Delicate situation

[PeapodBurgundy]

Not sure how to play this one at all, so I thought I'd ask here for want of somewhere else.

We've recently moved house (FINALLY got the keys about 3 weeks ago, moved in last week once it was fit-ish to live in). The people next door are lovely, and I think we're going to get along well. They also have children one of whom is slightly older than our son, so lots of potential for them to play together etc.

The issue I'm facing at the moment, is they have an older son (I think they said he's 7) who has low functioning ASD. He's a climber, escapes often. He ends up in our garden several times a day, which as a rule I don't mind in the slightest, (he and his younger sister have already been over a few times to play in the garden with our son when OH is at work and I'm out there to keep an eye that they're playing on the lawn where it's safe not on the patio where it isn't) but we're currently renovating the house, so there are often things which are unsafe in the back garden (think work horses which he's been found sitting on, circular saws, chisels etc). These are all put away between uses so our own son can play in the garden, but there are times where the tools etc are out in the garden and OH is in the house fitting whichever thing he's just made/cut etc. It's impractical to lock away the tools every time he comes back into the house as he's building a kitchen from scratch, so there are lots of ins and outs to make adjustments, it would make the job take months. We keep the gate shut, but he's coming in over the shed roof (one giant building split between both houses, I assume the old coal shed and outhouse so not something we can move). We have no problem with him being there when OH is out to keep an eye, and once the garden is set up properly with the toys etc once the renovations are done he's welcome to come and go as he pleases, it's not a territorial thing, I'm just petrified he's going to hurt himself, as he has no fear or sense of danger as far as I can see.
The first few times it happened I just took him back to his own garden, but when it kept happening, I started giving the back door a quick knock to let them know I'd brought him out of our garden because there are tools etc lying about. It hasn't stopped him coming over (he's non-verbal and I don't know him well enough to know how much of what I say to him he's able to understand). At the moment there are a load of MASSIVE wooden boards under a tarp for the kitchen, and some big items waiting for the council to collect to scrap piled up on the patio, with nowhere else to go, if they fell on him they could seriously hurt him. I've just tried to tie them to the wall of the house, but they're still not secure enough I'd be confident a child could play safely near them.
I feel I need to speak with his Mam about my concerns, but I don't want to offend or upset her. She has a lot on her plate (home alone most of the day with him and two others), I don't want it to come across as critical or judgey, or a 'get orf my laand' attitude, because that's not the case, but the comments about the garden not being safe at the moment don't seem to be registering. I need her to try something different to keep him out of the garden just in the short term as I can't be out there all of the time watching her son; we have baby number 2 due on Monday, so I'm up to my neck trying to get as much of the house sorted as I can before we're working around a toddler AND a newborn.

Any tips on how to handle things without causing a rift will be gratefully received (or if there's something obvious I haven't thought about regarding making the garden safe/secure that would be welcomed too). Sorry for the War and Peace effort!!

If his back in your garden again tomorrow you need to take him straight back and tell his parents this cannot continue and your concerned for his safety. If it still continues then you need to ring SS.

I have a disabled child and it is really hard to find out if there is help available and how to access it. If they are struggling the social work team should be able to assess them and get them in touch with the right people to help them. They should be able to access respite and help modifying the building to keep their son safe.

I'm going to go through the thread with OH tonight, and see if he can find out if/which school they attend and flag it with them first.

I'll be honest this phrasing really concerned me. It sounded like your DH was going to find out through his work. My apologies if I have misunderstood.

I still remain concerned that you are choosing to wait until Schools return in 2 weeks instead of following good practice today.

You really do need to raise this with children’s services

Also I do understand the reluctance to involve social services but let me put it to you slightly differently: if the child was being looked after by a professional body (eg supported living) as opposed to his parents, would you have second thoughts in raising safety concerns with the proper channels?

How did they respond to DH?

If you don't enforce this stopping, you are enabling his mothers neglect. She is neglecting him. He should not have been able to escape and climb on the roof more than once. I'm sorry, but you're really not helping this little boy, who could fall and break his neck at any point. You should have stepped up a lot sooner.
If your DH chat with the Mother doesn't show any improvement, it's your duty to report this to SS. There's another 2 weeks of the holidays left yet, even if you found out which school he goes to that's 2 weeks too long to wait. Highly likely school will report this to SS anyway, what else are they going to do?

I’d chat to the Mum first and stress how concerned you are , if you refer to social services I’d expect relations with your neighbour to be damaged irreparably

I don't get this at all. Why all the pussyfooting round reluctance to raise a concern for a child with social services? School can't do anything except report to social services and at the moment you don't even know which school he goes to. Possible a special one? The healthy growing team or whatever they are called aren't going to do anything either except report to SS. It's not the remit of school or HV or healthy growing, it's for SS. With your background as you say I'm utterly baffled st your reluctance to step in and do something to help. SS aren't going to swoop in and remove the child on the back of an anonymous phone call. They will contact the mother and ask her what's happening and assess from there. There's a child at risk and you have the power to help him but are choosing to dilly dally. Makes no sense. I've reported to SS before and have been reported myself. Malicious reports by my stbexh. They came to see me, told me what had been reported, asked for my version and agreed that it was malicious reporting and shit stirring by my stbexh who was well known to them for this kind of behaviour. No further action. You're not doing this little boy any favours here, or yourself if he hurts himself on your property.

I wish parents of DC with low functioning ASD would supervise them properly, and I say that as someone who's high functioning. We had a little girl upstairs from us who used to sit at the open window, and we know she wasn't supervised in the bath, as she flooded our kitchen a few times, she could have drowned.

Hope your husbands visit went well?

I don't understand all the detail of the dangers in your garden, no have no obligation to make your garden safe (apart from for your own kids etc obviously). You are doing building work and you have the right to leave anything you like anywhere on your property.

Also don't understand why everyone is viewing social services so negatively, they are there to help and support. If I was in the position this woman is in I'd be delighted to have some help. I have various friends in my ASD parents support group who have been reported to SS and it has been incredibly helpful for them cause they weren't getting help any other way, it was the moment their issues were taken seriously.

If you phone NSCPP they have a confidential help line where you can explain the situation and they can advise what to do, and they can even report things to the relevant department for you.

Also this is not about keeping the boy out until the work is finished it is about keeping everyone out all the time because it is your garden.

I don't understand all the detail of the dangers in your garden, no have no obligation to make your garden safe (apart from for your own kids etc obviously). You are doing building work and you have the right to leave anything you like anywhere on your property.

Yes you do. But you would be deemed responsible under occupiers liability if someone, invited or not, injures themselves whilst on your property.

In effect the neighbour child is guilty of trespass. If there's repeated trespass OP can apply for an injunction however trespass itself is not an offence. The person who flouted the resulting injunction would then be liable to criminal prosecution for contempt of court. That's how the legal route could go one way if it came to that.

If you ask a trespasser to leave they should leave immediately by the route you specify. If they won't leave you are within your rights to use 'reasonable force' to eject them.

Reading through the law on this and some cases advice appears to be that you must always be prepared for trespassers, especially young ones and children cannot always read warning signs and may not realise how dangerous things like barbed wire are, if they injure themselves, even if they are not meant to be on your land, you could be responsible. On the one hand a court case would look at the fact that the mom knew her child was regularly escaping and that you'd told her multiple times and told her that the garden wasn't necessarily safe and weigh that up against the fact that you had taken reasonable steps to make the building equipment safe in the garden and warned the mother about it but she had not put in place any new measures that had stopped the repeated trespassing. That would just be weighed up in court if it ever went there. There's a limit of course what OP can do eg fence heights for example - she can't just erect a 15 ft anti-climb fence like the ones used in secure acute mental health units, it would never get past Planning and of course, why should OP have to do anything like that - the mother should be doing it, at her cost. However, the fences and other physical deterrants should be the secondary line of 'defence' - the mother should be taking all reasonable steps to secure the actual property - windows and doors - to stop the child even getting out at all. Even then there'll be the odd slip-up but others with children with additional needs on this thread are managing it. They're managing it because despite the difficulty, these parents are highly motivated to keep their children safe and are entirely capable of working out the potential risks and resulting injuries that could befall their child if they got out. This mom isn't doing that at all. It's negligent.

From this risk point of view if noting else, the mum MUST be made to keep her son secure - I feel OP you're taking on WAY too much responsibility and if you are doing that, then you've GOT to make the garden safe for this child (as nuts as that sounds) - so dealing with it and stopping it completely surely is the only sensible option?

For me, just having someone keep coming into my garden would absolutely piss me off so much, I'd be absolutely livid with this woman. She's utterly irresponsible and selfish to not give a wotsit about it and be happy for her son to keep escaping risking injury, death, and preventing your reasonable expectation of having quiet enjoyment of your own property! What if he did enter your property and was killed? Is it worth being softly softly when your risk is so high? There is NO WAY I'd be having that BS going on. The third time that child appeared I'd have gone apeshit at the parent (sorry, but I would). Especially if I was going to be having a baby - goodness sakes, how are you going to and why should you have to constantly be watching out for this child appearing in your garden thundering about, potentially climbing in through a bedroom window and into your house? No. No. bloody. way.

I hope you can sort this out OP.

Hope you husband was able to get through to them OP. It just beggars belief how negligent some parents can be.

Probably a minor point in the scheme of things, but I hate how nearly everyone is saying this child's mum is to blame, the mum is neglecting him, OP needs to be firm with his mum or call SS so they can support his mum. The OP makes it fairly clear there's a dad in this picture too. It's bad enough that wider society blames everything to do with children on mums, without all the mums on a parenting website joining in too.

How on earth is a 7 year old who likes to escape out of her sight for long enough to escape unnoticed? She needs to keep watch when he’s outside, or keep the doors and windows locked when he is inside!

Yes you do. But you would be deemed responsible under occupiers liability if someone, invited or not, injures themselves whilst on your property

Stop talking bullshit

I don’t get the reluctance to report this to social services. It’s not the reporters job to prove a safeguarding issue, the idea is that a concern is reported and then social services investigate that concern.

I’m not sure what you’re worried about in relation to that, its really not the end of the world and the family won’t be vilified because of a reported concern, more likely they’ll get support that they may very much need.

Every day I've been here, he's been in the garden 3-4 times

Well, that certainly seems to back up suspicions as to why the last owners left

I also hope your DH got through to them, but frankly I doubt it; sooner or later they'll probably claim you're harassing them over "nothing at all" and that the problem is actually you

I repeat what was said earlier upthread, if you've spoken to mum /dad of child. And they leave child unsupervised long enough to climb your unsafe shed over fences, unaware that he has absconded, .... repeatedly! For a 7 year old, with Special needs or not, (SN exacerbates risks), it is safeguarding -neglect- and you need to let CSD know. You can be factual about it, and ass that child has SN and mum /dad seem tired but unaware he is missing each time.

CSD don't go all in guns blazing you know. They are capable of assessing situ and seeing if mum (or dad) is worn out and needs more support. Including they can suggest & sometimes fund telecare door alarms and make recommendations to help, if child is In Need. It's not for the school to fix any of this, their remit is education.

If you are unsure ring NSPCC for advice, who will tell you what other PP & I have said.

If you find him in your back garden unsupervised and uninvited again, ( after any of times you told them about it from day one ) and his parents aren't out shouting in streets looking for him, you have a duty to ring CSD. Especially as this is a repeated occurance and he is particularly vulnerable.

Whether your garden is safe or not (it's unsafe as you have building works going on which your NDN know about, he is climbing an old shed too) this 7 year old child has absconded and his parents don't care and aren't aware. This is a boy that could get seriously hurt one day.

It's not 'being nice', not to report if it continues, it is colluding.

You sound lovely OP, but there's a responsibility here that you have in observing it and his parents have in preventing it, that they are not meeting.

Child neglect (& abuse) goes on unreported because people don't care, the child isn't known about, or nice neighbours and friends think 'they're such a nice family' , 'it's hard for them' or that it's None of My Business (i.e. it's someone else's responsibility to say something) .

*say not ass

@Kitkatmonster puts it well.

Social services have a disabilities team, as oppose to child protection.

They can be very helpful and can carry out needs assessments for both child and carer.

I understand that there's an appalling lack of consistency and availability of support and services for parents of children with additional needs - it's an appalling state of affairs and incredibly unacceptable. I feel for all parents who have to struggle to work their way through a system which is so overstretched and often falls short of what's really needed in each case.

But what this woman needs to do isn't anything that she can't do herself, entirely by herself, it's just home security. Buy and fit some locks/ bolts/ window restricters that prevent windows being opened beyond a certain width, keep the keys on you. It's wilfully negligent and completely reckless but entirely within her gift to address.