To think that there should be a lot more support offered for parents who lose their children through social services?

[FedupofbeingtoldIcantusemyname]

I've seen many articles about the fact that quite often parents who lose their children through social services (adoption) will go on to have more and more children, who are usually then removed again. This means the whole cycle goes on and on and more and more children end up in the care system.

I can understand this is often due to the parents trying to replace what they have lost, many of them may have either diagnosed or undiagnosed mental health problems that might have caused them to struggle with parenting in the first place.

IME, social services don't offer enough, or any, support to stop this cycle from being repeated over and over, parents have their children taken and then just left with no thought to what happens next.

I know that their focus is the children, as it should be, and that they have limited resources but Aibu to think that something should be done to help these parents rather than just removing any more children they have?

Apocalypse - these experiences were several years ago when I was a CPN. I'm now in a very different role.

I had lots and lots of the conversations you describe. Many people did. I remember one multi-disciplinary meeting with MH services, drug services and SS where it was made explicitly clear (and sympathetically) that baby would be removed shortly after birth. I had had many conversations with her before the meeting about 'what would happen if ...' and service user knew that she'd be told baby would be removed in the meeting. In the meeting she was agreeing that was the best thing for the unborn baby. She was praised for her insight and calm reaction.

When I was driving her home afterwards I gave more positive feedback about how she was coping.

She was (probably still is but I haven't seen her for years) one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen - genuinely stunning and made most models look plain. She gave me a big smile and whispered 'a secret' that she knew they'd let her keep this baby because of (numerous psychotic beliefs). Every conversation had previously was meaningless in comparison to overwhelming symptoms of mental ill health.

And I completely understood why. If it's a choice between listening to the professionals or listening to psychotic symptoms that give you hope ..

That was the young woman where I was present when her baby was removed. I'll never, ever forget her or her desperate but quiet sobbing pleading to me as someone she knew and trusted. Begging me to make 'them' let her keep her baby. Worst day of my career and one of the worst days of my life if I'm honest. To be part of that situation and know it had to happen but witness her dreadful pain and be helpless to alleviate it because how could anyone?.

The next few hours with just me and her in a private room on a busy and noisy maternity unit with joy all around us and all I could do was hold her (I'm sure lots of people would have comments about professional boundaries etc but I don't care. It was right) will always stay with me.

Sorry, I've just realised that is long and probably upsetting but I've not really spoken about it for years and it all came out.

And do you know what I think is particularly nuts?

Removing children on the grounds that their parent's council house isn't appropriate.

Surely it would be better for everyone to remove the council at that point.

Mum going through - So sorry to hear the story of you and your DCs. It is strange how many words and phrases in your post are the same type as what happened around me.
Without being specific about other details, there were several times where the abusive and violent man "mysteriously" appeared where women and children were to be at certain times
I was a child at the time of this incident. I was not one of the removed children. I was put through some really awful stuff. I heard and saw a lot of the fighting with the violent man. I stepped in a few times. A child doing what SWs were scared to do.

No-one ever asked me how I was or how I felt about the goings on. If a SW's duty is to children why was I not even considered? How much thought went into how all this affected me. I am told that it was around this time that I changed! Not sure what that means.

Welsh my Sw won't allow me at LAC reviews , the children were apparently "living too close " to where the reviews were held at some point when they were together and even though neither now live in the area where the reviews are held I'm still not allowed. I can't fight this issue any longer , I've put in complaints and it gets overlooked. I put in a complaint last month about the lack of communication from my Sw it took them 20 days to reply to that . I only found out today that they moved my daughter into a new placement 7 WEEKS ago!! I text the Sw, I ask her how my children are and she takes days to reply if at all . It's taken since the 6th April to get today's meeting which is meant to be the 3 way meeting with the Sw and the lac reviewing officer. I feel like I'm banging my head against a brick wall. At Xmas my daughter missed 2 contacts (I only get 6 times a year ! ) the 1st due to another child in placement being ill and the 2nd made the week after the Sw gave the carer the wrong details for the contact centre. so my daughter didn't get her presents until 12th January. Then Easter Is my Daughters birthday too , the Sw went onto annual leave over Xmas without sorting Easter eggs or cards for my children. Management were involved in that. Then they moved my son and the Sw was told by her manager to send me a letter which she didn't do and the manager involved her manager at that point and called a meeting with myself, herself and the Sw and she told me she had ordered the Sw to do this letter and it wasn't good enough that she hadn't.

My kids were split up last summer and since then only see each other every 2 months with me. They are apparently always asking about each other to the Sw and my 12 yr old has asked for a photo of his sister so he doesn't forget what she looks like ! I asked Today for more contact for them and I was told they haven't got plans to do this but then the IRO backtracked and said he would look at asking the carers to facilitate this but the children live so far it might not be possible. This isn't Their faults but they are being almost punished by not being allowed to have a proper siblings rship .

I didn't have support before this. I had never had ss in my life before they took my kids. My son told a teacher something serious at school , I was in a domestic violence rship but he wasn't living with me due to this . They took the kids and 2 weeks after before I had chance to work with ss he threatened to take the children from contact. Bang we was in court at 5pm on a Friday night during Euro 2012 til 10pm. Child protection started. He wouldn't work with them and I was scared to go it alone coz I was petrified of what was going on. I was holding onto life by a hair. I didn't get assessments . 4 months into what turned into an 8 month court case we split , the carer one night after contact told me ".... you do realise you will never get the kids home whilst you are with him don't you?" 2 days later I asked him to move further away and we split . I went thru the court case alone. The words "forever family" in the court room killed me off , I'm my children's forever family , no one can love those kids like I love them ! My first barrister was working for the LA she told me to give them my kids and we would fight contact ! I got rid of her and had another one in the final hearing who asked me if I wanted to have 1 child home . How can I choose between my kids?
I had a psychologist in court who said in her statement to the judge that for a child to keep their family bond they need fortnightly contact , they gave me 6 times a year which works out once every other month ! My kids are almost like strangers and I get reminded of this at every meeting. I was told by the LAC officer today "I'm birth Mum but I ain't Mum , I don't take care of the kids on a daily basis .... Yeah thanks for reminding me !!

The position I'm in now , I won't get the kids back together , but how does a parent fight to have one back and leave the other?? My ex is now in prison in Australia. I haven't had a rship since 2013 and I'm not the person I was then . I have had to find the strength to fight all this. Some days I wonder how I actually do fight it? is it a tactic by ss to push birth parents to give up? leave them in foster care rather than try to get them home because it feels like it !!

mumgoing
It's heartbreaking. Not that the system exists and obviously there are many cases where the children should be in care. I think there should be a SW for every woman who has a child removed.

mum That is just heartbreaking. I wish there was something I could do to help.

Don't give up. If they offer you one, I would take it because then you can prove you're capable of having them.

Could you pay for a psychological assessment privately? It might count for something if a psychologist thinks you are mentally fit to parent?

I fully agree with you apocalypse. I was told sws should have a maximum 20 cases , my Sw at one point had 28 cases !!! how realistically can 1 person help 28 famillies successfully ?!! social workers are still human at the end of the day and the system is messed up.
My LA are actually in a bad state atm shit has hit the fan in a huge way. My Sw I felt was really good when she first took the job. Everytime I rang she was in the office. I never had to chase her. She even agreed to come to my sisters wedding so the children could be apart of it. She did try her best for a while and it all went downhill once she took on child protection cases. No way can anyone give their best to help a family when they have so much to deal with. At one point my Sw was asked a question about my child and she couldn't even remember her age ! They must have so much on their plates , I wouldn't do the job if they paid me £1000 a minute lol .

the grounds that their parent's council house isn't appropriate

Yeah that doesn't happen.

Mumgoingthroughtorture that sounds horrendous. Your social worker sounds incompetent.

Goneto the problem I've found with ss (not. sure if this applies) but it doesn't matter what situation you are in now , they still use the past against you. I guess coz they have given so many children back who have then gone onto kill or hurt their children.

My son actually asked the Sw himself to come home to me last year. They had his wishes and feelings and she didn't even need to ask. Problem is I have a worker writing absolutely everything down in contact and I feel I can't say anything to the kids coz I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't. My then 5 year old DD asked me 2 weeks after they were took "mummy is it coz you don't want us anymore why we can't come home ?" that broke me , those words will haunt me til the day I die. I find myself having to not answer the children for fear of the repercussions and in turn this has probably made the kids think I don't want them !

I maybe could look into the assessment tho. Ive done level one and level 2 of a domestic abuse course and doing level 3 in Sept. I am in the process of doing a confidence course atm. I have had the Sw tell me herself they shouldn't have taken the kids the way they did but she obviously won't stand up and say that.
I have held my hands up many times and have said I could've done a lot differently. I'm not one to shunt blame all I want now though is the opportunity to right my wrongs. But it's not the LA's plan to help me do this.

Well she's leaving our LA in 2 weeks I'm hoping my next Sw is going to at least keep me informed about my children. It's got that bad that I now have anxiety about phones because the Sw only ever rang me to tell me bad news. They've moved my son usually. I don't get calls to say anything else so now I'm scared to answer the phone to anyone coz I assume it's bad news !

mum inexcusably shit is the only way to describe how your case has been handled. Unfortunately, whilst I wouldn't say it's normal, incredibly rare isn't something I would describe it as.

Professor Karen Broadhurst is a researcher in this area and she agrees with you OP when she says: ‘The key issue is that England doesn’t have any statutory requirements for post-removal support.’

This is just dreadful.

www.telegraph.co.uk/women/mother-tongue/8349748/Social-services-took-my-children.html

No it isn't rare. The kids guardian (official voice for the children) told ss he wanted the kids found a Forever home and not moved around coz he knows of too many cases where kids are shipped out and then bought back once a LA placement comes up and he didn't want this for my kids. But this and more has happened. 6 times my son has been moved. He trusts no one !! He's angry , playing up and doesn't like the Sw. Ss were already referred to the highest judge in the court by our judge due to their failings in the proceedings. It took them 8 months instead of 6 months and still walked into court with absolutely no idea what was happening with my kids. Someone had gone onto leave and left important emails unopened in an inbox regarding placements for my kids. It took them 9 months to find a forever home and 18 months later they found a problem with the carers (again this is hush hush) and moved my kids and this broke my sons heart. They were perfect carers for my kids. They called them Mum and Dad and they were apart of a lovely family and almost overnight the kids were ripped away again. I don't think my son has got over this .

It just makes me wonder coz these are meant to be the people PROTECTING my kids , yet they are causing more damage to them !

Thank you MrsDeVere and others for the thoughts. I wouldn't wish this on my worst nightmare and I have said all along all I want is for my kids to be happy , if that's not with me I accept that , I would gladly give up my fight for my kids if I knew they were happy and with people who love them and it was their choice ! Not thru choice but as a parent I just want the best for my kids .

mum have you spoken to the Family Support Group or got a solicitor involved? I have read other threads on here who have done those things and it has saved them losing the children. There maybe something that could be done. I really hope so, for all your sakes.

Lurkedforever what sort of things have you seen on plans which irked you?

Lady Stark re You think magistrates and judges agree to grant care orders without seeing that all appropriate support has been offered to parents? It's the LAW if you read the Neuberger case of 2013 (I will link it for you if you need me to) you will see that actually that seems to be exactly what happened for a long time - the judgement of a senior court lambasting both SS for not providing information about why children were being removed AND lambasting judges for being shoddy and issuing orders without the proper information over a period of years. There are more recent cases where social workers have been lambasted for lying to courts and changing evidence. There is more recent work being done by judges in relation to the system.

In other jurisdictions open adoptions are far more common and these require that children maintain face to face relationships with their biological parents as this is seen as beneficial for the children. And presumably the bio mother too and I wonder if this would also be a way of preventing the multiple babies being taken, if the mother knew that they would continue to have a relationship? Research has been done in the UK backs the fact that it is of benefit to children to maintain the relationship (assessed on a case by case basis) and I am not sure why this hasn't found its way into policy?

Yes, you are right!

They have also apparently been a force for change over the years, through campaigning.

It is correct that SW will focus upon the children as that is their role.

People can access counselling via their GP and especially would be referred without doubt for losing a child.

I've never ever known a child to be removed when it wasn't absolutely necessary, I will agree that once they have moved out of mums care it can be very hard to get the children returned.

Usually because they are settled, doing very well in school.......

The fact that children present problematic in placements is usually linked to what they have experienced prior to being looked after.

mogon I'd rather not go into specifics. But I've seen more than one where the recommendations for contact are at odds with the evidence, and every other professionals view. In terms of sibling contact, mum/ parental contact, and sometimes in terms of granting contact for the abusive bastard that was responsible for it all to start with. And then when they are ordered aren't adhered to. I've sat in on meetings/ court/ read files/ documents where vital evidence or other files aren't available. Or where another agency hasn't been informed of the meeting. Or indeed not being informed myself of a meeting, or informed far too late. Where clients are berated for not attending eg mh appointments, when it's been scheduled to clash with contact or an agency meeting the client can't miss. Where a client has been given improvements/ changes to make, but insufficient support to do so. I think it's very rare, if ever, it's deliberate. Just down to pressure and lack of resources: Still not good enough for the people whose life it is.

I truly don't mean it's a regular practice to balls up, or that the sw is the one to blame. I know that it's far more complicated than that. And quite often when the sw is responsible for some mistakes it is due to too little time and funding, and no access to the resources the client actually needs. Time and again I meet people who needed a bit of relatively cheap support years ago. Instead they can't get it till they are in a mess, and not suprisingly it doesn't magically make them perfect.

Teen care leavers who understandably don't have all the skills to cope. But there's fuck all help until they are really struggling when it is either too late, or mum folds under the scrutiny.

I think too there are lots of minor details that make up the bigger picture. Eg a mum who still hasn't had the mh care that was the root cause supported. The kids who haven't had the mh care to support the problems from home and the trauma of leaving that home supported. And then you review supervised contact and observe they don't interact and behave like the Walton's. Or not taking into account that it's often better to leave an older child with mental stability, even if it's not perfect and the physical side is far off perfect, than it is to take them into care and give them just physical stability instead.

I've also met incompetent and sometimes downright twattish sw's. And the problem is that short of it being a big media case, they aren't always held accountable. Possibly because the LA are scared of the backlash. I do genuinely believe that it's a tiny minority who fit that description, but because they tend to just get moved to another LA, they appear more numerous than they are. I don't think they are the main issue though, they are too few in number: I think most incompetent sw's are the unwitting representative of all the pressures and missing resources to help the client.

I've never ever known a child to be removed when it wasn't absolutely necessary

So what. I've grown completely unimpressed with this claim. One would hope it was rare for something so horrific to happen. Your (and others) anecdotal claim that in your view you haven't known it to happen is...meaningless.

And it's hard to get children back with their mum once they've gone. What is that supposed to mean? Hard??? Hard like a euphemism for 'they are kept away from their mother one second longer than is appropriate or necessary, in a country where looked-after children are languishing for lack of proper care and being failed right left and centre.

No, they're not being kept for one second longer than is necessary, are they. It's more like days, weeks, months and even perhaps years. That's an outrage. And you use a word like 'hard'. [hmmm] These are children you're talking about. Mothers who have a right to have their children with them unless there is a jolly good reason why not. Who may have turned their lives around and this is (to use your wording) 'difficult' for SS to see, for some inexplicable reason?

poster mogonfoxnight

I can tell you now if open adoptions were made mandorty children would sit in care more so than they do now I have no plans to expose my daughter to the people who sexually abused her and of that was the plan before we adopted we simply wouldn't have

Open adoptions are common in the US because it's often the BM who are choosing the family leading the adoption in the first place it's not often because they have abused the child and have been removed

Really, open adoptions aren't as great as you'd think morgon, don't assume it's a better way.

Open adoption means the BP don't give permission for children to move on and turn adopters into long term foster carers

Also it can also give scope for the BP to re abuse the children I have seen this when I fostered children and they were having contact with birth parents