People who have never experienced being in family court

[SavanahXx]

It really does my head in when people side with social services. They have an opinion that "they are just doing what's best for the child". These people that have the opinion mostly have never even had involvement with SS, therefore don't see the lies and manipulation of a situation that they use.

It's easy for them to say that a parent 'could pose a risk' but do you know how hard it is to prove you wouldn't?

I seen an utterly revolting article that really baffled me. Social workers manage to get away with this stuff daily. Yet its not reported as it should be. This child was removed, with a judges permission. Then placed back with the mother by another judge.
There is so much corruption in our society and it needs to change.

www.google.com/amp/s/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/06/13/social-worker-criticised-child-taken-away-mother-refused-give/amp/

Some have to leave the thread because they can't cope with parents talking back. They're not used to it, must be a bit of a shock, that's why one even had the nerve to tell you to leave your own thread!!

Not a SW but I worked for children services in a very large council.
It frustrated and saddened me how 'slow' it all was (ie children being helped in very bad situations) as everything had to be very well investigated/procedures followed to a t, evidence gathered, support given to the family and many chances to right the situation first before any notion of removal.

My time there has affected my mental health and made me hyper aware of the dangers to my children.
And yes SW make mistakes, they are human.
They were the nicest people I've ever worked with and I couldn't thank them enough for the work (underpaid) they do.

"Smile, Ah yes The AIMS article is an unsubstantiated opinion piece presented as fact. Exactly like SW reports then?"

nothing like. A social work report to the court will be informed by evidence. A social worker's opinion is accepted by the court as expert evidence. It must be supported by direct observation and evidence from other areas - police, schools and hospitals for e.g.

When the situation goes beyond a social worker's expertise - such as how bones got broken, then medical expert evidence is obtained.

Of course there are cases where the evidence is weak or poorly supported. That is where the lawyers and the court comes in. Parents have non means and non merits tested legal aid and if they haven't been persuaded to dump their 'legal aid loser' lawyer by one of the myriad 'support groups' that populate the internet, then it is the lawyers job to identify and highlight any weakness or contradiction in SW evidence.

this year alone I have had cases involving a baby with a broken femur, a mother who tried to suffocate her child and the usual round of drink, drugs and mental health issues. These are serious cases that require serious evidence.

@auntethel hopefully one day they will wake up

"How do they remove the children instead of giving support then Spero?

If a child is in a high risk situation that could possibly be mitigated by high level, intensive support, but that support is not available locally (or at all) then the child remains in a high risk situation. The child’s safety is paramount, so sometimes- in a limited number of cases - removal is the only way to mitigate the risk to the child."

The test for 'interim removal' - that is before the final hearing and all he evidence is heard is very high. I usually see this in cases of new borns where the mother has had other children removed, usually for drug misuse/serious neglect and there is no evidence of change. The courts will not wait for the new baby to be harmed if they think the risk of harm is serious enough. Sometimes mother and baby placements can alleviate the risk but not always.

I have tried to explain the way the courts approach interim removal here childprotectionresource.online/category/the-law/key-legal-principles/interim-removal/

There are around 1,250,000 children under the age of 18 in England. Of that around 75,000 (around 6%) were looked after including around 20,000 placed on a voluntary basis. 32,000 of those stopped being looked after (ie were returned home without further statutory involvement, moved into independent living having reached adulthood or were adopted). A total of 3,820 were adopted, ie around 5%. The number of children being adopted has dropped year on year for the past 5 years.

If social workers are purposely baby snatching children to place for adoption, they’re shockingly bad at it.

Brilliant post Cailleachian. And a barrister has confirmed a few times that removal is being used instead of support.

@auntethel oh are you another failed parent? Interesting

Pencils, Austerity doesn't cause lies.

clarissa thought you'd left?

Becca we dealt with a similar “easy” case which resulted in us having to subtly lock the school down in order to ensure the safety of a child.

There had to be an appearance at court by the SW that day (this was obviously the end of a rapidly escalating situation) and that only granted an interim order.

It was frankly terrifying for everyone involved.

Lol. I am a social worker and have been for 10 years. I have never lied for a child to be removed and out of 100's of sw's i know, none of them have lied either.

Sure, here are a few bad ones, but they are few and far between

I'm sure a few of you said you was leaving yet you've returned.

I used to lead on complaints for a hospital children's services. It was just after the climbe report came out and our doctors / nurses raised every concern to social services. Our number one complaint from parents was about these concerns being raised. Ss always did a brief investigation and dropped the case. Not once, even when we had a consultant (incorrectly) convinced a parent was fabricating the illness, did they pursue removal. More recently, two people close to me have had concerns raised to social services - one because of a comment made at nursery and one a misreporting of a comment made - and both were handled with complete common sense. Of course people will make mistakes but if you are subject to one and then seek out others who have then it will seem far more prevalent to you than it really is.

Yep, I’ve returned.

What a shame.

There are situations which end up way out of control very quickly. And I believe once someone in authority has made an allegation they'll go hell for leather to prove it rather than admit they were wrong when evidence doesn't support their claim.

I've witnessed a case like this.

I've also had a school try and parent blame me and make allegations of Fii because I wanted them to put in the support ds needed and they'd promised (academy 🙄).
Luckily I'm my case I didn't engage and let evidence be presented to tribunal factually.
The school got a severe dressing down.

@youarenotkiddingme 🙌🙌🙏

A social worker's opinion is accepted by the court as expert evidence Therein lies the problem. Spero not every court asks for evidence to support the SW "opinions". In my case (and others by the sounds of it) the opinions (lies) were accepted as fact. Both my children were damaged by this system and remain damaged (now adults)

Good grief, 15 pages of being in your own aggressive bubbles. Or is that the same bubble as the OP, I wonder? Your posting style is so similar!
Thank you to social workers who get things right 99.99999% of the time.

auntethel

So are you saying that there were absolutely no issues with your family. Some sort of allegation/referral was made. A social worker ran with it all the way to court - with no other professional being involved at any point, no CP plan, no conferences. Then your children were removed.

Apologies if you’ve outlined it already, I did look but couldn’t see it anywhere.

Yep Smile this is the kind of holey story that makes people irritated when they hear these kinds of things most days!

I have not rtft but,
I’m a childminder and had a family referral so looked after the children. I could not understand why there was local authority/ss involvement. The family were lovely, the kids were the best I’d ever looked after (polite, friendly, we’ll socialised, clean, seemed well looked after and generally a great bunch). I couldn’t understand it but didn’t question it as you never know what goes on behind closed doors. It got to the point, without disclosing any identifying information, that one if the parents tried to take their own life. In the hospital there was a problem with the records and it all came out that this family had the same name as another family that was also known to ss and that caused this family to come under severe scrutiny! You couldn’t make it up!! If I hadn’t been personally involved I wouldn’t have believed it.

Barbie222 what do you hope to get from this thread, which OP kindly set up for families who have been failed by the system?

"A social worker's opinion is accepted by the court as expert evidence Therein lies the problem. Spero not every court asks for evidence to support the SW "opinions". In my case (and others by the sounds of it) the opinions (lies) were accepted as fact. Both my children were damaged by this system and remain damaged (now adults)"

then I am very sorry to hear this. It has not been my experience in over 20 years. When I work for LA we find and present evidence. When I work for parents I find and challenge weaknesses in the LA case. I have never known a Judge make a final order on anything other than evidence. It can be more difficult with interim decisions I accept. Then the court may well err on the side of caution.