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/

OkPedro

They work in the best interest of the government. By that I mean cost savings and minimum effort.

I don’t trust the government to look after a goldfish

Glad I don’t live in a conspiracy theory world 😃

My relationship with my parents broke down when I was 15. No abuse or anything, just constant arguments which led to my dad telling me to pack my bags in frustration and me being pig headed and going through with it. So I ended up in foster care.

My parents contacted SS on many occasions so they could make contact with me to talk and fix our relationship.

But SS made it impossible for my parents, every welfare meeting held about me where my parents had a right to attend, SS deliberately sent out the invitation letter AFTER the meeting had been held so my parents missed every single meeting. My parents kept and showed me the letters.

I also told my SW while I was in foster care that I wanted to repair my relationship with my parents . I was told I was absolutely not allowed to make contact with them.

SS placed me with an alcoholic foster carer btw, who got drunk every night and made it clear she fostered because it was better than being on the dole. Her teenage DD lived with her and clearly resented me and the other girl (she was allowed to foster 2) for being there!
My parents eventually managed to get in touch with me and both my SW and foster carer tried to stop me having contact. I had to go behind their back and have secret meetings with my parents where we talked and started to repair our relationship.

I dont like them and I certainly dont trust them. I dont understand why they went to such great lengths to keep our family torn apart! They knew there was no violence, no substance abuse, no abuse of any kind, I made that very clear, and that we just hadn't been getting along. Our situation was a stupid series of arguments which led to a breakdown in the relationship. It wasnt just one SW who tried to prevent a reconciliation, it was everyone involved within the SS department!

I've come across good and bad social workers, as with any profession. Anecdotally, most of the crap ones erred on the side of gullibility and ignoring evidence of abuse painstakingly collated by professionals (e.g. teaching staff) because the parents put on a good show of loving their "babies".

Either way, the theory that it's in the interests of the government to go through the whole expensive process of removing children from their families unnecessarily because it makes "costs savings" doesn't quite stack up.

I speak as a solicitor, who when 4 months pregnant was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and accused by a social worker as being one of 3 alleged perpetrators of physical abuse of a DF's 12 week old baby; of which, following the conclusion of the family court hearings I was later exonerated. And this was notwithstanding that the police put in writing very early on that they didn't consider me a suspect / person of interest in the investigation.

The social worker was entirely incompetent and in fact was sacked before the matter reached the court and then replaced very late in the piece with another social worker. The first social worker made all sorts of representations to my DF and her partner, then wrote up reports which didn't reflect those said representations nor any substantial content of what discussions my DF and her partner had said in various meetings. Most of the social worker meetings with DF and her partner were never written up, and a copy provided to them, though they were promised this would happen by the social worker many many times.

When my DF's child was being forcibly detained in the hospital at the beginning of the investigation, I evidenced first hand bullying by the medical professionals too. I was watching over the baby for 2 hours while the parents left the hospital briefly to get legal advice. A doctor spoke to me and demanded to do a medical procedure on the child to investigate further the alleged abuse. I said no, they can't do that without the parents consent - wait till they are back. The Doctor said we don't need their consent, and will do it anyway. I stood my ground. In fact, the Dr would need to go to a judge to obtain an order in absence of consent - which my DF gave anyway once back at the hospital. But in this incident, I saw saw the system of representatives of the state - be it social workers / medical - in action, bullying and using their powers falsely and coercively.

And the system is broken. Following legal aid cuts, intervenors in family proceedings accused of child abuse are not entitled to legal aid funding - unlike the parents in family proceedings. I was eventually exonerated by the family court, but it cost me £20K in legal costs to get to that point, none of which was recoverable.

Having experienced first hand what it is like to be someone on the wrong end of a social worker accusation, I have great sympathy for the sentiments expressed by the OP

OkPedro

You honestly trust the government??

Well I don’t think they’re out to get me so yes in a round about way I do..
I don’t believe that Sw are actually in cahoots with the government to take children from loving capable parents

Couldn't agree more OP.

Especially the discrimination towards parents with mental health problems. Meanwhile neglected children are being left in their parents' care.

Important to remember they don't care about children, they are just look g for ways to cover their backs should the worst happen.

I agree OP. I cant say much more due to potentially outing.

All the social workers I have had contact with are awful.
The last family I worked with who has ss were threatened with court (on plo) as they were homeless due to no fault of their own!.
When the family moved area and the area transfer meeting happened the social worker from the original area said they had no solid reason to go to court!.
Maybe not all social workers are bad, but every single one I have meet have been as useful as a chocolate teapot and I would not trust them at all

It is very navie to think all social workers are perfect. They have so much power and over stretched. Most of them a

Sorry accidentally posted to soon, but if you give any human a heavy workload and expect the work to be done in unreasonable time, which means work is rushed then mistakes are bound to happen. It is not an argument of will mistakes happened but when will it happen? They need more funding. I have personally only seen one case that they didn't remove children when they should have and one case they were trigger happy (yes, there was one mistake that lead to devastating consequence, even the mother involved think they needed to investigate but not act they way they did).

My mum spent quite a long time on the Children's Panel and she said that the problem is that the process is so long to remove children from neglectful or dysfunctional homes that the damage is already done by the time they can be taken out of that environment. Five-year-old children who are already severely emotionally damaged and have major behavioural issues because of abusive or neglectful parents, and who face a childhood and most likely a lifetime of repeating the same behaviour. I think I'll trust her judgement, given what she was actually seeing day in and day out.

That's not to say mistakes don't happen. But I'm pretty sceptical of stories where children are apparently whisked from safe and loving homes.

I have been lied about by a social worker who was only in my home for an administrative matter. She claimed that I had said I had not registered the birth of my youngest, which I could not possibly have said since the birth certificate predated her visit. It was enough, however, for an investigation to be opened (and promptly closed). There are some jobsworths out there who need to justify their existence. I have heard other horrible things directly from affected families. So yes, OP, there are definitely some social workers who lie.

The only people I know who have had their children removed have been drug addicts and people who repeatedly expose their children to violent partners. I know that doesn't mean that it's the case for everyone, but from my own personal experience they have always gotten it right.

I know a child that was in a happy loved home and taken away.

His mother repeatedly attacked her succession of lovers including glassing one and kicking another in the face when down.

She loved her son dearly, didn’t attack him, but was neglectful in that she spent many hours eating Mcdonalds front of unsuitable films and witnessing her mums tirades and violence.

Mum refused all attempts of help by SS to change her behaviour.

Behaviour is learned and that’s why she was taken away. She is a very damaged child, it took five years for the child to become known to SS then removed.

I dare say the mums friends all thought the SS were wrong, because the child was loved.

I agree with @PatricksRum in that parents with mental health issues and/or in or experienced in dv relationships are not (in my experience) well supported. I understand services are overstretched but offering support and kindness instead of removing children is what is needed. The case I have been involved in has resulted in formal apologies from SS and the child being returned but it's too late, both mother and child are damaged by the harrowing and long winded experience. I know they are trying to protect children but mistakes ARE being made.

I've seen both sides of this, but more often than not social workers are underpaid, are losing resources all the time due to funding issues and have far too many cases on at once.

Volunteer advocate. I've seen a sw stand up in court and claim the mother was neglecting her child due to not attending medical appointments for diabetes. None of her 3 children had diabetes. I've helped on a case where newborn twins were removed from the mothers care 2 days after birth because of the mothers disability. The sw fully admitted the disability was the reason. Luckily on that case the judge decided against a full care order.

On the flip side, I have known some truly atrocious parents. Not details I want to go into as it gets quite horrific. If it wasn't for ss stepping in several children I have known through the cases I have helped on would be dead.

Social workers are people. It's not some magic profession where the shitty side of humanity doesn't exist. You get amazing social workers that do their best by the kids and you get assholes. Same as everywhere else in life.

I'm still shocked at how nieve some of you are lmao. It's actually laughable

Yes family experience of child removal to their awful dad who had done a great job of manipulating SS.
It wasn't they he wanted the children, but he really wanted to finish his wife. It was scary how that spiralled.

Op...believe it its vvvv hard to get a child removed to a place of safety from their parents. The parents are given chance after chance. In the cases ive seen the parents dont see what theyve done wrong. Yabu

I've had lots of personal dealings with SWs too. I met a whole range of different people. 2 were excellent, really thoughtful, empathetic and helpful. About 4 or 5 were overworked, stressed, fairly unhelpful and most of these suddenly disappeared in a short time only to be replaced by a new one.

One was awful, told lies and changed the facts to suit her point of view. I eventually complained and much of her bias came out but it was a shock to me to hear that she'd chosen to blatantly lie about conversations we'd had. Fortunately she couldn't lie about written reports, though she had tried (successfully, until I complained) to hide/manipulate some of these.

On the whole my experience was luckily positive, but sadly after my experience with her I would always be very wary of SWs and would always advise people to take notes, clarify what has been said and consider their conversations with SWs very carefully.

You almost only ever hear the negative in regards to SS, it's the same with the police etc - it's only when someone abuses that power that it gets spoken about. Yet they help 100s if not 1000s of people a day.

A woman I know had SS involvement because she was an alcoholic and SS helped out with things like cleaning, shopping etc and did everything they could to help them as a family. Her children were never taken from her but she volunteered for them to go into foster care some weekends for their sake. I know of many similar examples.

That said, I DO also know of negative examples of SS where the damage they have inflicted has been irreversable and they rarely get held to account (in my experience).

They do a thankless task and I'd say that on balance the majority are genuinely acting in the childrens best interests but YABU to paint them all with the same brush.

It is not in the interests (from SS point of view) for children to go into care for a long, long time.

Of course it does happen but it’s expensive.

Adoption however is very much in their interests. I am NOT saying that they are ‘baby snatchers’ but they will remove children who can be adopted and leave children who can’t be in the homes of their parents.

My involvement with them was horrendous.

Thanks for linking the Indeoendent article above. And I found it reassuring - in a whole career, the juspdge had never seen or heard of any other case like this one. It is that rare.

Yes, I have always known that things can go wrong, by mistake or by deliberate act. Trying to polarise also mg the lines of ''you must agree with me or you are all stupid/naive' is presumably the kind of loaded argumentation OP wishes to see eliminated?