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?

'A nosey biddy with a high opinion of herself. I'd be tempted to have concerns about the potential use of her house by drug dealers, I can be as petty as she can. If her daughter is oh-so sensitive then keep her indoors, certainly keep her away from the beach. Poor child, she has a very poor mother.'

Jesus

The sheer spite is unbelievable

What a joke. My neigbours child is the same. They escaped and ran naked down the street. These things happen. Obviously she has no idea

*emerald, I didn't see it as I was inside the house. but as far as I understood it was mooning only.

and as a member of the puplic you would knock on my door to 'discuss'?*
Not to argue, but to let you know your son was mooning us on the street, would you prefer I snook off and called social services.
I think it is reasonable, if my DS was in the garden with his pants down mooning, I'd like to know ATT.

If SS have the time and inclination to come out and do anything about that as a one off incident, then it’s no wonder we have disgraceful tragedies like that little Pelka boy, the Climbié girl and Baby P where lack of capacity and a failing system are held up as reasons why these children lost their lives.

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.

anyhow, checking out now. Clearly this must not happen again so I will stay inside with the DC from now on. we are already very isolated due to DS's SN. it won't add much in terms of getting further cut off.

thanks for all the supportive messages.

SS will come and visit you

Wouldn’t have thought so for a minute.

Sorry again goddess7any other SS professional: When you say put support in place can you be more specific? What does that mean?
In other words, if I requested a social worker for me or DS or both, what can they actually do for me?
Do you mean emotional support ie once a week as to how things are going
Do you mean support in terms of advocacy eg liaising with school wrt attendance, LEA, getting EHCP, appeals with LEAs
Do you mean support in terms of getting help from other sources
Or all three?
Or is the support simply monitoring home and recommending parenting courses (not being goady I promise - I need to know what I am dealing with/hoping for without being naive in expectations or ramifications of making a self-referral). Am coming back to the UK after over a decade away so am out the loop.

Wow decomposing. The administration involved in processing everything must be an absolute nightmare. Can you give more clarification in exactly what you mean by 'everything'? I bet a lot of parents are getting quite concerned at the seemingly indiscriminate reporting to ss going on here.

Speaking for my own training, we were shown a body map and told what was considered 'usual' bruising for an active young child: marks on shins from rough and tumble play for example, were seen as not concerning unless excessive. If I adopted your strategy of reporting 'everything' there wouldn't have been an unreported child in the class!

In terms of behaviour we were told to look out for sudden changes - so an ASD child who had disinhibition as part of his condition and written into his EHCP as part of his list of common behaviours would not necessarily raise alarm bells - but another child suddenly behaving in that manner would be cause for concern.

OP no one is blaming your DS. Everyone feels for you, how difficult it must be. Don't shut yourself off from the world.
My uncle born in the late 1940s had down syndrome, my nanny was told to keep him in, she refused, he lived to a ripe old age off 55, he definitely displayed inappropriate behavior but people eventually understood. I am so proud of my Nan for her strength.

opalescent do you not see that it was a massive waste of finite resources?

What fun I had insisting CAMHS provided my dd with some free counselling when there were resources enough for the lical hospital to admit her overnight with a 1:1 MH nurse when the dr didn't think it was necessary but it was a protocol.

She was referred back to camhs as an emergency the following week. I insisted as we had been reported to SS.

So there is money to admit
Money for a MH nurse
Money for an MH Liaison assessment which exists on hosp premises but a&e didn't know it did 16-18s
Money to report to SS to investigate
Money for a CAMHS assessment
Money for a charity counselling orovider assessment

All to cover backsides and system sustained mooning (couldn't resist the pun).

But GP and CAMHS had previously told me to get a therapist of the internet because they couldn't do anything despute her taking overdoses and cutting with razorblades.

The people running these services are spending more on avouding interventions than providing them but by repirting to SS tbey engender a rather stalinist culture of fear to keep the scummy public in their places.

It is a disgrace at every level.

Lorribella and others. You are sadly misinformed. Various occupations have heightened responibilities and quite different safeguarding training HVs are definitely one of those occupations.

There is such a law as Mandatory Reporting it has been law in Wales since 2016. In Enlgand it is not, yet, mandatory. Whilst the law does not leave the onus for reporting on the individual, but rather the organisation for which they work, the specific training many organisations are now legall obliged to include for staff includes the need for reporting anything that could be child abuse or neglect. There is not, yet, any sanction for not doing so but, having undertaken one such trainign session, it is clear that unofficial sanctions exist!

From OPs posts it seems that this HV saw what she thought was a child left alone for too long behaving in a manner that was concerning. OP has said that this is not the case. nonetheless the HV was not wrong to report. Hasty? Possibly. Impolite? Possibly. Vicious, interfering and all the other epithets? No. Not really!

OP Please don't see it as a threat. You are still saying that you don't get any respite, any support. If you do get a visit frm any of the teams that could respond (they depend on your area) welcome them and use this to your advantage. Don't fear it, yu did nothing wrong but your son may have started displaying behaviours that need to be understood and addressed. Mooning only is minimising what could be sexualised behaviour.

Best advice would be for YOU to go back to whomever your SS/HV contacts are and discuss this with them yourself. Don't let anger or embarrassment prevent you from continuing to try and get some proper support for you and your son.

RuffleCrow

This was in the context of school, so reporting to the safe guarding lead rather than SS (Safeguarding lead would take that decision) but yes, it would be anything of concern. So maybe something a child said, or them not having clean clothes or no lunch repeatedly for example. The point being that something that appears fairly minor in isolation might actually to point to serious neglect or abuse when put together with other pieces of information.

There was a child who died wasn't there and when they did the review it turned out that lots of staff had individual concerns but that no one knew what all the concerns were and so the seriousness of the situation news not recognised.

That's why schools only have one, maybe two, Safeguarding leads. It's so that there is one person who will have all of the information and can make the decisions to refer on.

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

Another hug for you OP. I have no idea. I have backache and a prolapse - both exacerbated by carrying DS around. Four years from now I will be 52. Dragging him around is not going to be viable.
Actually dragging him in and out will cause a meltdown - he does not cope well with waiting (Hippo's ds kicking the bus stop because the bus was late resonated with me)
Currently doors are locked and I only tell DS we are leaving when I know we are leaving - his shoes go on last (unless his shoes and/or socks 'feel funny' in which case we don't always make it out the door at all).

f I was you I would contact her job and speak to her manager say how it has made you feel that the woman just reported you and used her status to intimidate you

I think this is a bad idea- unless she specifically marched up to OP and said "I have reported you in my capacity as a health visitor" or added "and that means they'll take it more seriously" or something along those lines. If it is just that OP knows she is a HV, and this made her feel more worried, then she did not in fact use her position to intimidate OP.

In that instance, all her manager would say is that everyone should report any behaviour they have genuine concerns about and so if she had concerns, she was right to report them. They may advise her not to tell anyone she reports in a private capacity that she has done so (you are obliged to tell patients you are working with, unless you have good reason to believe doing so carries an immediate risk to the patient or others), but that's about it. Her employers are never going to order her not to report something she is worried about. The only way this would get the HV into difficulties is if she specifically used her position to intimidate (e.g. if you don't do x, I'll report you/I have reported you and they will believe me and not you because I'm a HV/ I'm a HV and that means I know that you're a bad mother so I reported you and so on).

I think there is also a possibility that appearing to report her in retaliation- unless the health visitor actually used her position inappropriately (and I'm not convinced she did as OP says she knows the mum is a health visitor not that the HV actually said anything about using her position against OP)- I suspect this would actually make things look worse doe OP. Trying to get someone who reported you to SS into difficulties at work can easily be misread, and is something people can so as a distraction technique (theory being that attack being the best form of defence). I'm not saying that OP should not complain if there was genuine attempts to intimidate OP using professional position, but that if you complain without that context it could be misconstrued. Similarly, to those suggestions of counter-accusation (e.g. suggestion by a PP that OP should accuse HV of using her home being for drug dealing)- it has capacity to back fire and is very poor advice. Surely far better to let SS deal with it- and it seems unlikely to go very far (if anywhere).

It sounds like she perhaps over-reacted- but does she know OP's DS has ASD? I would think it slightly odd for a 10 year old boy to be mooning an adult walking past with a younger child. It may raise concerns that they are vulnerable because they don't display age appropriate behaviour or are being exposed to inappropriate behaviour at home.

I am a HCP and have had to report to concerns to SS (elder protection, not children), but not in my professional capacity as they weren't my patients. I still have a duty of care- a dim view would be taken if it became clear I had concerns/should have concerns but did not report them. Even though the people were not my relatives. So yes, it does sound like she is rather overzealous and officious (I would never have told OP I had reported- I would have left SS to decide if there was an issue to be addressed based on the info I had passed on).

If SS have the time and inclination to come out and do anything about that as a one off incident, then it’s no wonder we have disgraceful tragedies like that little Pelka boy, the Climbié girl and Baby P where lack of capacity and a failing system are held up as reasons why these children lost their lives. Fucking OUTRAGEOUS!

It is BECAUSE of those tragedies that laws have been enacted, mandatory training updated and implemented. It is probably BECAUSE of those tragedies that this woman's did as she did!

I despair of the faulty logic round here sometimes!

In terms of behaviour we were told to look out for sudden changes - so an ASD child who had disinhibition as part of his condition and written into his EHCP as part of his list of common behaviours would not necessarily raise alarm bells - but another child suddenly behaving in that manner would be cause for concern.

Well you can sort of see the HV concerns then can't you? How is she to know if this is usually behaviour or something with a more worrying cause?

The answer is that it isn't her role to look into it. It is her responsibility to pass it on to someone who can look into it and act accordingly. In the OPs case there is nothing untoward going on but in another child's case this could indicate something serious is happening to the child.

Can you give more clarification in exactly what you mean by 'everything'?

It is absolutely obvious that “everything” means “everything concerning”. Again, you are being wilfully obtuse or totally lacking in inference skills. Nobody apart from you is talking about reporting bruises knees or headaches.

The HV doesn’t have access to the child’s echp (if he has one) and she doesn’t know what’s standard behaviour for him. Did you expect her to investigate herself? Reporting to an agency who can check out there’s nothing worrying is the right course of action.

May I venture to suggest to all the sw's, teachers, hcp's on here that if you all now are expected to report all and sundry that when dealing with the scummy parents you start adopting the courtesies you reserve presently for doctors and head teachers. If you use their titles I trust forthwith you will begin to address parents with the same courtesy

It's v simple. If you are going to repirt me you may call me Mrs Roses and "mum" "love" etc stop becoming remotely acceptable.

Yes decomposing but your safeguarding lead would be absolutely swamped if you reported literally everything as some posters keep insisting.

It has to be a genuine concern in the first place and plenty of minor things that happen in the school day will have to be filtered out to focus on those that really are concerning. MN is really weird when it comes to using common sense sometimes

@curious so a child eating food out of bins at school is the same as a child randomly mooning another at ten years old? Somme a fucking favour.

I won’t go into the other cases as too distressing by far but it is fucking outrageous that this sort of thing which at this stage is an isolated incident would merit investigation other other things which should be far more worrying to laymen or health professionals.

Yes decomposing but your safeguarding lead would be absolutely swamped if you reported literally everything as some posters keep insisting.

Nobody is saying that. Nobody.

And if you think all social workers and health visitors do all their mandatory training then think again.
And even if some do it’s box ticking.

Yes decomposing but your safeguarding lead would be absolutely swamped if you reported literally everything as some posters keep insisting.

You report everything of concern, is that better? When I said everything the of concern was implied because I assumed it was obvious what I meant.

A lot of minor reports to SS, SS simply cross check if there have been other reports, and if not, nothing happens.
Some things that seem minor can be a big deal when put together with other concerns.

Not at all purple and there's no need to be rude. If you're unable to express your point of view accurately people you've never met won't necessarily get where you're coming from. 'Everything' and 'everything concerning' are not in any way interchangeable and the latter is highly subjective.