I have been reported to SS

[mooning123]

I have a DS with ASD and LDs. he is 10 but cognitively much younger well.

anyhow, we went out the other day and whilst I was getting something from the house and DS was waiting outside for a minute, a lady living down the street and her 7 yo DD pass by. for whatever reason, DS dropped his trousers to show his bum to them. he has never done anything before.

Said lady is also a HV and when she passed by today and saw me outside told me, she would (or already has) reported us to social services over safeguarding concerns re DS as he mooned at them and I am clearly unable to keep him safe.

DS is very well looked after. But with a child with SN, sometimes, you take your eyes off them for a moment or two (generally speaking, DS is always with an adult).

I am terrified what will now happen? anybody any insight?

@ontheroses you make some compelling points.

I think there is an increasing culture of seeing to be looking like you’re doing as opposed to actually doing. As your post so clearly points out.

Not all these individual faults but the system is a mess and ridiculously compromised by the constant tinkering and commissioning and fatal budget cuts. All this sorry I’m going to say it - multi agency faffing - for so little outcomes is not right.

Ginlinessisnexttogodliness Who said that? If that is the hyperbole you need to make a point, the point is not good enough to be made.

FFS! The very caes you find too distressing to go into changed the face of child protection and safeguarding. Issues like this are a direct result of those cases. Straight line... from them to this.

Reporting may well be an overreaction... but not reporting was the issue that led to the cases you can't discuss!

At what point do all relevant organisations get given a crystal ball so that they only report the things that definitely need reporting and don't bother reporting the things that obviously, in hindsight, didn't need to be worried over?

RuffleCrow that's the very ppint many in such roles are dealing with... and will continue to deal with more as Mandatory Reporting is rolled out over the UK as a whole!

'Everything' and 'everything concerning' are not in any way interchangeable and the latter is highly subjective.

“Everything concerning” is not subjective. It means “everything concerning based upon your safeguarding training”.

Ffs.

And disabled children are more likely to be sexually abused than NT children.
OP nothing much will happen though. So please don't stress ut about this.

RageAgainstTheVendingMachine thank you. I'm in the arsehole of Essex so not near you at all unfortunately. Good luck with everything

So @jennymara on the basis of a ten year old mooning but his mother not getting enough support anyway and trying her best what precisely is the point of a HV reporting this?

I would love to know the ratio of all these reports to SS in terms of

Seemed obvious there was some concerns so reporting it was right : Nobody had any idea, nobody ever reported anything and it was too late by the time they did.

Your son exposed himself to a 7 year old girl in the street.

If he was a few years older, he could well be facing criminal charges.

I understand how difficult things must be for you, but he cannot be left unattended in a public place. If you’re not ready to get out the front door, he shouldn’t be outside either.

I would report a parent whose son flashed at my young daughter, no matter what form of learning difficulty the boy in question had.

@jennymara sort that was not meant to sound aggressively aimed at you personally it was a general query

Purple, i suspect your anger says more about you than anyone else. Of course it's subjective. Yes you interpret according to safeguarding training but you will do so as a flawed human being who sometimes makes mistakes, not a perfect safeguarding robot.

rage

I would not expect too much help. with our DC we get nothing apart from help at school.

I don't live too far from Tameside and it doesn't have a good reputation in terms of SN support.

I honestly cannot believe some of the responses on here.

If I was walking down the street with my daughter and ten year old boy flashed his bum, I think I’d go and have a quiet word first with his parents and see if there was any reason to suspect something was up before reporting them.

Gin The point reporting is in case SS have wider concerns you do not know about.

I have reported to SS once a mother I was concerned about. She was the next morning complaining that SS were round at her house that afternoon questioning her (literally about an hour after I made the report). SS would have been very unlikely to do that based on my report alone.

@curious the reports and the enquiries have failed if their legacy is that a HV reports to SS on the basis on seeing that one isolated incident.

It suggests to a great many people that the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction. A zeal for increased reporting and referral does not necessarily result in improved outcomes or more children being made safe, in fact some might argue that it increases the chances of very subtle and successful abuse slipping through the net.

Culturally as well I know from close friends who work in children’s services that they have so little time to actually work to support families already. They are trained to the hilt but opportunities to utilise their skills dynamically in an impactful way are hindered in many ways.

Of course systems need to be improved to for tragedies occurring but there will be more of them splashed across the news as there often are still. What will happen then?

@RuffleCrow

So when I said everything ( given the context that I said it in) you honestly thought I meant literally everything did you? Like Johnny arrived on time for school, Sally did her homework and infinitum? That is what you thought I meant?

And everything concerning is applied in the context of the safeguarding training. The point is to try to remove the subjectivity by emphasizing the importance of people not trying to judge something that they don't fully understand. Somethings can only be judged in context and that is where the safeguarding lead comes in.

Looks like he showed her his bum because she deserved it. She probably stared at him...

Really feel for you OP. Our DD has ASD and a severe learning disability. She went through a long phase in her teens of exposing herself in public. Really not appropriate behaviour, obviously, and very stressful. We got pretty good at anticipating it and preventing. Tight drawstring trousers didn’t help much because then she then couldn’t manage the loo. In her case it was probably attention seeking , and boy does it get attention, particularly in the supermarket on a Saturday! Eventually she pretty much stopped doing it. An awful woman once threatened to report me to SS, not because DD had stripped off but because I had spoken to her crossly for doing so. Nothing came of it however.Parenting a child with SN and challenging behaviour is very very hard work. Good luck with getting respite. We didn’t get anything until DD was 16, but it does make all the difference.

You can see what SS are trying to deal with just from this thread and the home-alone thread. Aggression, people insisting that they are “power mad”, “interfering so-and-sos” and on they go.

Said lady is also a HV and when she passed by today and saw me outside told me, she would (or already has) reported us to social services over safeguarding concerns re DS as he mooned at them and I am clearly unable to keep him safe.

For fucks sake, someone who should know even better than the 'general public' is really going down the, a young boy thought it was funny to show me his bottom, clearly in an abusive house! route?! I would have thought it was more unusual for young kids not to have obsessions with their bottoms and what comes out of them, thats at least been my experience of kids..especially my son who woke me up this morning by hosuting to the entire house that the poo he had just done had sweetcorn in it an it looked like eyes

Sounds to me like this woman wants to bully you in a way, parents get really upset about stuff like this and worry a lt when usually its unneeded. She was pissed off she had been mooned, so mentioned social services tro put the fear of god in you, what a horrid person tbh.

As an aside, I have a friend whose mum was a social worker and has suggested that I self-refer because "it's a tool to help you". Which of course it should be for families with additional needs. Unfortunately because 'support services' exist only in theory and there's nothing really available, all you get is scrutiny and sympathetic noises along the lines of "hmm yes, it's hard isn't it".

And strangers who claim to simultaneously 'understand' your struggles yet also expect you to keep your disabled kid away from the rest of society in case any poor flower gets upset.

onefork

DS is almost as tall as me (I am just 5 feet) and will soon be taller and stronger. How on earth do I drag him e.g. back and forth at all time when unloading a car against the resistance of a strong child? some people must live very sheltered existences.

Mooning, I'm sorry if I've upset you by suggesting that ultimately, it becomes the parents problem regardless of fair, feasible, right or wrong.

Sadly I live anything but a sheltered existence, it's lived experience. They don't remain children, we don't get younger or stronger, the 'concerned' don't get nicer, SS don't get more helpful.

If I was walking down the street with my daughter and ten year old boy flashed his bum, I think I’d go and have a quiet word first with his parents and see if there was any reason to suspect something was up before reporting them.

Yup, this would be my reaction, but it doesn't sound like theres much reason to suspect here, and basically telling someone you are goin g to report is, pointless. If you were actually concerned for the child you would just report, not basically threaten the parent in this way.

Also my reaction originally may have been a bit OTT, I for some reason managed to read 10 as 5 so it seemed ludicrous that someone would theaten to report over what I would consider quite usual behaviour for young kids.

As an HV you would always tell a parent you are reporting them to SS. I suspect HV therefore just did what she would do in her job.

I don't see that at all hercule. What i do see is a lot of parents wondering why this well trained woman didn't excercise a little common sense and have a quick chat with the mum first. Especially as she was clearly planning to tell her after the fact anyway.

I have been in the position of going directly to SS with my concerns as a citizen and what struck me was the detailed level of information about the individual's circumstances I was asked for. HV would be well aware that any additional information she could have provided about the boy's circumstances would have been welcomed, and certainly having a chat with the boy's mum to sound things out would have provided this. It certainly would not be classed 'investigating the matter herself' as pps have insisted.

Sorry but if I saw a 10 year old drop their trousers I would report it, ld and asd doesn't mean they drop their trousers, 3 year olds know it's not appropriate. I'm not saying you have done anything wrong but he obviously needs help beyond what he's currently getting or possibly has been exposed to inappropriate behaviour (is he at Sen school?) asd is never an excuse, it annoys me when parents say "but they cannot help it" they can, dd has asd and we never tolerated bad inappropriate behaviour, she knows she needs to fit in this world (she's an adult now). If his delays are so severe that he really didn't know this was wrong then how was he left alone?

I don't see that at all hercule. What i do see is a lot of parents wondering why this well trained woman didn't excercise a little common sense and have a quick chat with the mum first. Especially as she was clearly planning to tell her after the fact anyway.

There was a thread on here the other day by a mum who had twice been reported to SS by a nurse. She was really upset that the nurse hadn't spoken to her first.

Everyone commenting said that the nurse was correct and that a parent shouldn't be alerted because it could lead to further abuse.

One poster then told her story of childhood abuse. A HCP asked questions once and the parents made excuses for the injuries. When they got home the children got beaten harder because they had let the cat out of the bag. After that, the parents didn't seem medical help for the children's injuries. This poster said she had been desperate for an adult to realise that something was going on and report it so that they could go in to care.

That's why suspicions should be reported.