to be confused about social services

[whentheraincame]

Bit of a long one but it's something I have thought about a long time. There's two narratives:

SS don't do enough; don't act to remove children in obvious danger (happens sometimes of course)

SS are overzealous; remove children from loving homes (going to happen at times, right?)

there was a show over ten years ago called I Want my Baby Back and it was absolutely heartbreaking and admittedly it terrified me. Basically hairline fractures were found in children and parents were blamed for abuse. The argument was (I forget details and could never watch again) from some doctors that these were the result of Vitamin D deficiency (which let's face it, was endemic a while back and in the news loads)

So the argument was those children were wrongly removed. One mother cried "I want my baby" and honestly it's never left me. I'll have a cry about this later as I always do if I think too much about a child being removed from a loving mum.

So my question is if anyone has proper insight. I'm scared of SS in general. Although I actually had involvement with them myself when I left an abusive ex and they came to check I was not going to go back, nothing further happened once they met me - so proof they are fine I guess.

But I remember seeing a lady on the news, well spoken, and saying SS need to return her children who were removed. I had a friend tell me in work once that a friend with undiagnosed autism got the children removed due an incident where one got hurt by the other (which happens. these things happen, children do get hurt and it's often an accident that couldn't be prevented)

I guess I just don't want to see SS as evil child snatchers, and want insight into how they operate in reality and what actually gets children removed from parents' care?

@Sunnyqueen
That is the most concerning isn't it that a social worker can have a opinion that a child could be at risk of harm in the future and try to have a child removed.

Like others have said the police have to have proof, socials worker can just have an opinion and that opinion of potential future harm.

I have seen first hand a social worker not do their job properly and meant a child who had drugs in their system was send back to the parent and no further action taken.....

@when2become3 It was a really horrible time and left me in a state of shock, I think. I couldn't come to terms with how hard they lied to push the narrative of me being a neglectful, drug taking alcoholic who needed intervention immediately, to pretending we don't don't exist, and sending me a letter to say they're closing the case. With a little bit about how hard I've worked to make progress, which just added to my anger and confusion!

My SW even blocked my number the day I received the letter.

Thing is, before moving here, we never had ss involvement. I later found out that 7 (and probably more) other families around here were under ss from reports by the school. All except 1 were single mums. One of them clearly needed it and I had one of her sons at my house most nights for dinner. She never moved past CIN and I can confidently say she should still have her children removed.

It has made me very wary of ss and I think anyone who says they absolutely, always do the right thing without an agenda, are very, very lucky not to have seen the other side. It isn't always conspiracies by shit parents with an axe to grind.

Agree with PP that it’s often about the SW need to be right based on opinion, and ignoring facts, that’s the issue.

And I don’t believe that children aren’t taken for no reason.

Take my case. DD, then 5, said that a family friend had exposed himself to her at a particular event, and then asking her to do something to him. Say Lucy’s party. I thought I was doing the right thing by reporting it to the police. Who told me they spoke to the man and he was away during Lucy’s party (she disclosed it some time after the event). The policeman narrative was v much ‘children of this age misremember facts but rarely faces, we are working off the basis that she got the wrong event/date’. I agreed. According to a PP allegedly a GP, This is me defending the man - see how misconstruancies cause damage?

Anyway, the SW, who is perhaps the most rude and abrupt woman I’ve ever had the displeasure of meeting, makes an appointment. I didn’t realise they’d become involved TBH but thought maybe they could do a referral to a counselling service of similar. No, she came in, got my DD’s name wrong which REALLY put my back up, and then suggested to me that perhaps she had got th person wrong. She asked about men within the family, about my DD, my DBS, FIL etc. I said in no uncertain terms that the police were not working to that and neither was I, in my view I believe my DD about the man but accept she got the date wrong. SW said “Oh so you’re saying she could be lying?”. No, idiot, I’m not. It was a VERY fraught first meeting with a total numpty who made her mind up that DD got the person wrong and the date right, not the opposite.

She went away and decided that I was a risk because I was not acknowledging that someone on her immediate family could have e harmed her, if in denial and possibly covering up for someone etc.

Honestly, it was bizarre. And then she found out about my previous sexual adult, made an unannounced visit and asked me why I’d kept that from her. I was and said didn’t realise you needed to know that. She WOULD NOT believe that I couldn’t see how it’s relevant.

At that point I said I am disengaging with you and only engaging with the police, who are on my DD’s side (despite the inevitable no further action on this man). To say she went nuclear would be an understatement. In my view, I refused to engage with a woman who was damaging my DD and working against us. In their view, disengaging with incompetent idiots is akin to beating your children up and they were ‘gravely concerned’.

Through threat of court action we reluctabtly re-engaged and Kids went on a CIN plan.

No imagine if we stayed disengaged. CP conference goes ahead, we refuse to attend because why would we when they don’t even know our kids names and are saying they don’t believe the allegation and are working against the police.

children probably put on CP register as we didn’t engage. Slowly but surely, disengaging - even when it’s with incompetency, and because there is NO support given, only damage, we get nothing out of having SS involved - our kids are removed.

When you boil it down, our children are removed because we refused to disbelieve our DD when she made a disclosure about someone.

Thats the truth - it seems to be that SW can have a very long strop because parents are RIGHTLY pushing against them and that can end up in removal.

out DC have been off CIN for a while now, but the man in question had DC himself who were put in a CIN plan and I heard that they were removed before we were.

How can anyone justify that level of shit show incompetence? I don’t care if some SWs are good - that’s not good enough, and you’ll find my story is similar to thousands out there

Yes SWs can make shit mistakes that have awful consequences but it's not the majority.

Thank goodness for that. That pesky scare mongering minority of families torn apart eh. They should learn to pipe down.

As a social worker it is sad to read some of the experiences that pp have had with social services in England. I'm from NI but I'm learning a lot. I would not want any family to feel the way most of you do, I would own up to any mistakes but always operate in a way that checks and rechecks information. I am completely up front with families and want to do what is in the best interest of the child at all times. We do operating differently over here and our superiors are constantly over us checking our work and talking through cases and advising.

Big things need to change all round because it is such a shame that families are not getting the support they need. During Covid it was the most difficult time I had service close down and even Health Visitors were not doing visits which was just a disgrace. We as social workers never stopped visits at all we carried on as normal and it is not fair that families would have reach potential child protection thresholds because there was no early intervention available or identified early enough because of closures. I always keep this in mind when working with my families.

I would like to hear more of what people would suggest for the better. We operate under signs of safety which if you have a quick Google is improving relationships and transparency, it works really well.

Just to add I always pray that a family will prove me wrong based on their history for example, nobody wants anyone to lose their children and I always have hope people can change. Unfortunately the world does not work that way and it's heartbreaking when it goes downhill.

Simonjt

I did answer. It's a silly question though as the point is that diagnoses can and should be made in a timely manner. They are not.

The judge (or the hearing panel) is there to listen to all of the evidence, for and against, and to make a decision.

I think you're deliberately missing the point.

SS should not be passing on 'factual information' to support their recommendations in a way that is teeing up a judge to decide in their favour. I have seen that done and I'm sure the temptation to do it is strong but it's wrong. The family is not 'on the other side' and in any case will have nothing like your resources or standing.

You are supposed to gather evidence impartially and present that evidence in good faith. The evidence gathering and presentation of the evidence should not be an attempt to persuade a judge. You have a chance to make your recommendation and that is your opportunity to influence the judge's decision. If you try to influence it in the quality of evidence you have gathered, or gather evidence with confirmation bias, you are quite simply corrupt and undermining the judge's ability to make a well informed decision.

I can really resonate with this. It is natural for a mother to try and protect her DC and this would be seen as a good thing except when the harm is coming from Social services themselves and the mother is trying to protect her DC from a revolving door of SWs who cause trauma and instability and 0 support to the DC, who in my case were already going through a tough time as I was unwell mentally. I think the only thing that saved me was that I'm MC and well educated.

Something which would have helped my DC enormously would have been having one SW involved who got to know us. I'm trying to remember how many different SW we had but probably about 8. This happened due to the short term/long term team model, our first was a student SW and some went off sick/left the job. The other thing is really quite basic but I would have like them to have listened to me and my DC and to realise that we are the experts on our family not them. And finally, every time we had a new SW everything had to be restarted. I really couldn't understand why but noone was able to access anyone else's work/reports so if someone left or went off sick they had to start the report they were working on from the beginning. So, for teams to work collaboratively so they can pick up someone else's work. And of course SWs need a much smaller caseload - it is ridiculous and dangerous atm.

Yes same. I am also articulate and able to argue a good pointZ I absolutely dread what happens to those not as fortunate as we are

I remember that thread and I was absolutely disgusted at the SW who posted trying to minimise SS actions and especially those who victim blamed Leiland James’s birth mother. One even basically confirmed there’s no support to mothers who are in abusive relationships and of her ex terrorises her and shows up at the house it’s essentially seen as her fault somehow. The complexities of DV are NOT considered.

Again it makes me realise that in the unlikely event of DH beating me up, I doubt I’d call the police so they make a referral and I’m being blamed by some dipshit SW. I’d rather say nothing and shuffled off and bear the injustice of it all

Something which would have helped my DC enormously would have been having one SW involved who got to know us.

As a foster carer (previously, not now) I would agree with this. We would have a different SW calling each week to speak to the same child. It seemed to be a ten minute "You're not being ill treated are you?" chat in her bedroom. Would the child have felt safe opening up under these circumstances and the insistence on being in her bedroom (presumably so she could feel she wasn't overheard) was very intrusive and harmful for her boundaries as a young person entering puberty. She shouldn't have had a different adult in her bedroom every week. If she had made a disclosure I don't know what they would have done because they all had so many cases that the right hand didn't know what the left hand was doing. It was staggeringly incompetent and poorly equipped to handle nuance or operate sensitively.

The one issue we did ask SS to deal with, they messed up massively in a way that still upsets that child (made out a short term placement was going to be a forever family despite there being no question of this).

My friend (a foster carer) has found herself being forced to share a waiting room with the fostered child's parent before conferences. That wouldn't be a problem in itself but what was the parent doing? Wrathfully reading the notes they had just been given about just how many contact visits they'd missed and disturbing info the child had disclosed...to my friend. It wasn't physically safe.

On a different note, SS might find it easier to get foster carers if SW didn't treat them as employees and their homes as open houses they have access to at all times. We would agree to a half hour visit at 4pm which in reality would be a rambling two hour visit at 9.30pm. We did wonder if our SW would be more efficient if she talked less. More respect for everyone in the process, especially the birth family. The way they were dismissed as useless was shocking.

Just did a bit of searching on here as I remembered posting on a similar thread in January 2020 inspired by the TV programme about fractures etc …..

It was under my old account - OldQueen69.

It was interesting to re-visit, and what strikes me the most is that when one has SS involvement people really are determined to think you’re obstructive / in denial / outright lying when bad practice is reported.

For example, I have the court bundles from my case, 28 years ago, and I have proof that my DS was placed before the Adoption Panel well in advance of the Final Hearing and before he had any court orders in place because in the spirit of co-operation we agreed for DS to be voluntarily accommodated with FC for the whole 18 months the investigation was ongoing.

I also have a letter of apology stating this was done “in error” 🙄

I have been told that this could never happen - yet it’s there in black and white.

That's awful mistress. There does seem to be a very defensive 'that could never happen'/'mistakes will be made so what' mentality. Where is the acknowledgment that these failings are serious and need to change?

Yo the PP - I think it might have been @Jellycatspyjamas - who asked what we need to do to improve things.

I think a good start would be to have a culture where SWs ^stop% referring to other people - as in, if a mother tells you you are wrong about X, don’t jump to ‘but other people lie to us all the time’ - take each situation at face value and factual value.

Another one is more simple - stop the copying and pasting from old reports. Or if you must, make sure that any errors or amendments are updated in old reports to reflect the truth. It’s absolutely infuriating knowing that you’ve told a SW til you’re blue in the face something which is incorrect, and they agree, and it’s there in your next report because it’s a copy and paste job. Example: first visit, SW asks to see DC’s rooms. I showed her but we were moving in a week and so everything was packed up in boxes except for a few days worth of clothes and a couple of toys. Idiot put in her report that the rooms were v bare, not much to show children lived there 🙄 I rang her and said this is incorrect - she at first told me ‘it’s not relevant’ but I pushed and she eventually said it IS relevant that we were moving. Bit forevermore that statement was in our report and no one ever changed it. And if SS ever become involved again, say we have an accident and get a referral, then they will look back at old case notes and assume the children dont have clothes and toys.

A third solution as a PP pointed out - get to know the child. We had 4 SWs in the 8 months we were under a CIN plan. None of them knew our children at any level, never got to know them. I know time is tight but FFS you are making decisions about childrenMs lives and you have no idea about their fears, what makes them happy, their hobbies, friendships and demeanour or personality. All you are interested in is getting g a name out of them, or a confession that they’re being harmed, then you toddle off to fuck it up with the next person too

There's an idea that they don't matter because the greater mission is so noble. But if a surgeon makes an unforced error and someone is hurt by that, we don't just talk about how hard her job is and how high her caseload is and how many people she's saved and try to stop people talking about it.

when one has SS involvement people really are determined to think you’re obstructive / in denial / outright lying when bad practice is reported.

This is also something I have noticed.

Leiland James’ birth mother was single when he was born. She was being supported by a local - and it seems, reputable - charity. She believed she was going to keep her baby and the charity also believed this.

Now yes, there could be more to it and there could be information we and the charity are not privy to - but SS have to accept some poor character judgement here, given the couple they placed the baby with murdered him.

Yet would people accept that maybe SS were wrong? Absolutely not

Yep, not to mention she was seeing LJ in a contact centre 3 times a week, showing up and engaging really well with him. But he was still adopted out - it doesn’t add up.

There's an idea that they don't matter because the greater mission is so noble. But if a surgeon makes an unforced error and someone is hurt by that, we don't just talk about how hard her job is and how high her caseload is and how many people she's saved and try to stop people talking about it.

That's so sad. It creates new victims. At the end of the day there is nothing more sad than a family split up without cause. It makes me think of the film Lion. That little boy was adopted because his birth mother couldn't be found. The pain for everyone involved was immense.

I’m not sure Lion is comparable

A little boy accidentally boarded a train that ran for 2 days in the 80’s in India. No one knew he’d boarded it. He didn’t know his mums name or where he was from. It would be like finding a needle in a haystack trying to locate his mum. Adoption was a very good alternative than living in a crowded, corrupt orphanage.

That’s different from SWs going on a power trip because they can to the point parents don’t have a voice and children are being harmed far more by the SW than anyone else in their life

SS are damned if they do and damned if they don't sometimes. They are often painted to be the bad guys when they get things wrong but don't get praised enough when they get things right and save lives.

The truth is that the issues they are dealing with are never simple. If they were, then it would be easy and they wouldn't get things wrong.

They deal with people, and people are complex, and they often have to make a judgement call based on the information they have available.

SS are not 'evil', no one goes into it for the salary. People generally go into it because they want to make a difference in society, and are coming from a good place. The problem is, the issues they have to resolve are just complicated, and they cannot predict the future for every person/ family they work with, and sometimes they will get it wrong. But on the whole, they do a very good job, and a difficult one.

SS are damned if they do and damned if they don't

This exact phrase comes up on every single thread I've seen about this topic.

But it could apply equally to a hell of a lot of other people in other jobs, who are expected to do their job in a way that helps, and not cause unnecessary harm. I don't think that the fact their job is difficult and complex means they should be praised to the high heavens for doing it. They should be properly resourced and properly remunerated, accept fault and responsibility where necessary, and as an organisation should try not to fuck up the same way twice.

And as far as I can tell the only person I've noticed on this thread so far talking about them being evil and saying they're expected to predict the future is you, @onelittlefrog. Even people who say they've been badly harmed by cackhanded/overbearing/careless/opinionated/obsessive SWs have been careful to say that they realise it's not all of them and that there are systemic and resourcing issues.

I think they probably get it wrong on both sides of the scale quite often, and it's not surprising we only tend to hear about the cases that go wrong.

However, I don't think either side of the scale if as rare as some like to make out though.

SS are damned if they do and damned if they don't

So are the birth parents.