Safeguarding my arse

[OppsUpsSide]

Name changed for this.
I have worked for years in ‘protecting’ vulnerable people from harm, in different professions, and had the experience of me and my DC being those vulnerable people.
So, AIBU to acknowledge;
Safe guarding is shit, except in extreme cases, you/your child’s suffering is a learning experience and therefore allowable;
If your ex has years of recorded abusive behaviour but feels sad it turns out it probably was you;
Your DC shouldn’t be protected from this, they should ‘manage’ it because parents have a right to their DC;
Training sessions are bullshit because everything is a level 4 where as in reality, unless someone’s dead, it’s a level 1 and everyone fights to take no responsibility apart from the lowest paid individual who actually engages with that person/child.
Protective services my arse.

Yanbu yanbu yanbu yanbu yanbu

I agree, I'm safeguarding lead in school, too often referrals made to Children's Services come back with " Criteria not met, deal with it yourself " How am I meant to deal with child and domestic abuse, neglect, poor parenting , drug misuse, sexualised behaviour ( in 8 year olds!) and this with parents who can't, or worse, won't engage.

In my experience going through family court a few years ago after leaving my ex and taking our kids to live in a refuge, his rights to see them seemed to be more important than their rights to safety. Social services assessed the situation, ex was deemed a “medium to high risk” to the children. Ex is allowed to have them every other weekend. The onus is on me to monitor his mood at hand over and decide if I think he’s safe to have them then. At the time when I agreed to this absolute shite show I was just relieved I’d passed my own parenting assessment with flying colours and my children would be staying with me. I guess that probably happens a lot- the just being relieved to still have your kids with you after years and years of threats from your ex that they’d be taken away and you’d never see them again.

his rights to see them seemed to be more important than their rights to safety

Yes!! And absolutely the onus is on the other parent to ensure the DC’s safety with zero back up and a clear message that actually the other parent can do what they like and the courts will back them up.

It's horrific. I'm a teacher and some of the backgrounds and current situations children are living in and are deemed to be ok are shocking.

Also some of the threats young people themselves represent to others yet are freely mixing unsupervised in school are really disturbing. I think government uses schools as kind of holding pens till 18 then the criminal justice system will deal with them if caught.

Some of the most challenging behaviour I've had to deal with has been from young people seen as having attachment disorders which often translates into having been left living with child abusers far too long presumably because threshold not met.

I also worked in a secure 'behaviour' unit for teen girls when I was younger. What it actually was was girls who'd been through so much sexual abuse and trauma that they had acted out frequently and devastatingly enough to end up in a secure unit and be labelled with behaviour problems rather than traumatised children who had been let down at all levels by protective services.

Lots of things I wish I could un-know sometimes

It’s no different with adult services
Elder abuse is more common than people realise
I also work with people with other disabilities, long term ill health learning disabilities, mental health issues etc - I’ve not managed to get a single safeguarding referral accepted this year as they are all dismissed by the referral hub

I agree its shit.
I used to work in a school and they'd tell us what kind of thing to look out for. You would then report said thing and they'd tell you you were worrying unnecessarily.
Then there was the time I reported FGM and the teacher i spoke with didn't know what it was. I could go on...

I agree wholeheartedly.
Been in the position where I made referrals and had them sent back as not intervention not required. I couldnt continue in my job, facing the reality that there were people in situations where they were being wilfully neglected, and nobody gave a fuck.

Courts often only take into account NRPs rights and not the child in question.

Its such a sad state of events

It is shockingly poor. The number of children who have disclosed sexual abuse and violence to us. We follow procedures to the letter and literally nothing is done, we still have to hand them over to their abusers parents at the end of each school day.
As op said the only thing worse left for these kids to experience is death!
One child used to come in with such horrific marks. I had to have counselling to deal with it!