to ask if a school would be made aware of previous social service involvement?

[Wonderingwoe]

Just that really -
Would they be made aware when a child joins if they had been involved historically? But not currently?

Depends, if in same area I would guess it will be on a file somewhere. Depends how joined up SW, health and education are in your area.

It was a serious accident
It was a fall and resulted in a serious head injury which needed an emergency operation
She was under 1 at the time so lots of checks had to be done including an initial assessment but then it was all closed so just wondering if the school would know?
Just out of curiosity really as wondered how they would find out about it as no current involvement obviously and assumed they would need my consent for access to gp records etc

Al

No they wouldn't. speaking as social worker

Thankyou for your reply above OP
So only current involvement would be mentioned to a school, there are no kind of background social service / health visitor checks prior to a child starting school?
It was a very traumatic experience for me and it's taken a long time to move on from, I just hate the thought of school staff even knowing about it as makes me think about it all over again 😢

There are so many children starting schools at various times etc and they can't check each one. It's illegal to give this information without parental consent. The ONLY time that this can be overridden is when a school has concerns that a child maybe suffering significant harm and makes contact with social service. Please relax and spend the time focusing on settling child into school. . Happy to answer any questions via pm if that helps.

Are you sure they actually opened a case fully?

We were assessed then told there was no case to open so there will be no record of it.

It was still very scary. I remember how scared I was when I started some counselling some time after, I wanted to talk about the impact on me but was convinced they'd call SS all over again if I even dribbled out a word about it.

But it does fade, I promise! It's 6 yrs ago now and it doesn't have any effect on my feelings now.

NB I wish they'd actually helped me though. Missed opportunity indeed.

Yes I'm pretty sure they did as they said it was an initial assessment, spoke to health visitor and so on and then closed it.
I remember asking for a copy of the records after and they did send it to me but I disposed of them after as it was too upsetting to read.
This is 4 years ago and in general I don't think about it much, until something like this pops up!
I'm sorry you weren't offered help you needed though, i hope you are okay now.

Well, I think as they decided there was nothing wrong except a horrible accident, I think there would be nothing to report or to share.

It's probably there buried somewhere in social services's records, and the only way it will get dragged into the light of day is if there was a current investigation and they needed to see if there was a pattern or anything like that.

Please don't worry.

The trauma of the accident and seeing your little one hurt is probably all mixed up with the scaredness of social services.

I felt the terror of some impersonal and flawed system having the power to just take away the little person who was as much part of me as my arm, or heart. Very scary stuff.

Especially when your baby was badly injured and then this must have seemed one more way that they could be ripped away from you... But it didn't happen, not at all, and not for you either. So keep hold of that thought.

I'm ok now thanks.

But no thanks to the SS person who did the assessment.

They said that if they ever had a report of stbxh hurting me again, like from the police, they'd hold me accountable for failing to protect my baby, and that she personally had taken away children in this situation.

Which was vile, as that meant I was powerless to get help or leave stbxh, as if he hit me or created any kind of disturbance SS would take my baby.

So, whatever she intended to do that day, what she did was to hand my abuser even more power and cut off any escape route.

It stopped me (& therefore DS) from getting out of a very bad situation for a lot longer.

I was desperate and needed help. I'd got up the courage to tell someone what he did to me, and instead of help I was threatened and blamed.

I did it on my own though, eventually.

That is horrendous
So they didn't make him leave but expected you to be able to stop his behaviour??
That is truley awful and could have had devastating effects