give a balance really.

What a brilliant thread. I feel like I can ease off my drum banging a little.

I would also be interested to know where this 8 storey family court is. You make it sound like some evil factory. The Principal Registry must be the largest family court in the UK and it is definitely not 8 stories. But there are about 25 courts. But that I think is unique to London.

In my view we desparately need more courts and more judges. Delay is one of the worst things about the system, particularly because if things go wrong we need to correct them swiftly.

I hope if you have had dealings with a barrister who lied that you do succeed in having that person disbarred. Because that would be terrible. I may have got the wrong end of the stick in court but I would never lie - why would I? What's in it for me? I get paid whether or not I win or lose a case. Difficult in most cases to work out who has 'won' anyway.

Here's what I think:
The secrecy or perceived secrecy of the family courts does them no favours when it comes to public opinion
I could not be a SW and I deeply admire SWs who are out there every day, under pressure, under stress and under-resourced trying to do their best.
When things do go wrong the consequences are enormous and on a societal level we struggle to cope with them - see the first point above. What we do not know, we fear.
Sometimes, even when the system works, families resent the intrusion, fear and upheaval of being involved in the system. I hear that and understand it. But honestly? In that case the system has worked. In secret's case, the court was satisfied her Dg was safe and he was returned. I'm glad he was. But her DD's ex was a nasty bastard (knowledge from previous threads). And I'm glad someone checked up on that child. Sorry it was tough for secret and dd. but glad for their child.

So, cap lock on secret?

I agree that the perception that family courts are 'secret' rather than 'private' is a massive problem. It enables Hemming et al to keep on riding their creaky bandwagon.

I have now sadly come to the conclusion that so great is the damage done by this irresponsible and dangerous scaremongering, is to throw the doors open wide to all.

I say 'sadly' because every time children are asked if they would be in favour of more access to court hearings about their cases, they say 'please don't'.

But maybe there is some way to allow more public involvement but tightening up on any identification of the children. But probably a pipe dream. But leaving the situation as it is doesn't seem to be a winner either.

It was interesting to me that Camilla Cavendish suddenly stopped writing about one of her pet cases after she did attend a court hearing. I think she commented after hearing an expert report about the family that 'maybe' the parents hadn't told her everything. There are always many versions of the 'truth' and anyone who looks no further than the Daily Mail, frankly does not deserve any respect.

SS are not child snatches. Yes there would be mistakes made by some SW just like every proffesion (DR's, Teachers, office workers etc).

If SS are child snatchers and want babies to meet adoption targets why are my children with me?

I give birth to a little boy when I was 19.
He was my second born. My first died of cot death 19 months earlier.

My little boy was removed from my care aged 1day old. It was a long drawn out process lasting all pregnancy. My little boy has now been adopted. Looking back it was the best thing for him. I couldn,t look after myself let alone a baby. SS protected him.

I sorted myself out after the final hearing and got counseling.

I then fell pregnant. I phoned SS and a SW came out. I went through all of the assesments again. DD was placed on child protection under risk of neglect.

When DD was 1year old SS closed the case.

I'm again pregnant and SS have been out when I was 10 weeks pregnant. There is no risks and once again the case is closed.

Yes SW can make mistakes but most of them(cant say all) want what is best for the child. It is the courts that remove children not SS.

Some posts on here might be putting people off asking for help. So I just wanted to say not all SW are bad and most of them hate removing children. Yes when I had my little boy removed I hated the SW but he was doing his job which was protecting children.

Thank you for that post Boom

mysecretworld

did you read what you posted?

The judge said the mother had endured a harrowing childhood and adolescence which left her not only vulnerable but 'devoid of parenting instinct or intuition'.
She has three other children, who have also been taken into care and placed for adoption. The court heard that she had 'previous unhappy relationships with men'.
She is seeing another man at the minute, which she 'believes promises better things'. However, he is a drug addict.

She does not sound like a fit mother to me. If a drug addict for a partner 'promisses better things' how bad were her previous relationships.

Boomboomboom - thank you so much for posting that. I think that if anyone is reading this thread and getting frightened by all the hysteria, your post is the one that is most likely to make them stop and think. If you are in the middle of the system, and already fearful and mistrustful, it would be very easy to dismiss all the posts by people who work, or have worked, in this field as just people trying to protect the system they work for. But your very honest post can't be dismissed as that and hopefully it might provide a good counterbalance to all the rubbish on this thread.

I think you are a very brave and generous woman - I can't imagine many people in your position have the courage and insight to reach a place where they can speak so positively of social services.

Spero - I'm glad it isn't just me who is wracking my brains about the 8 floor, 25-courtroom baby-stealing factory. I haven't been to the PR for years and couldn't remember how many floors it had. In fact, the only court building of that height that I know of is Camberwell Green magistrates' court which has 7 floors! There are probably plenty of court buildings which have 25 rooms, including numbered consultation rooms, but if family courts had 25 judges sitting on a daily basis then I would imagine that the whole process would run a bit more smoothly and speedily.

Boomboomboom, thank you too

Anyone that lets John hemming get involved really need to look at the decision they are making. He advocates people lying to as and hiding. Which can put the children in physical danger and increase likely hood of them being removed. It is disgusting.

mysecretworld I am glad you have yourself clued up as during your last thread you had no idea what yup of facility your dd was in when she left her boyfriend. Which would suggest to me you didn't know the details. Glad you seem to know a bit more now. But you are scaremongering. There could be someone reading this that needs help but doesn't ask for it because of why they have read here.

And a lot of it is false. Please think about a possible child that you are helping put at risk because the parents are scared by your posts.

mysecretworld I am very sorry to hear your daughter and grandson had such a horrific experience. No one is denying mistakes happen nor accusing you of sharing your experience inaccurately. However, obsessively spamming posting these links is not helping your case. Reasoned debate over how child protection policies and procedures could be improved? Definitley! Spamming and one-sided stories from the Daily Hell? No, thank you. It won't engage debate, it will outrage everyone.

I was going to post my experience with social services but not sure I should now as this thread is SO unproductive at this point.

Mysecretworld I can see that you're hurting so I'm not intending to argue with you, but I feel I ought to warn you about your daughter's intention to take action for libel and slander. It is true that local authority legal reps aren't exempt from libel and slander laws, but I can't imagine them being in a position where they'd be able to say anything defamatory. It's not defamatory for them to put their client's case, to eg say to a parent something like 'you did neglect/beat the child, didn't you' even if it later turns out they didn't. The only way I can really see this happening is if they were claiming to have personal knowledge of the events, in which case they shouldn't have been doing the case anyway. If they were, you should complain to their professional association. I find it hard to believe the judge would allow it though.

I only mention this because I know a lot of people in your daughter's position want to bring defamation cases, but it's extremely expensive and difficult. I have heard anecdotally of people being fleeced by unscrupulous lawyers who take money from people in this position without telling them they don't have a case. People who've already been to hell and back don't need this too. One more piece of advice- if she does decide to try and bring a case, you mentioned that drug tests had shown she'd never taken drugs. I don't think this is the case, they would only show she hadn't taken them for X period. I've never seen a test sensitive enough to give an entire lifetime. Was it a hair strand test? I'm not saying your daughter did take drugs btw, but if she does try and bring a case for defamation she should be very careful about saying the drugs test proved she'd been clean for life.

Oh and fwiw, I say this as someone who does have reservations about the system. I worked for a year in a family law firm as a trainee, mostly on care cases. In that time, I did see one case that everyone involved agreed was fairly borderline, and where the social workers concerned did seem to have it in for the mother. This was in 2008. The others, though, were pretty much no brainers. A lot of the parents were just useless. I don't mean that in a pejorative way, though obviously it sounds like it. I just mean they couldn't parent anymore than they could go to the moon. It wasn't their fault, they were just inadequate. Many had very low IQs. The case of the learning disabled woman upthread sounds terribly cruel, but some people geniunely have such low capabilities that they wouldn't necessarily know to deal with a medical emergency, or prepare baby food/formula in a safe way. Not their fault and no blame whatsoever should attach to them, but there could be fatal consequences. I have a sister with SEN and she would be such a person, so I'm not speaking from a position of ignorance here. Anyway, sometimes the social workers in these cases were unnecessarily obnoxious and antagonistic, in my view, but it made no difference when the parents just had no chance at all.

People are mentioning medical conditions causing fractures etc. These do exist, but they are rare. And the tests for them are quite painful, I was told. If a child is at A and E with an unexplained fracture, or several, the unfortunate truth is that statistically, it is not very likely that this happened because they have brittle bones. The vast, vast majority of the time it's because somebody did it to them, either by accident or design. With that in mind, it is questionable at best to put an already injured child through painful tests to rule out a very rare and unlikely disease, when the more obvious explanation is staring you in the face. It's not an easy one.

For the record, I have a cousin training to be an SW and I love her dearly, so I am not in the 'all SWs are evil' camp.

Flangelina - your posts were very interesting and balanced - thank you.

well IME SW exaggerate, twist facts, are not impartial between parents, choose vocabulary to paint the worst possible picture, and outright lie to make themselves look good.
Of course it must depend on the individual and their area, and what they are up against.

I've had contact with children's social services three times since I had my son seven years ago. I've also had contact with adult social services.

My experience is that they are very reluctant to assess without concerns for neglect or abuse, because they are so overstretched in my area that those children who need support due to high risk are the one's getting help.

The first time I met them (CSS), they came out in error as I had been referred by a midwife as I was pregnant with my second, with a toddler, and quite disabled by what was then considered to be SPD. They did an assessment any way and were quite happy that I had plenty of support and did me a referral to adult services to be assessed for care to make my life a bit easier. Adult services assessor was lovely, and I did get some care, but it was not suitable for my needs really and ended -unfortunately with my only unpleasant experience of a social worker, but that was more to do with my mental state at the time, and with the fact that the care agency complained that I wasn't in when their carers arrived, I'd given up waiting most of the time, they were very hit and miss and I was basically accused of not deserving of the care, I asked them to leave.

Over the years it has become apparent that actually I have multiple illnesses which have left me pretty much disabled. As my daughter grew it has also become apparent that she has behavioural issues, particularly a lack of risk awareness. I asked again for an assessment from adult social services and met my lovely social worker and two trainees. When we discussed what my needs were it was apparent that I was struggling with my children in some ways so we decided to refer again to children's services. Meanwhile my lovely social worker managed to get me twenty hours care in direct payments and supported me to employ a carer, she has also helped me to make adjustments along the way, taking two and a half hours worth of care and turning it into funding to hire a mobility scooter, then adding a further seven and a half hours on to the twenty when my arrangements for the morning collection of my children fell through.

The children's services came out on a day I was really ill, with my best friend here for support with the kids, I was on a drip at home and ill with a kidney infection, and the lady was really very patient and kind. They had some concerns about my ability to care for the children, but stated they were happy as I have obviously called for appropriate support with this. The outcome of that assessment was a recommendation to refer my DD to CAMHS, something I had been trying to have done for a while without luck. I was able to take the report along to my GP and show him and finally get it moving.

The second time I begged the school to contact them for another assessment, my carer independently contacted them after talking to me about concerns she had about my DD, and the police contacted them due to my DD escaping the house in the middle of the night and eventually knocking on a strangers door. I wanted the assessment because of my daughter's risky behaviour, I was struggling to keep her safe and had no real support other than the care I was getting, and that wasn't enough as she needed watching round the clock obviously, given her night waking and the fact that I cannot take her out and guarantee her safety due to my mobility issues and her running off. I also had housing issues at the time and so they assessed me and found me needing support, but bounced me back to the school as I wasn't high risk enough to warrant my daughter becoming a looked after child. They have left an open door for support regarding appropriate housing and support though, willing to make phone calls and write letters of support, so in my mind they have been as supportive as the can be in the circumstances.

There has never been any mention of taking my children away, or even them being better off with their fathers, they accept that I am disabled but have arranged appropriate support, so despite any concerns have ruled me fit and able to care for them. They have always been exceptionally kind and approachable, and they have opened up doors to get the support I needed. At some point in the future I am considering asking for some respite care for the children, that is how unconcerned I am about them being child snatchers. A lady who has been very helpful to me is a respite carer for them, and she suggested it to me actually, and she has no concerns about them either.

Thanks Cinnabar. I do think this is a very complex issue, and there are lots of problems with the system. Buggered if I know how to solve them, mind. On balance I'm in favour of the family courts opening up, but that brings its own issues too. Additonally, the fact that a child is obviously suffering at home doesn't mean they'll do any better in care, sadly.

Really interesting posts flangelina and rabbits. I am glad to hear of positive experiences and I hope that is reassuring to others.

more like false hope to others from my experience with child social services

i damaged my back and was really struggling with my 4 children, i told dds nursery head teacher, she rtang sure start who offered to take dd to nursery, nursery kept her 15 mins longer so someone could pick her up, sure start rang home start who gave me an emergency support person. i was told social services may help me i rang and asked them, i didnt, but i didnt get a social worker

mysecretworld - how arrogant of you to assume that your experiences are somehow more valid than those of, say, rabbits.

The odd thing about these kind of threads is that those who have had good experiences are able to recognise and sympathise that some people haven't while those who have negative experiences often seem to offer them as proof positive of a corrupt system and just can't or won't accept any other perspective.

Is that because a bad experience is just so traumatic?

I'll chime in as somebody with a positive experience of SS. My exH made malicious complaints that I was neglecting/abusing my DD. They investigated thoroughly, but were always pleasant to deal with. They found his allegations unsubstantiated. He has made all sorts of allegations against SS as a result, and if you listened to him, you'd be told they were biased etc. He said stuff that wasn't true, and he's furious they're not taking him at his word.

SS are actually over run with referrals from ex partners who make false accusations. It is such a massive waste of time and resources as most of them are unfounded. The terrible thing is they are often child protection type referrals which involve the child being interviewed by police and SW and it is so unfair to the children to be dragged into this type of situation.