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?

And - again - any discussion about the fact that things aren’t great elicit these very defensive, irritated, officious sort of posts from practicing SWs or those who work in a similar field.

We do have the right to discuss this.

take each situation at face value and factual value.
Social workers can't do this if they want to do this,
as an organisation should try not to fuck up the same way twice.

Because serious case reviews show that taking every you are told by parents at face value is dangerous.
Many people lie to social workers, often it is only to present the best versions of themselves and their families is harmless.
Sometimes it is to cover up serious issues.

Likewise this thread has people complaining that multiple visits to a&e triggered a social services visit. A system put in place as a result of learning that multiple a&e visits is a warning sign that needs checking out.

In reality no one likes external state scrutiny, why would they.
No group of individuals will always make the right decisions, this shouldn't be expected.
Mistakes are always going to made the same as any other job.

I have never met a SW who isn't happy to talk at length about what could be done to make things work better or what needs to change.

There are several on this thread.

@LydiaBennetsUglyBonnet

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

Bingo! Couldn't have said it better myself!

My children were immaculately looked after and loved by us and both of our extended families. Thriving in school. School gave a glowing review, health visitor gave a glowing review. Character references gave a glowing review. It made 0 difference in our case.

@calmlakes You've noticed that @LydiaBennetsUglyBonnet and I are different posters, right? Your first quote in your post of 14:53 is from her, the second from me. It's not surprising you can find that there are aspects of what two different posters say that clash with each other, because, well, we're separate people.

@Neverfullycharged

What is this 'adoption lobby'?

I'm an adoptive mum, know dozens of adopters - I don't know anyone who does not believe that the best place for a child is with birth family who love them and can keep them safe.

Using language like adoption lobby and baby snatchers just plays into this idea that there are quotas and bonuses.

@Ted27 There are certainly people/groups who seem to blindly opine against adoption irrespective of the specific facts of a case.

There also seem to be those who are doggedly 'pro' adopters and adoption regardless of the facts of a specific case.

Both positions are dogmatic and less than logical

My point is that it isn't possible for social workers to achieve everything that people want them to do.
Not least because these things are often in direct contradiction to each other.
This can clearly be seen even on this short thread.

So there is always going to be an element of dammed if they do and dammed if they don't.
As a society we are very muddled about what we want social workers to do and how accepting we are of this if it impacts us.

I don’t think there’s a reasonable person alive who isn’t sympathetic to that view, @calmlakes , but it does rather stand in contradiction to the ‘mistakes aren’t made and there must be more to it’ arguments that surface when discussing removal of children from their families.

there is always going to be an element of dammed if they do and dammed if they don't

Just as there is for everyone else. Find me someone who wouldn't be considered to have fucked up in their job if they did something when they shouldn't have done anything, and didn't do something when they should've done something. Social workers are damned if they do (make unwarranted intrusive interventions in people's lives and/or escalate the situation into a disaster) and damned if they don't (intervene appropriately when a child is at serious risk). It's called being expected to do your job properly. Yes, it's a difficult job. Nobody's saying it isn't. But they don't deserve prizes for not actively fucking up.

And yes, sometimes there will be a genuine need to investigate, which on further examination will turn out to be a situation that doesn't need intervention, and those are stressful for families but ultimately a price our society is willing to pay.

I'm talking about the situations where SW provide an inadequate fractured service, mess up, misunderstand, pass on their misunderstandings, bring their personal biases into play, refuse to ever accept fault or blame or even that the system is capable of error, and cause needless harm to families. Some of those things aren't the fault of individuals. Most, in fact. But it's infuriating to see people repeatedly bleating "damned if they do, damned if they don't", which I'm starting to parse in my head as "why should social workers have to have accountability?"

@Neverfullycharged

Mistakes happen, sometimes very serious ones with awful consequences. That does not mean adoption should not be an option.

I look at my son and I know he has a better life and a more positive future, certainly a lot better than his sibling who was bounced around various birth family members for years, ended up in care anyway, lost years of education and has a very uncertain future

I haven’t once said it shouldn’t ‘not be an option’ @Ted27 , and I don’t wish to sound overly combative here but there again, people are inventing things others have supposedly said. It’s a bit of a theme, isn’t it?

And re your DS having a better life - I’m sure that’s true.

The problem is that that in itself shouldn’t be a justifiable reason for a child to be removed from a birth family (I’m not talking about your specific case here so please don’t take that as an attack on you.)

I and my DH could probably offer a more positive life to thousands of children who are currently with their birth families now. That isn’t a reason for removing them.

Exactly. Anyone with the ability to make decisions that seriously impact families should be highly accountable. Their decisions, if wrong, can have such a disasterous impact on so many lives. The obvious situation is of course a child that ends up harmed, but although not quite so devasting families are torn apart by being seperated from their children for months on investitations that turn out to be completely unfounded. Getting over that, the trauma, will not be easy for those families. And a "[sorry?] we were wrong" just doesn't cut it.

@Icanstillrecallourlastsummer

Exactly. Anyone with the ability to make decisions that seriously impact families should be highly accountable. Their decisions, if wrong, can have such a disasterous impact on so many lives. The obvious situation is of course a child that ends up harmed, but although not quite so devasting families are torn apart by being seperated from their children for months on investitations that turn out to be completely unfounded. Getting over that, the trauma, will not be easy for those families. And a "[sorry?] we were wrong" just doesn't cut it.

This!!

So rather embarrassingly I realised I don’t know what ‘take at face value’ means after googling it what I mean is not to believe them every time, but assess the situation based on THEM and your judgement of them and not with “oh but people lie to us all the time” in mind. That kind of thinking haunted my experience. I couldn’t give a fuck what other people do and I resented being judged on people in entirely different situation to me. That’s what I mean - take this family on the merit you judge them as individuals with no benchmark

Actually I think most people just want them to get the basics right. It seems to be too much to ask for

Yes. There is NO accountability in social care unless a child dies.

Ive worked for the NHS and the standards for accountability are, rightly, so high. A doctor fucks up, admits it, apologises, puts it right and may even face the GMC.

Social workers fuck up, and they refuse that they’ve done anything wrong and the victims get ignored, and a red flag is put against them for raising an issue in the first place

Neverfullycharged
the prospect of a better life is not the reason children are taken into care.
There has to be a reason for the child removed.
a Sw doesn’t just turn up on someone’s doorstep who has a beautiful baby and say ‘ right, I know someone who can give you a better life, off we pop’
Im reading a lot of how children are taken from parents for no reason. As pp have said, these parents can tell their side of the story but you will never hear both sides due to confidentiality.
A pp said about leilands mum turning up at contact and engaging well, this is only her version of the story. I’ve had parents turn up for contact, telling me how well they are doing, how they’ve turned their life around then when we attend meetings with them I hear a completely different story, the true one.
im not sticking up for Sw in any way, one of my children had 23 in 9 years, the majority of them hopeless.
The ones involved in the lives of the children who were murdered by their parents should themselves be charged with neglect as far as I’m concerned. After baby P and Victoria Climbie Ss was supposed to have had a massive shake up, unfortunately this hasn’t been the case.
SWs are necessary, some good, some bad. There is a big team around a child when they are removed from their parents, it’s not just on one persons say so who receives a bonus for every adoption they secure.

A relative of mine is a children's social worker and she says that in her experiences, cases where parents don't love their children are almost non-existent. The problem is that loving their child doesn't mean they are an adequate parent. People can love their children very much but still have drink or drug problems, be incapable of understanding or meeting a child's needs, have a skewed notion of what discipline means, fail to grasp boundaries, have no control over their temper, lack the ability to remove certain people from their lives who are a danger to their children, etc. People who struggle to look after their kids - understandably - do not want to admit that they're doing something wrong.

There will of course be people like this. The problem is the people who aren't any of those things that go through months sometimes years of hell only to be told sorry and left to try and rebuilt your life afterwards.

Why doesn't anyone mention this? Because it's a huge huge problem that needs sorting asap. But nobody wants to take responsibility for it.

I agree that most children are not permanently removed from families easily.

My anecdontal impression is that the case is quite different when children are removed temporarily due to an investigation. I have a good friend who is a family barrister. When DD was small he told us not to take her to A&E for accidents unless we really needed to. He said the amount of people he represented fighting to get their children back after having their children (temporarily) removed for investigations that turned out to be completely unfounded and based on very little was shocking. He obviously was exposed to that through his line of work, but it really spooked him. Clearly sometimes it's called for, but imagine having your baby removed from your care - even for a few days or a week - would be devastating. Someone has to be accountable for the decisions taken to get there.

Exactly.

I’m not a bad parent nor am I a person who doesn’t love their children.

But I went through hell because my DD was the victim of a crime.

And not one person is SS could see why I was cross about that.