Aibu to think that my kids aren’t coming back?

[SeaOfDespair]

I had my girls removed last month and it’s been a very traumatic experience. My family are so far away, my friends have dwindled away and I’m stuck looking at these 4 walls.

I’m seeing a private child psychologist and doing some work with him. He understands how harsh the system can be. I’m doing 2 different parenting courses online. I’m paying for all of this myself and has been a bit of a struggle recently.

My solicitor just tells me to go along with whatever they want. I’ve ticked one thing off the list, but they’re not forthcoming with starting their own assessments. Social worker is either sick, or can’t be bothered.

My youngest has arrived to contact with bruising to her face 4 times. She is cruising, but never managed to be bruised within my care. My elder one seems sort of happy, but is having a lot of tantrums and isn’t able to communicate with me.

From them wanting to keep them at home on an order, their original intentions until the court hearing, to pretending I don’t exist. They didn’t even turn up to the meeting last week. No apology given. No notification of cancellation.

From a case of closing ranks to keeping the case open, it never did surprise me that they applied for a court order. My social worker’s reasoning? I don’t agree with their concerns, so there needs to be a care order.

Am I being unreasonable to think I don’t stand a chance in hell of getting them back, if they’re not willing to even bother working with me?

I agree fully. This is why I think the OP needs an advocate. She needs someone else to assist with the communication because the SW, for whatever reason, don’t seem to be facilitating communication effectively.

I find it strange that ‘private rental is discouraged’. Loads of families with children rent privately. Yes, there’s always the chance your lease might not be renewed but it stills seems a better option than the places you’ve been living in.

@bluetongue the rules are different for people in SS radar, it’s that simple. The post above highlights how naive most people are to living on benefits. £40 spare for a curtain rail and curtains. That means mum doesn’t eat or the heating doesn’t go on. It’s literally hand to mouth. And everything is noted against you.

Inliverpool

I hope you are saying the SW are naive not me.

I’m shocked reading this thread. I never realised social services held being poor against parents. I thought they were there to prevent severe neglect and abuse. I never knew they held poor accommodation against parents, I thought they were there to help parents secure better accommodation from the council instead of actually trying to remove children, how terrible for poor families.
My son also had a speech delay, it wasn’t because we didn’t engage with him! We found speech therapy wasn’t all that useful tbh.

Math has given a good summary of what actual steps would be good to do.
I would push for MENCAP to provide you with an advocate, because as someone with As[pergers myself I can absolutely understand EVERYTHING you are saying, and, when fighting for things in the past, would be using exactly the same approach (so when appealing about housing conditions, when fighting against LEA about home schooling, when doing a planning application by myself, when applying for my daughters EHCP and school placement)
HOWEVER this is not the time to prove that you have the theoretical advantage of understanding things over them. Now is the time to play dumb and keep your knowledge to yourself - to literally smile and wave.
Yes I understand EXACTLy how all this has happened, I understand exactly about being homeless, about moving from pillar to post, of understanding that private rentals CAN mean moving every 6 months (Ive lived in more houses than people have fingers due to this in the past) and the absolute mindfuckery of how beaurocracy works and the flim flam buzzwords used that do not put things down in clear simple English.

I think you need someone else to act as a go between between you and the solicitor, and you and social services. Someone with a very very thorough understanding of autism and communication.

I think you need to drop the child development course and use the money for this kind of specialist support - I can PM you a psychologist who is a specialist in autistic spectrum disoprders and is also an expert witness - perhaps he could help, or point you to someone in your area who can.

If you are like me then 'a bit of a mess' can look to others like horribly cluttered and a bit grubby. I would imagine SS would probably have a fit if they came in, but thankfully they never had. This is because its really hard for me and my levels of acceptable are different to others. But my children are fully loved, supported and thriving, and excelling at school. My ASD partner is the same. There for the luck of god nobody who could make a decision has looked.
HOWEVER when they decide its messy and dirty you need to use some of that child development psychologist money to get a cleaner in. get it deep cleaned. go through everything and reduce it all. Because its not about our level of OK, its about peoples whoe expectations are far far higher.

in regards the mould in your room - we have used an amazing product - Zinsser mould killer primer and the zinsser cover stain.

you say you have nice relatives. Can you reach out to them - do they know what is happening? Call them. Get them down. Get them to help you. to show you have family support also helps. I know you say that you would move there, then maybe put that later as a future plan - to move to a place with good family support.

But the asd advocate / expert witness to be a buffer and to be able to attend a hearing with you/ pre-empt correspondance and present it in the 'correct' way, would be I think the most beneficial.

In your need to be right (and my God I recognise that) and fight injustices, you are prioritising the wrong thing - the fact that the more you bang heads with these people, the more they dig their heels in and the more they dislike you. You need to act damn quick to get someone who can dismiss all of the aggro and defensiveness as 'part of your ASD and they didnt mean it how you think they did' Thats the clever move.

ChazsBrilliantAttitude I completely agree!

It's shocking that of all services social work is apparently the one that does not understand the difficulties the OP will face in navigating their system.

regards the speech therapy / ASD diagnosis - stop pushing for that right now (or get an expert witness to recommend given the hereditary nature) - if the child isnt with you at the moment you need to focus on one thing only - getting them home

THEN, get them into nursery because if there are traits, they need to be seen in more than one environment anyway - nothing wrong in telling any nursery that you suspect ASD - will actually make the SENCO possibly be on the lookout to record, but again, this needs to be done by another person, so its not just you pushing for it.

How was your daughter able to communicate that she didn’t have enough vegetables if she is non verbal?

I think your priorities are as follow:

1. Get the place spotless (a spray containing bleach is great against black mold, open the windows to let it dry that will then get ride of the smell) and tidy and declutter everything,
2. arrange toys (throw away extra stuffed animals, only keep 3-4 best ones for each girl), potty, kids clothes, nappies and other toiletries (nappy cream, soap, baby shampoo),
3. if possible get your DD1 an appointment to GP to get her diagnosed asap, 3 is not too young to be diagnosed. Ask your GP for material to provide SS that detail how your daughter's symptoms match an ASD diagnosis. Get the ASD assessment form for children.

NT people are very much about appearances, appearances are everything. It needs to look spotless and shiny. It needs to look like you are acting on what they say. When they have a concern, tell them yes, write down the list of things to do (ask them to tell you precisely) and do them. Take pictures as proofs and build a file that shows your compliance.

4. write meal plans for 2 or 3 weeks with kid meals, once you are at the end you can start over and that's feeding your DDs sorted. Examples:

Monday:
breakfast: cereals
lunch: canned macquerel with potatoe mash
snack: piece of fruit and a biscuit
dinner: beans on toast

Tuesday:
breakfast: toast with jam
lunch: steak with green beans
snack: yogurt and piece of bread with chocolate
dinner: mac and cheese

etc...

Jumjam, I don’t think op is able to take her daughter to the GP at the moment as she only sees them at contact times.

Just fwiw, the pp who said you can't get diagnosed before age 4? Not quite correct, my son started having investigations at 18months and was diagnosed with autism at 2yrs 10months.

Also, he is only just starting to be potty trained now. He is 12. Not for lack of trying, we started at 3/4 but he just did not have the capacity to understand and no motivation to do it.

stairway
They don't hold being poor against parents.

They're interested in whether children are safe. They do lots of support, there's family support, there's tiers of social worker involvement long before a child gets to the point of being removed (unless it's a case where a serious disclosure of abuse is made).

They don't go around removing children for having poor parents. There's not enough social care workers or foster carers to remove children for a house being a little untidy, a spot of ceiling mould (which can happen in any house during the winter), development delays.

MN is full of lots of misinformation on this, which is precisely why people with complex situations are better off seeking specialist offline advice.

You absolutely can get a diagnosis before 4. My brother was diagnosed at 2 and my friends child at 3.

OP regarding the clutter, is SS concerned that you might have hoarder tendencies? Living with a hoarder can have a serious psychological impact on children. If this is the case then you need to take two practical steps: de-clutter to the nth degree (and I really do empathise about how difficult this can be) and also engage in CBT specifically focused on hoarding tendencies (there are online courses you can access) so that you can demonstrate to SS that you have a strategy in place going forward. These are the kind of practical steps that will help to return your girls to you. From professional experience, I would say consulting with the child psychologist will do nothing to aid your cause. SS doesn't want to debate attachment theory with you, it needs you to prove beyond a doubt that you can cope with the daily grind of parenting.

De-clutter, clean like your life depends on it, engage with CBT, access a first aid course and possibly a food tech course so you can evidence that understand good nutrition.

Seaofdespair - I think you have been given some good advice on here, and I can see from what you have said how your girls have ended up in care.

I think I would advise you to do the following things.

1. That you stop trying to prove professionals wrong. You have been doing things like looking into the content of social worker degrees to try and prove that they do not know what they are talking about. That is not going to help you or your children.

1. Accept that simply loving your children is not enough. Most parents who have kids taken into care love their kids. Children need more than love.

1. Stop trying to be right. You want to agree to disagree. That is a good approach in personal relationships but not in this situation. These people have power over you. Your focus needs to be on doing what it takes to get your kids back, not on being right.

1. Go to child contact. I understand that the train costs too much, but get cheap buses instead, it is always way cheaper than going by train. And don't complain to professionals about the long journey as it will come across that you don't care enough about your kids to do the journey. I understand 4 hours round trip is not a short trip, but there are people who do this level of travel every day to get to and from work. Even with delays, getting back at 2 am is worth doing to see your children. You will not get your children back if you do not go to child contact. This is the most important thing to do.

1. Listen when social workers are telling you something is an issue, agree, and say you will go away and think about how to address it. You can always come on here and ask for advice. Social workers expect a parent to be capable of coming up with solutions themselves. So they are not going to give you a list of what exactly you need to do, that is for you to work out. So when they talk about not enough stimulating toys, rather than arguing that you have enough, say something like I hadn't realised, I will go away and come up with a list of toys that I need to buy. Then you can post on here what toys you have already and others can give advice. Because being honest two boxes of toys for 4 kids does not seem a lot.

1. Name change if you want, but post on here what you gave your kids to eat in a normal day and ask for suggestions on how to improve their diet. I know there are the extremists on here who if you give a child a few grapes will go on about too much sugar, but there will be sensible suggestions as well. Again it is unusual for a child to complain about a lack of vegetables, so the diet may not be as good as you think.

1. Stop focusing on tiny things that professionals get wrong. I have seen other parents do that. For example complaining about how a report is rubbish because the child's date of birth is wrong, and totally ignoring all the evidence of neglect in the report. No professional or judge is going to care too much if 1 or 2 minor details are wrong, they are concerned about the overall picture.

1. Stop focusing on differing parenting styles and do not say this to the social workers. This will just be seen as evidence that you are ignoring their concerns.

1. Professionals rolling their eyes at you is rude, but you have to ignore how it makes you feel and look instead to ask what you have done to make them respond like that.

Forgot to mention about the autism, neglect can cause in young children similar symptoms to autism. So as I understand it generally the advice to social workers with neglected children is to address the neglect first, see if things improve, and only then consider autism. I have also seen this in practice. The child was non verbal, incontinent and non responsive. Within 6 months of being taken out of a neglectful home they had improved amazingly.
I am not saying your child has autism, but I am explaining why they will not consider autism at the moment.

And don't complain to professionals about the long journey as it will come across that you don't care enough about your kids to do the journey

This! The amount of times you have complained about this on here also gives off that impression. caranconnor , what an excellent and helpful post. Spot on.

It can be very hard to navigate a situation like this when you have ASD as the injustice can be too much. Def advise getting an advocate

So as I understand it generally the advice to social workers with neglected children is to address the neglect first, see if things improve, and only then consider autism

Who is giving this advice? Is it only applicable to autism or other conditions too? So, they'd consider neglect before hearing loss; neglect before an eating disorder; neglect before brittle bones; neglect before cancer? Anyhow, if you are correct you are basically saying that they would only advocate for a diagnosis once they have decided it was the time to do so. Not HCPs, not parents, not teachers, not HVs, social workers who have little to no medical knowledge.

I am genuinely astonished by this thread. If what I'm reading is true then social service departments need some major training on autism PDQ.

I don't get the big deal about having curtains? Loads of people have them open all day with no net curtains so you can see in their front room as you walk past... As if not having curtains is neglect? You only need them if you don't want people to see you and for many people that isn't an issue.

@saskia I may be wrong, but I thought I remembered reading that in guidance for social workers somewhere. But you are ignoring the point that the symptoms of neglect are extremely similar to the symptoms of autism.
And yes in diagnosis of any conditions, exclusion of other reasons is common. So if an underweight child from a neglectful home was being looked at for being underweight, the first question would be is the child being fed enough, before eating disorders are considered.

And this approach makes sense. Diagnosis for autism takes assessments and time. But if the real issue is neglect, this will quickly become obvious once the child is removed from that neglect. If there are still significant symptoms of autism, then an assessment is appropriate.
I know there does seem to be an unwillingness from some parents to accept that in young children the symptoms of neglect can be similar to the symptoms of autism, but it is true.

@Valcat It was more likely a case of that the social worker was saying the children's bedroom was a mess and needed to be much better and OP asked in what way? And the reply given was that the mess on the floor needed to be put on shelves, curtains could be put up, etc. No curtains by itself may not be a big deal, although it can lead to children waking up too early because of the sun. But it is more the overall picture.

It is far less common to get an early asd diagnosis for girls than boys as difficulties may present differently and later.

Op, you just don't seem focussed on making the changes suggested by ss. Whatever you think you have done is not yet enough and you need to ask why, what and how you can do so. A month is not long enough to demonstrate this and sustain it, although I suspect warnings were given long before this and you either misunderstood or failed to take it seriously. Rather you are allowing yourself to get distracted by parenting styles, child psychology etc.

Is your home now appropriate for young children, are you out of contact with those who have abused you in the past, have you got professionals on board who will support you going forwards. Where is your ex in all this? Do you have any friends or family who could give you a less partial view of the situation in rl and break it down for you.