Social services

[Reds8]

After some advice....
Recently had an incident where my child ended up in hospital (precautionary checks) the nurse treating us said that because it was a preventable accident (aren’t all accidents preventable?!?) that they had to refer us to ss....
Has anyone been in a similar situation?
This was a week ago and I’m yet to hear anything from anyone 🤷‍♀️. I just sat here thinking the worst

I wouldn’t worry too much, they have to check but if there was any problem they would have been in contact by now.

When we get reports like that there is generally two things that determine whether we'd contact the parent. One is the severity of the incident and the other is if there is a pattern of similar concerns/poor supervision, neglect etc. Even if a social worker does make contact if its an isolated incident it is likely it will just be to talk it through etc, make sure there are measures in place to ensure doesn't happen again, if needed look at support from health or school etc. Given its been a week I would work under the assumption they've decided not to progress the hospital referral. You could if you're worried contact the front door yourself (google mash, children social care and your area) and ask them. Honestly we're an ok lot really social workers and are not going to be swinging in to take your kid because of an accident! Please don't worry.

Yes, we had a call by SS the next day. She asked what happened, didn’t seem to be listening, gave some advice that didn’t really work for the circumstances (put a stair gate in a shared area in a hallway to flats), I told her why it didn’t work and she said that was fine and she was closing the case. It was horrible at the time for us as we already felt so guilty about our son having an accident and felt like awful parents but it was all very straight forward.

I once got referred because I had a bruise on my arm while I was having a MC in hospital and the nurse accused it of being domestic abuse? Then we had a social worker repeatedly try to call me because she was quote 'concerned for the child in our home' and didn't listen to me, eventually I called higher up explained we were a) the bruise was because I do roller Derby b) I didn't have a child because I MC and it was quite insensitive for social worker to repeatedly remind me of this and C) that the nurse assistant who treated me on the day was very rude and refused to listen to us, after an investigation the social worker was suspended and na fired for false allegations, I wouldnt worry at all, nothing ever comes of it, people just seem to misunderstand basic protocol. (oh and the worst part about my situation was my mum was a practice lead and hauled them over the coals for miscommunication as she was also at the hospital), just reiterate the actual truth to senior leaders and leave them to it

Fair play to you Halloween. The last thing you would have needed. Sorry for your loss.

@howallergic even my mum to this day has frustrations with how the system is run and the accusations those in healthcare are able to make, I feel for op it must really affect your mental health, my partner to this day gets scared even arguing with me because he doesn't want to be accused of anything

Halloween - unfortunately I've had life-changing detrimental interactions with social workers so have a valid but visceral hatred of them.

Hi Reds8,

Having a little experience with both an excellent and a terrible childrens social worker I am very pleased to hear they are shutting the case.

However, you always need to treat their involvement as potentially serious. They may be leaving you alone now but the next innocent incident may lead to another refferal (as it in your notes you'll have had once before). There will be a file (albeit small) on SS records, which if in any way innaccurate will colour their investigations.

Please do yourself a massive favour and do a subject access request to SS (this is usually through your local council) and find out what exactly has been recorded and make sure you put in corrections / comments. If they do ever get involved again be sure to make a covert recording - the council I was under stated that this was not illegal and social workers should be under the presumption covert recording is going on (although I would strongly advise against sharing it) - but for notetaking it is extremely useful as you can transcribe it word for word and if they deny anything you can always offer to share the recording with the social workers permission.

Hopefully this will be unneccesary - but I know from experience how a poorly phrased medical entry can be treated as gospel truth. Most social workers are excellent, but you want to make sure both the orriginal refferal and their analysis is correct.

So glad they have said they are closing your case :-)