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?

In fairness, I know someone who, due to mental illness, was not at all safe to be around their children and were in and out of hospital. Social services have been nothing but supportive of the relationship between the parent and children. They have visited frequently assessing the level of risk and have made stipulations regarding supervision, but they have never threatened to take the children (surprising really). They have been sensitive and reassuring. They have provided both home-based play therapy to support the relationships in the home and out of the home parenting direction. And that is just what I have heard about.

Sorry, but why do people believe mumgointhroughtorture's account at all?

All parents always state that it's a conspiracy, they were great parents who made a few tiny mistakes, they were given no notice, social workers are paid money to steal kids etc etc. Just like all men state that their ex-wives are crazy bitches who never let them see the kids.

Even based on the account mumgointhroughtorture has given, I don't see where the social workers actually did anything wrong. Reading between the lines, her partner abused the children and she refused for months to end the relationship, despite SS having custody of the children. I'm not sure how this makes SW evil?

No, all parents don't state they were great parents A11. Many parents who have lost their children to SS will say that they can recognise they weren't in a good place or can see why the children needed different surroundings temporarily. mumgoing hasn't criticised SS for taking her children as such, it is the fact that they have not been returned for years without proper consultation or explanation, despite the fact that the situation triggering the removal has been resolved for years.

Furthermore foster care can be pretty grim, even in a decent foster home. If at all possible, children do better with their biological family. There need to be seriously good reasons why a biological mum can't have her kids. mumgoing is articulate and has disclosed a great deal - and she clearly hasn't got a clue what these supposedly good reasons for withholding her kids are. Her children are suffering and without a stable home. Do you think she would hold back if she had any idea how she could go about getting her children home? She's desperate. Anyway, just because some parents may lie or be deluded doesn't mean none of them should be trusted. Believe it or not, it's not always the parents' fault when children are removed. Sometimes it's down to illness, or a parent being the victim of an abusive relationship. These factors don't necessarily add up to a lying ne-er do well! You sound heartless and judgemental.

A huge amount of support is in place before the child is removed. The parent/s are given every opportunity to keep the child. Some just aren't able to do what they need to (for a variety of reasons) and some, many ime, just don't bother.

With budgets how they are there is nothing left to support the parent after the child is removed, and you can't stop people having children.

I'd love to know which LA's have these magical resources where every support is always offered before removing a child. And the Jesus like sw's who can apparently turn our failing mh services into a suitable service. And even the support that is available is so limited that parents can't access it until they are deemed serious enough.

Yes there are a minority of parents who just won't, no matter what, and some who can't, but there are plenty who could and would if 'every support' was available. But it's not.

If that earlier account is considered "taking responsibility", then I think you made my point for me. If you read between the lines, I think it described a parent losing custody after refusing to end a relationship with a child abuser but it's hard to tell behind all the euphemisms.

Aside from that, I'm basing it on the fact that for years on mumsnet itself there were many posters insisting that SS was a huge conspiracy and even encouraging posters to leave boroughs or the UK to escape SS involvement. Wasn't an MP even involved in it? None of it could be substantiated because it all turned out to be bumf. Some posters on mumsnet still insist constantly that SS will take your kids as quick as blinking.

Where is the evidence that social services are taking people's children prematurely? Where? There's plenty of evidence that they are failing miserably to intervene to protect children. There's plenty of evidence that the support fails much of the time anyway. Additionally, pretty much every single one sided account of a case that ends up in the newspaper in which people insist that it's a huge conspiracy and they did nothing wrong turns out to be complete lies again.

It's easy for anonymous accounts to insist that SS did everything wrong and there was no support given whilst underplaying their own actions. All the better to bolster this idea that SS are out to get you. I don't even get it. When it comes to sexual assault, we believe victims because the statistics say that false claims are low and women are not believed. There are a lot more children being left in abusive homes than are being wrongly removed by SW. There's no reason to assume that people are telling the truth rather than a very skewed version of their own "truth" in which their own actions are easily excused/explained away/faultless.

But this thread is not in relationships, it's in AIBU. Maybe it should be moved and shift into a support thread.

The sheer volume of children on section 20's long term gives a good indication that plenty of parents are told do it voluntarily or we will do it anyway despite the approach predominantly being used when you know you don't have a good enough case for a care order.

I know very few people who claim to be perfect parents. and we do not remove people's children when they are not perfect because the law does not allow us to demand perfect.

Granted a lot of parents are unable to comprehend what is significant abuse and what is not but over all most of the parents I work with do get why their children are removed.

SW's are the same as everybody else there are good and bad there are those who are great at their job and those who are shockingly bad and almost everything in between, there are those who are attracted to the job because they want to do some thing for the most vulnerable in our comunities but their are also those who do so because it's an incredibly powerful position to be in and they have unhealthy desires about that.

There is a reason they have rules, policy and good practise and have to follow them many very good reasons when they don't it places Childrens safety at risk.

Ive never been a SW basher, I was one for long enough so bashing them would make no sense but I am not and never have been a fan of ones who don't operate with transparency and well within the rules and sadly it happens more than people realise (that's one of the reasons family court are getting far more relaxed about covert recordings) The main losers when this happens are the children involved.

I found this interesting

lurked ime of Several LA areas, there IS a huge amount of support before the child is removed. Unless it's in a very serious case where something very bad is going to happen without immediate intervention.

Indeed things are going to be different in other areas. The areas I have experience of are rural/semi rural, and I would have thought (shouldn't make assumptions I know.....) that there would be more services in city and urban areas. We have a lot of voluntary agencies, and some of the support workers do go above and beyond. They will go with parents to any appointments, groups, courses etc. Yes much of it is monitoring and CIN plans etc. I have witnessed again and again parents 'failing' at the most simple of things. Turn up to an appointment. Not parents with high needs either.

I just wanted to add a bit of my story. I have been having problems with my dd for a while. Things hit a crisis point and she was admitted to hospital.
She has autism and MH issues. The urgent help service recommended foster care or a children's home after refusing inpatient mental health treatment. Social services do not believe this is the best option thankfully.

I've managed for 16 years and when I asked for help I felt vaguely threatened. I'm an intelligent, articulate woman. I have a supportive family. I can see how easily it could've gone in another direction.

My SIL went through the trauma of a forced adoption. She was a single parent with bi-polar effective disorder. During her pregnancy she had an average of 6 people contacting her every week, parenting assessments, additional mw appointments, sw meetings etc. She has never been so well and felt so cared about. She loved it because people gave a shit about her. As soon as the baby was born she went into a mother and baby mh unit and baby was removed from there. I have very mixed feelings about what happened. The decision was taken to remove on the basis of a forensic psychologist who spent 3 hours with my SIL and decided that her previous history was such that further mh episodes were a given and it would be unfair on the child to be traumatised by removal - either permanent or temporary when they happened. Only they did not take into account that SIL's terrible history was very much down to her not engaging with medication and taking huge amounts of drugs and alcohol in the past, and for 3 years before she got pregnant she had completely come off all illicit substances and found a medication that suited her and she was compliant with. We had offered to have the child when it was not okay for her to be with her mum - not allowed, too confusing, and CAFCAS put such restrictions on us having her that it was impossible (only seeing birth mum twice a month when we are her carers). Since the day she was removed interest in SIL disappeared and she has not had counselling or any support to come to terms with her loss. It's inhumane. I know services are stretched to breaking point, but in every other scenario when there is such loss, there are bereavement services offered to help. Nothing here. The pain is very real and immense, and I am amazed at the way she's coped. Amazingly she has not had a psychotic episode in the 2 years since...

Sorry MrsD I'm not arguing. Probably not the best time of day for me to be posting mid morning chaos. Sorry if it came across that way.

I have to say I was shocked at the low level of hv presence after having my little boy. I've seen her twice, he's 11months old. Will come back to this later when I can post in a less rushed manner.

nota my area is semi-rural too. But I've also worked with people who have come from cities who didn't get any different support than they would here.

The type of support I'm talking about is early on intervention and support. Places like the homes for young mums who are in situations where they need a bit of help. But they're so few and far between that you can't just get someone a place because they are a pregnant care leaver or are 20 with 2 kids and have no support network and are struggling. You can't offer respite care/ a support worker to a mum with functioning depression or a dc with sn that they are coping with on the surface. The help is only available when it gets serious. And then when the support does come, it comes with constant scrutiny. Of course that scrutiny needs to be there, but the huge stress on the parent somewhat cancels out the benefits of support. My point is that if the resources were allocated more towards prevention and early intervention, the cost, human and financial of fire fighting further down the line would be significantly less.

I also believe it would make it easier to identify earlier those bp's who really can't/ won't provide adequate care for their dc, because there would be less reason to give them time to improve.

Re missing appts and not adhering to actions, ime bp's can be blamed on occasion when it's not their fault. Eg mum not home for sw's visit. Because the sw never got the information that contact got rearranged, and mum is still on her 3 bus journey home from it. And while the sw may later be satisfied the mum wasn't at fault, that report may still stay in the file.

Or when there has been an incompetent sw in the past. They might get shifted off the case or to another LA, but their past reports are still in that clients file. Somebody familiar with that sw might read them with a pinch of salt, someone not will take the clients history at face value. Or when the sw isn't incompetent, but had a case dumped on them that was beyond their current experience. The file doesn't say 'sw made errors here, because he/she is relatively new to the profession, and we shouldn't have dumped this complex case on them along with 14 others'.

That's awful, narnia. And idiotic.

Mrs DeVere

My experience is this:

I've been personally involved in 3 SS interventions through extended family. One sets of parents skipped the country to end SS intervention. The general attitude of surrounding parents (including in school and wider community) was that this was a good thing because of SS are child snatchers.

One set of children was removed temporarily and returned. Other child was removed permanently. All kids should have been permanently removed imo but that's actually not how SS work.

I spent a long time working at a direct services alternative education non profit so I've spent a lot of time around the children and parents. I quit (the sector completely)because it was horrific. Yes, we were underfunded. Yes, it was chaos. Yes, the parents are not "evil" but many did not have the capacity to parent in a non neglectful way and their version of events ALWAYS made us the villain. Always.

Again, I'm not naive. Everyone lies. Parents lie. Teachers lie. Doctors lie. Alleged Rape victims lie. There is no class or cohort of people in society, a section of whom, does not lie. But Do you have some structural evidence that SS on masse lie systematically to remove children? If so, have you considered telling a newspaper? Because we really need to do something about it. If not, then why are these stories automatically believed rather than treated with the skepticism that they should realistically warrant?

Ime too with multiple families, the process has lasted years with hearings in court at intervals stating the parents would have another x number of weeks to engage with this service or turn this aspect around, and a number of those children I would have said were living in actively dangerous situations that could have ended with the child seriously injured or worse at any time. They weren't low level situations. The LA (rural) is desperate not to remove children unless there is no choice since every looked after child represents a huge LA expense.

I've seen situations where the parents were able to cope with huge amounts of daily support going in, but after several years of this and repeated evidence that they couldn't cope when any of that support was weaned away and couldn't do these things independently, the decision had to be made that this level of support just wasn't sustainable indefinitely. In many cases I heard SWs say that months and sometimes years of support had gone into the parents to help them try and turn things around, however they had to stand up for the children's experience of all this time and the multiple chances, and there had to be a point at which the child's need to not live in that situation came first. Its an awful situation and there are no winners.

There's also the overwhelmed services thing that means the high level help is concentrated on the families with the highest needs - when arguably if those services were given to the lower to moderate need families at earlier stages of need who qualify for very little help, then the number of families able to permanently recover and stay together would be much higher.

There is nothing like support for families who have had children removed, it is devastating. Many families would not want or be able to accept support from SS following a removal, they are too hurt and angry and the service is the perpetrator to their distress. I've known playgroups and schools do the best they could but yes, YANBU, there really should be a national agency or group there for this.

a11 I think that part of the reason ss get all the child stealer accusations is because there is a lack of transparency and admission when errors are made.

Where I live a sw screwed up and a child was taken into care who really shouldn't have been, and was later returned. At no point was there any admission from ss that they'd made a mistake. There's also another family whose dc probably should have been taken into care years ago, but again mistakes were made. The child in the former situation would have been v easy to place, the latter would be very hard to place.

Years after the general local consensus is that ss will snatch nice adoptable dc, and don't give a toss about problem dc that nobody wants, if you're a decent good parent they'll take your nice child, if you're a disgrace with kids they don't want to snatch you get endless support.

They don't see it from the inside perspective. Where actually the sw in the first situation shouldn't have been in that position, and that rather than being a lying child snatcher, whoever left the sw to make that decision screwed up. Or that in the latter case more should have been done early on, but if they were taken now the kids would have a worse mental outcome in care. Nor are they aware of all the times ss do get it right, rather any positive experience is considered to be a lucky exception. And yet I think if there had been an actual admission that they fucked up with that first child, people wouldn't assume the worst.

A11 there has been plenty in the papers about this issue and much discussion of how the principle of secret courts (intended to protect children's anonymity) has been exploited to protect SS and free them from having to be publicly accountable for their actions. I'm surprised you aren't aware.