Social services..

[CandyCreeper]

Posted recently about my sons school referring me to SS. I had a phone call this evening at 6pm on my landline from what appears to be the LA phone number. Im taking it its social services? (not expecting anything else) but aibu in thinking it is an odd time to call? I missed it as have been in bed with flu this also means my house isnt at its best because im ill, can/will they turned up unannounced??

Kittykat93 Wed 23-Jan-19 21:13:50
I think social workers protecting children are brilliant, not arseholes. What a disgusting thing to say.

What about the ones that used to forcibly take babies and practically sell them?

Or the ones that pimp the kids they are supposed to look after like what went on in those houses in Wimbledon, was it? The sex parties in the brothel.

Or the ones on Jersey where the house & basement was full of burnt bones & teeth?

Or the ones that were involved with Baby P and Victoria Climbie?

Or ones like the one that was involved with me and asked me in the front room in front of my SD abuser and mother whether I'm fine for him to stay in the house?

Forgive me if I don't hold social workers in very high regard.

We have a bit of a mixed bag with SW’s. A couple of CP SW’s were terrible and potentially dangerous, more harm than good (they had no idea or experience of disabilities) Another CP SW was excellent. The disability team were excellent too.

The difficulties we encountered were no knowledge of disabilities or SN. No transparency, writing and sharing inaccurate info, (such as ds did not have any diagnosis) without sharing with parents. Basing their opinions on things other than facts. Had it been shared at the time, rather than after, much ‘confusion’ (and I use the word kindly) could have been avoided.

A huge turn over of staff, within very short periods, leading to missed info, assessments not being written, timescales not being followed, no consistency etc.

However, the OP’s child doesn’t have a disability or SN’s, so it should be pretty straight forward.

My only advice would be to ask for a copy of the criteria, have some knowledge of the process and that it is followed.

claw A huge turnover of staff points to a very badly managed Department. Decent staff will not stay somewhere like that.

Have you called them back yet op?

Easily sorted once you know what they have to say.

candycreeper - seems you do have a few anger issues, maybe a visit would be a good thing

Or the ones on Jersey where the house & basement was full of burnt bones & teeth?

That didn’t actually happen. When it was all tested, it turned out to be all animal bones, none were human.

BejamNostalgia Thu 24-Jan-19 15:41:16
Or the ones on Jersey where the house & basement was full of burnt bones & teeth?

That didn’t actually happen. When it was all tested, it turned out to be all animal bones, none were human.

Really? Said who? There were all kinds of cover ups all over that case.

@BejamNostalgia speaks absolute sense.

I know this is not a laughing matter but I did just LOL at @Frequency's DD's determination to get biscuits!

Oddly, she was allowed biscuits at home. We rarely had them in because I was skint but she got them at Grannie's house on a weekly basis. Tall tales were not her only way of obtaining sugary snacks.

I think it was a mixture of DD wanting biscuits and an over zealous welfare officer who had no training on not asking leading questions and a penchant for over exaggeration. There was often a grain of truth in DD's tales. Clearly, she was never pepper sprayed but she was messing around at the breakfast table which was still set from the night before and she did get a grain of pepper in her eye. By the time DD had embellished the incident to the welfare officer and the welfare officer added her own embellishments TAP were hearing that DD had been pepper sprayed by her sister while I stood idly by doing nothing

We laugh about it now but at the time it was irritating. However, you can't really ask kids not to report concerns to trusted adults can you? So all I could do was roll my eyes and sigh inwardly. It all worked out in the end and TAP were lovely.

marymarkle I totally agree. I don’t know if it’s just my LA or is typical. However, I have heard of many similar stories over on the SN board.

I don’t know if I could blame a badly run dept (in our case) or individual SW’s incompetence. A mixture of both, I think.

@Posterbook the family that live very close to me (ahem

And I agree with @BejamNostalgia!

@User321123 selling babies🤣🤣🤣🤣

Please make sure you have adequate knowledge before posting!!!!

So you complain about the inadequate social workers in the baby P and Victoria C case. Yet here we are having them come out to make sure everything is okay, and that’s wrong too!! Make up your mind, where’s do you stand!!

For what it’s worth OP, when it comes to how clean is your house:

Breakfast bowls, things on the side from making pack lunches and tea now- show you are feeding your children breakfast, dinner and tea
Toys over the floor- shows they have toys and being stimulate (however you don’t want lots of Lego over the floor with a 8 month old baby crawling around)
Chair and washing basket full of ironing- you are cleaning the children’s clothes
1 bed with the sheet removed because dc wet the bed the night before- fine because you removed the wet sheet and are putting on clean
Pillows over th living room floor- fine SW know kids take them off and play with them
Bath full of toys- fine SW know lots of us store them in the bath
WWlll going on when they arrive because you can’t get them to sit down and do their homework- fine because you are trying as you know education is important
Scratches on dc’s hands and knees- SW will understand if you say he fell off his bike

I’m not going to go on but you get the idea. They don’t expect you to have a show home. Trust me BFF and aunts are children protection social workers. You should see bff’s house in the evening! Makes mine look tidy and that’s saying something! They know what a home with children is like!
Also I have bipolar and anxiety and a whole other host of things. Never once have either of them took me aside and ‘we have concerns’. I also know 2 other social workers, one children protection and one who’s team I can’t that’s she’s moved too, but they both have anxiety. I know it’s hard telling someone with anxiety it’s no big deal, but seriously it isn’t.

I hope that with what ever is happening you and your children get any help and support that you need. SS really aren’t the villains that some here have made them out to be. I would happily open my door any day, even when it’s a shit tip! If they thought I needed support than I would take it with open arms. They are 14 and 18 now though so can’t seen that happening!!

Good luck!

fughtingfit more to do with general discussion than OP’s particular case. The coming out to cases, doesn’t seem to be the problem. It’s more the following up of cases, sharing of accurate info, internal communication, transparency etc, as I said in my last post above.

This is what let’s the public down, either where cases really need SS involvement, like the 2 you mention or where SS involvement is not needed but they plough on or where some support is needed and it’s like getting blood from a stone!

I think the SS department needs a serious case review themselves about how things are done, they have made so many mistakes and it makes them come down harder on innocent people.

There’s a whole thread about bad social workers on the Netmums site, obviously there is good ones but I’ve only ever had one experience with a SW and it was a bad one, she was a lying, manipulative, contradictory bitch and I think she used to record our meetings that took place in my home and she never once said, and she didn’t take notes and would be going straight to another person after visiting me so how the hell would she remember correctly what happened in meetings with parents?! Surely it’s against the law to record someone in their own home without telling them? My mum thought she was recording her too, she caused lots of trouble between my mother and I, and oh my god the irrelevant questions and the sheer nosiness of her, also there was one time when my mums friend was donating some toys for the Social work dept and the SW went to my mums friends to pick the toys up and the social worker was there for an hour and I can only imagine what they were talking about, yet there’s no record on the notes that she was there, my mums friend is a right gossip and I don’t think that should be allowed, that a SW is allowed to talk to others about me without it being written in the notes, and without my mums friend not really seeing me for years and only knowing anything about me through my mum which is hearsay, and my SW never worked beyond 4pm because I asked her! She was away at 4pm on the dot everyday so she wasn’t weighed down with caseloads, she also remarked on my slim figure a couple of times in a kind of typical bitchy female way, she was overweight, and I was a size 8 to 10 and 5FT 2” so it’s not like I was underweight, I’m still the same now. God I’m getting angry just writing about all this, it’s bringing it all back, it was years ago now but I’m still angry because of the power that they have, their word is taken as gospel, which is why I believe that parents, and social workers should record meetings so there’s no question about what you said, and you should both have copies so there’s no worries about editing it to make the parent out worse than they are, same with SW. There was an article in the Telephraph or Guardian one day about a SW that allowed her ‘clients’ to record her, she felt that it gave people peace of mind therefore building a trustworthy relationship and I couldn’t agree more. There was also comments from other sources that said SW wouldn’t feel comfortable about being filmed, and if your doing your job as you should then what’s the problem?

Even the police have to record interviews but yet the SS don’t have too?! Something seriously wrong there.

Social workers keep records of all of their meetings.
You can request to see your families records should you wish to.

I have seen my records and there was absolutely nothing in it about visiting my mothers friend, why would she stay a whole hour to collect toys? I know that they would’ve been talking about me, they hadn’t previously met and if they were talking about me then it should’ve been mentioned, this is my point.

When I say record regarding the police I mean rape recorded, social workers must take notes and yet she didn’t even do that when she was at mines! This is why I think she must’ve had a dictaphone in her bag because how else would you remember all that? Plus a lot of it was just her opinion rather than fact, hence why things should be voice or even video recorded!

Tape recorded not rape.

What did you expect SS to do Lizzie?

I know it was a mistake now, but I wasn't exactly in a good place back then, this was over 2 years ago. (In my defence, my DD2 had had a bad night due to chicken pox and she was incredibly clingy around strangers back then.) That's why I was warning the OP not to make the same mistake I did. Things have moved on now; I'm having therapy for my childhood abuse and my DD1 is also having therapy, too, for her attachment difficulties (adoption related).

Glad others have cottoned on to the op and everything feeling a little off.
Im thinking in this case theres no smoke without fire.
I have a sen 2 year old and have self referred to sociak services for help, they arent as scary as people make out, unless there is reason to think kids are in danger or being neglected. With all due respect op your house did look a bit grim, stories dont add up and your actively hiding health information and trying to avoid them. I wouldnt be suprised if they are all over you

SS are not a nice fluffy service to help struggling parents though, and it's misleading to present them that way.

Yes, they will support, but only as a last resort.

I do agree there Artfullydead