To think some posters are naive about SS?

[fudgeraisinbiscuit]

I see many posts where people seem to believe either that SS will offer support and that parents who are loving and coping but struggling can contact them for a hand-hold, or posts where people believe a not ideal yet normal situation can and should be reported.

AIBU to think posters are naive about what SS actually do?

myusernamewastakenbyme, all because in space of a few weeks, we had moved home, moved schools, i had been made redundant from my job and i had split with there dad after 14years together. So the children were acting up a little, one of them was telling fibs and i had told SS all they needed was time to adjust, and i was proven correct, after around 6months they had settled down and were getting on.just fine.
But during that time all SS did was make my life harder, more stressful and were not at all helpful. My ds1 who was 10 at the time broke his wrist after falling over on the ice outside, they actually blamed me for it!! Like i was supposed to somehow have stopped it, my youngest daughter was constantly having small bumps and knocks as she was very clumsy, they claimed she wasnt supervised properly, found out not long after she has dyspraxia so it was nothing i was or wasnt doing at all.
Never recieved any apology and thats what really gets me, the least they could do is apologise when they get it wrong, they think they are above apologies.

I have always been a little wary of any sort of involvement of SS and I can see how their black and white approach of complete focus on children and what is best for them can be seen. HOWEVER i have had reason to have seen them in action recently and they have been utterly amazing. They have said some tough to face things, they have threatened removal of the child but honestly it was all appropriate and I am GLAD they did it. It moved someone I know on tremendously when she was stuck in an emotional vacuum. They have also been great in terms of realising what her ex is like and getting her away, child into school without ex consent (and threats of court orders, abduction etc in background). I know some of the things they have to do are tough on the parent and you can get ones that are not great at what they do and stressed out or just overloaded but honestly in a dept i know is advertising for at least 4 staff including management in a county with many issues and deep criticism in the past they are doing a fantastic job.

Claw001, re your earlier post. Doesn't even make sense does it? Your GP had signed ds off school and referred to CAMHS, yet SW accused you of causing risk of emotional harm??!!! Shouldn't it have been the GP who was causing emotional harm, not you? Can any Sw on here explain that please? I'd love to know the answer because I had similar and my SW was never able to explain. Any explanations please?

september usually social workers are not allocated to people with whom they are likely to have personal contact, this does happen sometimes, in my experience they are usually swapped out at this point. I think it would be fine to ask for a new worker on this basis, if it hasn't happened they may be short staffed, they haven't thought it through yet or the worker may have expertise they thought would be useful.

In my case I only have praise for SS.
They have supported me after I asked for help.
Got me a support worker who in turn got me onto a course to understand my sons behaviour.

I know people have vastly different experiences but they really helped me, even when a malicious referral was made against me, they shut it down really quickly (same day) and reassured me that I was doing everything I needed to do for myself and my son.

It could be that it was perceived that you were keeping your child off school for your own benefit, rather than the child's, which is emotional abuse. This would be especially true if the sws thought you were 'dr shopping' i.e. repeatedly changing GPs until you found one that would do what you wanted (other drs were useless, didn't understand the condition etc) or child didn't present as you described to other adults.

Aunt it didn’t make any sense. The only ‘risk’ of emotional harm was actually from the SW! insisting my son attend school and trying to bully me into doing so with CP threats!

My GP had written a report saying he was not fit to attend and referred to CAMHS! Once seen by CAMHS they too signed him off!

Thanks midges. They do have a very similar personal experience which in some ways is a good thing as I know they understand our situation but also I think it can create problems as well.

What would be the benefits of a parent keeping their child of school? If I didn’t want him to attend I could Home educate!

I don't know. You would have to ask the parents who have admitted that is why they keep their child off school. But it has been used to hide abuse, or by highly anxious parents, or by parents who have unconventional (sometimes harmful, sometimes not) ideas about child rearing, or parents who can't be parsed to provide care for their other children, so use older children for child care.

Can a social worker please answer whether this would be used as evidence against a family as someone I know has done this and I think it's illegal but they are claiming it's in the interest of the child but I think it could harm the case and do more damage when she should have just reported to SS and not tried to do detective work.

Basically they have concerns about their child's friend and over Xbox online this person has asked their child to ask his friend various questions like does your mum leave you at home alone, has your mum ever smacked you, has she ever kept you off school when you aren't ill? she has done this and recorded the child's answers with her phone.
I'm pretty sure it couldn't be used as evidence anyway but I'm sure must be illegal asking a child they suspected of harm and recording them ?

As I've mentioned before I don't doubt there are many brilliant social workers who don't have a desire to snatch peoples children so i'm not "anti-SS" even though I'd have good reason to be, but I can't help but think it's unhelpful to the people who've been let down by the services instead of helped, to hear people talk of "so called forced adoption" as though its something only abusive parents spout to justify the removal of their children.

If a child is adopted against the parents will and the parents object to the bitter end, the adoption is a forced adoption, be it justified or not. It has been forced on them. The term is the correct one. It does happen it is a thing and its not always the right thing to do.

I do understand the narrative of forced adoption has been used by people who quite frankly should have their children removed (think neglect, abuse etc) but that doesn't take away from the fact it is also forced upon people who with a bit of help could go on to be perfectly good enough parents.

but that doesn't take away from the fact it is also forced upon people who with a bit of help could go on to be perfectly good enough parents

But that isn't actually a fact. I'm not saying that can never happen, but its rare. Perfectly good enough parents don't have their children removed from them for adoption. It's the other way around, even bloody awful parents don't get their children removed from them for adoption.
You're saying that multiple agencies, and court processes are all colluding together to take children from good enough parents. WHY do you think they would do that? What for? For whose benefit?

If a child is removed and adopted against the wishes of the family, there is a good faith belief by those involved that it is best for the child. Can it be wrong? Yes. But the vast majority of the time it is not.

@toomanychilder

It happens and I know this because I'm one of the people it happened to. I'm not going to type out everything I posted on the last page but read it if you like. In short, an experienced senior social worker went over the mountain of paperwork I held along with her manager and legal team and they said adoption was absolutely not the right thing to have done in that case because I had received zero support and no other avenues were explored. It was also very clear the reports on me by one specific social worker was biased and embellished. My case was a risk of emotional harm one, with my XP being the risk.

There will be hundreds potentially thousands of people who have been let down by SS, but its easier to overlook them than believe the services get it wrong more often than they'd admit to.

I read your account. Forgive me for asking, but I seem to remember you posting about it before and you have left out a couple of rather large things thats somewhat change the picture?

But rather than me harping on about my own experience I think its fair to say that even one miscarriage of justice where SS get it wrong is one too many.

Where a child being wrongly separated from its mother is concerned. It shouldn't matter how often or unusually it happens, it should never happen

Asyouare they threatened me with removing my children and they werent at risk of harm from anyone, they just did not agree with my approach to parenting, which given the fact that i did not want to be the over controlling over bearing parent my mother was which held me back from reaching my potential, and it has worked all 4 are doing really well. My eldest 19 is a manager of a pub, and has worked very hard to get there. My 16 year old is on her way to a teaching degree once she has done the access courses and she is, as her tutor has said one of the most level headed, smart and mature students they have ever had not to mention they are all polite and fairly well behaved..give children time to adjust to change and all will be well, keep pushing and you will push them to a point of no return.
They caused me to become withdrawn depressed and ill. Everything righted itself once they withdrew. What does that say for SS?

I think its fair to say that even one miscarriage of justice where SS get it wrong is one too many.Where a child being wrongly separated from its mother is concerned. It shouldn't matter how often or unusually it happens, it should never happen

But that isn't realistic, is it? People are human and fallible.

IME though most mothers claim they were wrongly seperated from their child. Even after years of support and involvement and continual issues.

I think ‘baby snatchers’ is very harsh term. I don’t think any Sw would intentionally just set out to snatch children!

In my experience, it’s more a case of not having the time or motivation to gather evidence or read reports. Once the ball is rolling, hard for SW to back down and admit mistakes have been made.

There are going to be cases were social workers get it wrong, not by themselves but alongside other professionals, I don't see any way that this can be eliminated, reduced yes but not eliminated. There is no work that is undertaken that has 100% success rate all of the time and it seems completely unrealistic to expect this of social workers undertaking child protection.
So society as a whole has a choice to make do we want to remove fewer DC and run a higher risk of child deaths but keep more families together that might pull round. Or do we want a lower threshold for removal with more families left with the pain of losing birth families and DC.
Even with the best functioning system and I think it is well recognised that the current system is chronically underfunded, mistakes will happen, bad judgements will be made, lies will be accepted as truth, hope will trump realism and fear will sometimes overwhelm objectivity.

Minimising harm is what child protection is often about and often that is about taking the least worst option available.

Midge The bare minimum from any professional should be telling the truth and transparency.

auntethel

I think my post must not have been very clear. When some of these kids are left in the birth family, the cycle continues. Poor parenting, abuse (of all sorts) which is allowed to continue for whatever reason has a long term impact on the child, which then has the potential to impact on their parenting.

Removal of the child to a safe place where their needs can be met is obviously going to be traumatic for everyone but breaking the cycle means that the next generation can be freed from that.

claw001 I agree that truth and transparency important, it is also a problematic area in child protection for a number of reasons. People who harm DC, routinely lie about it, not everyone but many people. Given the consequences of harming DC it isn't surprising that people do this but it does mean that sometimes explanations are given for harm that are accepted and then later found to be false. This means that it can be hard to accept truth about how some harm happens, this can come across to non abusing carers as being cynical and offensive.
In terms of being open, this can be difficult in terms of balancing all of the competing rights of the people involved. There was the example above of the birth mother being very upset that her correspondence to adoptive parents being returned, her wishes for transparency were not being met because the adoptive parents rights to privacy were being guarded. There are on going debates about the court process being confidential with some people wanting open courts and others highlighted to right to privacy of the DC involved.
It should also be noted that truth can be subjective and you can ask two people who witnessed and event what happened and they can give you two different accounts of what happened. Neither is lying they just have different recall of the event. Good note keeping, agreed accounts signed off where possible and differences noted when it is not all help but none will remove the issue completely. Child protection is a very difficult area full greys, not black and white but it has to be faced into for the welfare of DC. It is not simple or easy and cannot have a guaranteed success rate of 100%.

@dailyshite it's the same story with my DDs' birth mum. She's had 4 babies taken off her (including my 2 DDs), as well as 2 stillbirths. It's heartbreaking. She grew up in care and was in many different children's homes as a teenager, and her partner (the birth father of 3 of her DC including my DDs) had a dysfunctional childhood and has serious anger issues. The police are regularly called to their house because of the DV but they can't do without each other.

Apparently, the birth mum enjoys the process of becoming pregnant and having babies, and keeps thinking this time it will be different.

SS had no choice but to remove her DC, because of the DV and her learning difficulties, but the awful thing is that their involvement in her life as a child made her problems worse not better. The background was abusive, but her going into care didn't help at all.

We're breaking the cycle now, as are the respective parents of the other 2 DC, but the damage is very much there to be seen. DD1 (9) has violent meltdowns and she's lashed out at me and DD2 numerous times, as well as trashed the house. She's about to start therapy soon, so I'm hoping that it will help her turn a corner. She's a lovely girl at other times, very loving and well bonded with us.

In defence of SS, they've made mistakes along the way, but, faced with dysfunctional families, it must be so hard to make the right call. Also, they're damned if they do and damned if they don't. Think what happens when a child dies as a result of abuse, they're pilloried for not acting sooner to remove the child.

dailyshite, Well, SS have started a brand new cycle with my children. Two young adults now, and as a direct consequence of SS, one is unable to write, can only sign his name. The other has mental health issues confirmed by a psychiatrist as having been caused by the actions of SS when young. Both have a fear of SS and would never ever ask for help from them in the future. How about that for a cycle?