I don't understand all the anxiety about SWs

[Loveweekends10]

I see so many threads on here where people are anxious about social workers. I really don't get it. I can honestly say that before I came on mumsnet I never gave them a second thought.
Is this anxiety whipped up by the media? Is it low confidence in some parents that they don't think they are dong a good enough job with their kids?
I'm also shocked about the amount of people that say they fell out with someone and that person then rang social services to get at them.

I would also like to clear something up about bruises.

There is a lot of research and training out there enabling health/SS people to generally distinguish between bruises/injuries obtained during play, learning to crawl and to also check there's no medical cause for excessive/unusual bruising.

woffling the mother has every right to start a new life with her new husband. You and I could do it tomorrow and nobody would crisize expect controlling people who having screwed up their relationship with their adoptive children wanted a second chance with the children.
If dumping your children whilst you work makes you a bad parent a hell of a lot of childminders would have a great case for custody battles by the same token.

Of course she has the legal right to do whatever she likes, and her child has no voice or chance to protest and be heard, But the grandparents fought and won, also legally. I wonder why?

I've said far too much already but the pint of telling this sorry tale and it was awful for the mother and child involved is that SS said one thing and did another and that canot be justified.

nokidshere,when you take your children to hospital,you would have to put that you are a social worker on their forms.
This would surely at least cause the medical profession to think twice about possibly reporting you.

GothAnneGeddes, the problem with what you wrote is that many mums including myself,and also young mums,are not aware that certain medicines can cause bruising.
That is part of the reason actually,that I wrote what I did.
To inform people of that fact.
If I had know that when my children were younger,it would have helped to put my mind at ease a bit more.

I think I am right in saying,that one of the things that nursery workers are told to look out for is excessive bruising.

Mosman MrsDeVere was right- you always make sure to incorporate the adjective "adoptive".

Noticing bruising is a flag, not a permit to have the child taken into care.
If there is a medical reason, platelet deficiency for example, then it needs investigating as much as if it was abuse so that the child can be supported appropriately.

amillionyears and gothannegeddes interesting you should mention other medications, you may have just explained something that baffled me about 18 months ago! DS was diagnosed with exercise related asthma and put on a Salamol inhaler. He's a lively sporty boy but from then on he went from the occasional bruise caused by football to legs full of bruising with no explanation as to where they came from. He's pretty much off the inhaler now and despite playing even more football than he did then doesn't look like he's been kicked from his ankles to his thighs anymore... Interesting... I need to look this up a bit I think.
As for the SS, I did childcare training in a social sevices family centre many moons ago and can safely say I wouldn't do the job for a gold clock. My experiences there put me off working in childcare totally for about 10 years.

I think it was all the more galling for the fact that theses parents weren't the biological grandparents and that my friend has built a great relationship with her bio father - the one that didn't punch her in the face - and yet often she canot make family events, weddings etc because her son needs to be dropped 200 miles away at his grandparents do they can have their contact visit.

How does the child feel about the situation? Does he want to maintain contact with the GPs? What is happening pre and after school and during holidays to him now, replacing the care that the GPs provided?
Your posts are all about the effect and inconvenience for the mother, not about the child.

FlobbadobbaBOO, exactly!
That is the sorts of medications that I now know were the cause of my childrens excessive bruising.
I always did have at the back of my mind,that if the worst came to the worst, because I have a lot of children,and because they were regularly at the doctors for minor ongoing things,so that they were looked at regularly,and that all the doctors at the surgery got to know me and the children well over the years,that that should have stood me in good stead.

I think nanny has made a really interesting post here. The fear and difficulties an unsubstantiated claim can cause can be incredible.

In an earlier career, I offered support to parents through some very difficult SS situations through work.

The worst I ever dealt with was all within the realms of social service rules. All procedures had been followed, but it was completely immoral.

A young mum who lived with her parents and her DD (six) refused to allow her ex to see her daughter. He was extremely physically and sexually abusive while they were together and that their relationship started when she was just 16. She had a baby when she was 18 and he was late 20s and did thr sensible thing and went hime to her patents. No criminal reports had been filed but were files from WA and she had psychiatric care about thr abuse when she got home and both records which they provided. However, it was deemed insufficient evidence and SS said they believed she was making it all up.

The mother was from a lovely supportive family and had rebuilt her life and was studying to be a midwife at university. But would not follow the court order for access. Her daughter had not seen father since a baby.

Social Services got involved and said she was emotionally abusing her chIld by not allowing access. She still maintained that there was no way she was allowing her daughter to be alone with him or have him in her life. They said she was being obstructiveand putting her child at risk of mental illness by not allowing her to form a relationship with her. I remember at one meeting she showed cigarette burns on her tummy and said to SW, you as asking me to allow my child to have a relationship with someone capable of doing this to a sixteen year old. SW said in a report this was proof she was unbalanced and that she believed she had burned herself.

SS said at if she didn't give him access they would remove the child and give him custody. The woman couldn't believe they would be able to do that to a functional, happy little girl with no issues who lived in a lovely family home and was adamant he wasn't going to be involved in her daughter's life.

S Worker said to be one day that she had a charmed life she need not think she'd get away with this. Almost seemed irrationally jealous of the mother who was very, very pretty. It later emerged that the abusive and very charming father was related to someone quite senior in SS and that he had met the social worker in social settings before...

Went on for more than a year. And then SS did exactly what they threatened. Went into the primary school and took the daughter out of class and gave full custody to a father she had never met. She was 7 by this point. I will never forget the phone call with the mother and her own mother. They were desperate and distraught. SW had said to them they were going to get a taste of their own medicine and see what it was like to fight for access.

I moved jobs a few weeks later but often wonder what happened to the family. It was a heartbreaking case....

The truth is woffling I don't know what his thoughts are its not something you'd raise with a small child in conversation so I can only look at it from the point of view of the trauma it's caused to somebody I care about.
I'm sure he loves his grandparents and would have preferred to go to them over foster care for the 24 hours it took to establish she hadn't kidnapped her own child.

MrsD that's very much how she describes them, first names not mum and dad.

Rowanhart social workers do not have the power to award custody. And I think, though I'm not sure, that a father who was not married to the mother at the time of the birth does not have automatic PR of the child. So there may have been more ins and outs to this case than you were party to.

I don't doubt for a second there are incompetent, lazy or just mistaken SWs, just as there are in all professions. But partial information about complex cases is causing lots of adequate parents unnecessary fear and anxiety and might dissuade them from seeking help they need.

No. They had a court order to do it. And he had fought through the courts or access. It was a court order and then social services got involved due to her refusal...

Tell me about doctors getting to know you... Took DS for something unrelated to sport (for a change) last month, we sat down, the doctor kind of sighed and said "so go on, what have you injured this time?"
I do still know some social workers in the job from my time at the family centre, and remember some of the cases there. At the time I had half a mind to go into social work so took a special interest in their work. i was 17 at the time. Saw some horrific cases of obvious abuse and the social workers had their hands tied with regards to how much they could do. You can almost understand if some of them get jaded with the work, they are damned if they do and damned if they don't most of the time.

They do an incredibly tough job and don't deserve the vitriol they get.
My mum is a social worker, used to do childcare but left it as she got so depressing at the cycle of abuse/deprivation and not being able to break it. I think that series on BBC, 'Protecting our children' clearly showed that removing children is a last resort, the vast majority of times it's in situations of drug or drink abuse.

If

Sorry phone typing is a nightmare!

MrsD I would imagine its no walk in the park but you do tend to be on the back foot once you've punched your teen in face, downhill from there.

I did once get asked about bruising round my dd eyes by a nursery worker.
I said have you looked closely. She said yes. I said its green face paint love! I rubbed it with a tissue and it came off!