To think (hope) Eastenders portrayal of social services (Lexi & Lola story) is wrong?

[MoonlightShadows]

I am watching it at the moment and am finding the Lexi/Lola storyline quite disturbing, I can't imagine social services really carry on like this and think it's an unfair portrayal.

So isn't it the fault of the SS for moving the child out of the borough they know that they have to facilitate contact and are supposed to make it as easy as possibly for both the parents and child, after all, they have taken the child so why should the BP have to pay twice, losing child and having to travel to see them.

Ok most and inc myself would go for option b which would be to place less stress on the child, i would walk to the ends of the earth for any one of mine and tbh i walked the route often because i didn't have the money for buses.

Did you have to travel with DS or was it a contact worker.
They should have used a car not the fucking tube.

Might have saved time and stress all round.

Sorry you asked earlier about my experience.. here 'tis, lol

My experience with SS

I don't know tbh, i guess everything they fail on needs to be brought to their attention and hopefully acted upon.

I can't believe that you had to do all the running around, to be honest, and not get anything for your time and travelling, i think would be bound to taint the whole thing for you. hope things got easier after contact workers were used.

FWIW are you surmising she didn't want to get out of bed/want to change the contact times to better suit the child, or were you told by her personally, or the SW? To be fair she probably gave not a shit about your situation, probably wanted to make the SS suffer, giving no thought of the knock on effect on you and DS.
I don't think for one moment that all parents are good and all SS interventions are evil/conspiracies to remove a child to give them up for adoption ect ect.. I'm not that biased or gullible.
I think the outcome may have been changed if you had been able to speak to her personally, without SS there, i know most of the FC's i dealt with were more than happy to deal with me direct and it was a lot more relaxed and i could see the others' point of view better than getting it third hand with bits added on.
I've heard lies told about FC's who have explained the truth when i have spoken to them, and i believed them 100%.

Anyway, i agree you shouldn't have had to do all that, you should have been told about contact workers from the beginning. Fact is you weren't and i would have kicked up a right stink, because you are not only your own voice but also DS's.

Oh were you a kinship carer sorry i just read your post properly i do apologise

I understand what you say, totally.

I suppose there may have been a chance that she felt she had been pitted against you. Can't have been easy for either of you. I clearly remember one of the SW's saying 'Refuse to let your DM have DD, or you will lose DD and DM will control contact' .. and 'If DM applies she will get DD and you won't, tell her to back down'.. I didn't think about it rationally at the time, and given that we had had a very difficult relationship in the past, i made snap decisions. In the cold light of day DM would have allowed totally free open ended contact. Another thing to kick myself over :( They made me feel like i was pitted against my own mother.

I'm sorry to hear about situations such as yours, because i know women who have walked out and left DC's, then come back years later and created problems by saying 'you were forcefully taken from me, i didn't want to lose you' to ease their own guilt.
I don't know why people choose to self sabotage, then lay the blame at others' feet despite being given every aid, every opportunity.
Sure you can make mistakes...

Are you sure that she hasn't got this rotten view of you, and believes you 'won' her DS, and can't now bear to see him with someone else? Not saying that feeling is right, or unselfish, she should be able to swallow those feelings, to visit DS, even if she doesn't like you.

I'm sure you don't hang around during contact telling her what she's doing wrong ect? So she would have no reason to feel the way she does.

I've also known very manipulative kinship carers, (passive aggressives) and they make contact so difficult in the end the BP walks away and says 'I can't cope with this abuse i'll wait till DC's are old enough to come and see me, i'll explain then'

Very complex. Very complicated. And yes, each case is very sad.

This was a suggestion made a while back, not sure if it ever made it close to being considered as a viable option.

Any social worker who has worked in child protection know that the
only way that social services can protect children legally is either
with an EPO [ Emergency Protection Order] which lasts a few days or
with an ICO [ Interim care order]

The former gives you very limited time to judge whether the local
authority needs to take over the care of a child to make them safe and
the latter for anyone who has been through it is long winded and
traumatic, and a far cry from supporting families.

When I mean anyone, I include in this, the child, the parents and the
social workers.

Most social workers want to support families and want to keep children
at home with their parents. There are a few that revel in care
proceedings but they shouldn't get publicity it's the good honest ones
that should.

Some children are placed on interim care orders after very little is
known of the family, others after social services have known the
family for some time.

But in most cases there could be an alternative if only the legal
profession advised it and that is that the local authority [social
services] could share parental responsibility with the parents for a
temporary period of, say, 6 months during which time they could really
get to know the family and work out ways of supporting the parents.

The court process is not only a horrible experience for everyone
concerned but is time consuming and extremely costly. The time and
costs of a case also has a knock on effect on supporting other
families and giving resources to them. With an ageing population we
cannot afford to have such poorly cost effective systems that often
lead to greater conflict between parents and social workers.

I realise the subject of this topic has moved on a bit now but I'm a social worker and so subscribe to Community Care which is a website/magazine full of social work articles and found this - www.communitycare.co.uk/Articles/09/10/2012/118586/fury-over-eastenders-misleading-social-work-storyline.htm

Which at least proves that a hugh proportion of social workers were unhappy about the unfair and dangerous portrayal of social workers on easties!!!

Of course they're not going to be happy.

But how do you think parents feel every time they're demonised by the actors on tv portraying the parent/parents and showing them as drug users/alcoholics/child beaters/abusers? And that this is the reason they lose their kids?

Because not every child taken is taken from an abuser.
Mistakes ARE made.

I had to when even my friends who knew me 100% were well kids don't just get taken for no reason do they, don't they have to prove the allegations??

How dya think we like being tarred with the same brush as whats shown in TV land?

Suck it up, buttercup.

thingsthat im gobsmacked but youve changed my mind.

in your last post you make a really valid point

The British Association of Social Workers also condemned the storyline, accusing BBC producers of being "too lazy and arrogant" to get their portrayal of the child protection process right.

One social worker in a looked-after team said the soap's portrayal of her profession had reduced her and a colleague to tears.

Well your profession reduces kids and families to tears
And how are the Beeb supposed to get it all right? Most of it is held behind closed doors, there's no transparency.

LOL i have my moments.

Even my family asked and asked 'Was there more to DD being taken'
They just couldn't believe it, i didn't drink, didn't take drugs, she wasn't covered in bruises scars or cigarette burns..

TV isn't always an accurate portrayal but it IS powerful
Sadly not always in the way that makes everyone happy.
Be thankful most soaps show SW's as people who come in nicely and kindly asking 'Is there anything we can do to help' and not 'sorry we can't offer you that there's no money unless its for a LAC.. so we'll take the child, then they will be entitled to it' and thats the truth as i've lived it.

Well its almost blow for blow as what happened to me.

Does this mean i have a right to be disgusted?

DD wasn't a baby though, frighteningly she COULD speak for herself and still wasn't listened to..

Sort of :) Its aimed at anyone interested enough to be reading.

I'm sorry SW's don't like how they're being portrayed but life's unfair sometimes.

Sure their profession has lasted many many years without being troubled by such trivial things as soaps and sure it will carry on for years to come, maybe though, just maybe, some watching it will buck up their ideas if the SW reminds them of the person they see when they look in the mirror.

And if it affects just one of those people then it has helped many service users, IMO

Thats very true.

It makes people more frightened you mean, that is a good point, they are also less likely to seek help.

But if it happened to me, i can't be the only one and this stuff has simply got to be happening all over the place.

Most of these people feel alone. If not for the internet and groups like Families For Justice ect, i would have felt very alone, not being able to disclose a lot of things,

that program and the internet may have the effect of raising awareness whether in the right or wrong way, it will have different effects on different people.

But the fact is that many people think you have to tell a child every day that they're worthless, or stupid, or hit them, sexually abuse them, leave them in the same nappy all day, burn them with fags, have them crawling round in needles and tin foil wrappers, that is simply not the case.

So maybe it will enlighten people who think that injustice doesn't happen because the family court is closed so they (the victims) are not supposed to tell anyone, they can't sue, they can't go to the papers..
They have to rely on a self regulating complaints system, staffed by people who work closely with the people you're complaining about...

Well the Lola and Lexi storyline carries on true to form. An over bearing SW who procured a baby illegally.

1. Social worker assaulted Lola and baby - lunged towards her and snatched baby off her. Common law offence of assault. Lola acted in self-defence and in order to attempt to prevent her baby being stolen illegally.

2. Police Emergency Protection Powers under Children Act 1989 S46 were not properly utilised. Mother was not informed that baby was being taken under PPO, and no contact by police appears to have been made with mother over the weekend to explain the situation:

CA 1989 S46 says:

Removal and accommodation of children by police in cases of emergency

(4) As soon as is reasonably practicable after taking a child into police protection, the constable concerned shall take such steps as are reasonably practicable to inform?
(a) the child?s parents;
(b) every person who is not a parent of his but who has parental responsibility for him; and
(c) any other person with whom the child was living immediately before being taken into police protection,
of the steps that he has taken under this section with respect to the child, the reasons for taking them and the further steps that may be taken with respect to him under this section.
There was no emergency. There was no adequate attempt to place the baby with a family member. Billy certainly couldn't be regarded as incapable because he had drunk 'a couple of beers' - this would probably not be enough to make him unfit to drive a motor car, so why would it make him unfit to care for a child? Many parents have 'a couple of beers' of an evening!

3. PPO under S46 has a maxium duration of 72 hours.

CA1989 S46(6) says:
(6) No child may be kept in police protection for more than 72 hours.
On the assumption that Eastenders works in 'real-time' (how else can it work, when the plot stretches over decades?) the baby needed to be returned to Lola by 8.30pm Monday evening, yet she went to Social Services offices on Monday afternoon, to be refused return of baby and told that she should attend court for an ICO hearing tomorrow. The baby is now illegally held by Social Services.

4. Under CPR 23.7 (b) the period of service for an Interim Care Order is three days: (b) except where another time limit is specified in these Rules or a practice direction, must in any event be served at least 3 days before the court is to deal with the application. This can be abriged by a judge, but we see no evidence of this.
5. Indeed, there is no service of a sealed court document at all, just a social worker telling her she has to attend court tomorrow. This is not proper notice of a hearing, and the court will not have the jurisdiction to make the order sought by Social Services, though it undoubtedly will.

Maybe they applied for an Ex Parte emergency protection order

I believe that is missing from the list

And as for assaulting the mother and child i have seen them drag a mother who wouldn't let go of her baby.

Carry on denying it happens and turn a blind eye to it. Where have i seen that before, oh arrrrrr in the case of the very well know sleb who is now plastered all over the TV (JS)

Sorry but the law is not always adhered to.

I was not informed that DD had run away until 48 hours later when they found her.
No school reports or photos,
I was excluded from discussions regarding her health care.
I wasn't told she had been assaulted or disclosed sexual abuse to the SW and contact worker until the court statement appeared in front of me some time later.

The police turned up to serve a PPO on me .. they didn't even know why just blindly signed and delivered it, they had to ask me wtf was going on.

No attempt at all on the part of the SS was made during the entire proceedings to place DD with any relative.

Hell i'm just now figuring out that EE are selling my story albeit changing a few bits and bobs, wonder where my royalties are..