AIBU to be disappointed in Social Services response to concerns raised?

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I’ll preface this by saying I think social workers do an absolutely incredible job in extremely challenging circumstances and this is no way intended to be a thread bashing social workers!

This morning I was on the bus during school drop off time and a woman got on with a number of children, she shouted and swore at the children, called them names and threatened to hit them. The bus driver intervened and they got off at the next stop. I was debating saying something myself but the bus driver beat me to it. When I arrived at work I looked up the number to report my concerns to social services and called them up. Admittedly, I did have very limited information (I had first names I had picked up from overhearing the conversations, the vicinity they got off at for school, a teachers name that one of the children had mentioned and the colour of the school uniform. To cut a long story short I was told unless I had the children’s full names and date of births they couldn’t take a report. In the end I spent an hour myself googling nearby schools and checking the staff lists for the name of the teacher mentioned- I tracked this down and reported my concerns directly to them who said they would be passing this Information onto children’s services.

AIBU to think that if I’m able to track this down then surely call handlers should have the resources/ability to do this too? Maybe I was being a bit OTT but I tend to be of the opinion that it’s better to report and it be nothing than not to report and it be something. I imagine a lot of people who have concerns regarding the welfare of a child won’t always have full names and date of births and it made me think/worry how many at risk children are being missed due to reports not being taken when information or concerns are volunteered.

You should be more disappointed in the children's school. They are the ones in a position to actually do something to help these children. The people that SS listen to the most are professionals from school because they see the children on a day to day basis.

You were right to report. Have heard from Social services in a professional capacity that reports like this help build up a picture of a family so they wouldn’t investigate unless family was already a concern.

Contact the school and ask for the DSL (Designated Safeguarding Lead). Give details and they'll add it to My Concern or CPOMS for those children. It will likely form part of a bigger picture and your observations may end up being crucial in a referral from the school to Children's Social Care.

YANBU

Well done.

You aren't being unreasonable. Soc Services can ring the school and be put through to the Safeguarding Lead who would answer the question immediately about if they have a staff member by that name and would in all likelihood know straightaway who the family was. Social Services just don't do these kinds of things very often for a number of reasons- and children 'fall through the net' continually because opportunities to act early are missed. The family may already have been raised as a concern and have input. All Social Services depts have a central database which shows every child and family where there have been/ate concerns, what has happened or been reported, what actions have been or are being taken, which schools the children are at etc- it isn't hard to check. You can sort it by first names, ages, schools etc.

I used to teach in a very rough area of Manchester. I had children in my class who hadn’t washed or had their clothes washed for weeks. We had to install a washing machine so we could wash them while they did PE. We had mothers who were prostitutes leaving their small children alone all night while they worked, no end of parents abusing drugs and 1 boy whose father had sex with a 12 year old girl in the front seat of the car while he was in the back! And that was all in one school in one year. All of those children remained with their parents but had extensive SS input. Imagine how much an underfunded SS has to deal with. Sadly, they can’t deal with shouty, borderline abusive parents which is why the sad cycle continues.

Exactly this! Well done, OP.

School has to take this further.

This is a brilliant post, thank you.

When DC1 was little, I lived on a very deprived estate on the Northside of Glasgow. Parents swearing at kids and threatening them with getting hit was commonplace. Most adults were unemployed, had severe addiction problems, and lived in pretty horrific conditions. Some had SS involvement but there was no way they could even touch the sides with effecting any sort of cultural change. It was rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic territory. As I understand it, the situation nowadays is much, much worse.
It's hellish. The childhoods that these kids are going through are just unimaginable to most people. But, there doesn't seem to be any appetite from the voting public to change these children's lives for the better. Just more hand wringing when another child dies.

Sadly, even if OP knew the family….this just wouldn’t meet the threshold for SS input…it would be logged…..maybe parent spoken to…..parent would minimise….parent would be offered early help….parent would decline….family would be closed to childrens services with an NFA

What a moronic response.

Good on you, OP.

@TheObstinateHeadstrongGirl

Childrens welfare and safety takes priority over property crimes and is never wasted.

Unfortunately without names there isn't much they can do, so yes, next time I'd report it to the police first. They can investigate and findings will be passed on the Social care

Without names there's not much the Police can do either. If there's not enough info for SW to trace them how would the Police be any better off?

The number posters saying the OP shouldn’t have bothered trying to flag this is so sad. Every report builds a picture of what is happening. It’s not unreasonable to think the this family could be on a social worker’s radar already and the OP’s report (now given via the school) could feed into that.

I think you did the right thing OP - if that’s how the mum behaves in public then how much worse could she be at home!

It's absolutely fine to report things like this. That's not the issue here. The issues is that OP expected call handlers to be able
to work out who these children were on scant information.

Others here are berating the school for not taking action when they have no idea what the school has or has not done.

It is very possible this family are already known to SS but without the ability to identify who they are this particular incident cannot be reported.

I think the time you spent working out the school was time well spent and a very caring thing to do. The school will be able to add this to “the bigger picture” and the safe guarding lead will be able to pick the information up.

I saw a teenager being aggressive to his girlfriend as I was picking up my children. I recognised the uniform they were wearing so rang the school and gave a description. This was passed to safe guarding lead and she rang me the next day to follow up details.

Well done for not ignoring the situation.

This ^^
Social care can't record it on anyone's file, as don't have anyones address or full names etc. (even if they had full names multiple people with same name in a county) so there's no way to log concerns to pass onto the next team.
it should have been call to police for welfare check who have a way of recording it as an incident and making enquiries via cctv and interviewing witnesses. A social worker or call handled for csd can't do that

I think you were right to report. However, I do get why they can’t spend an hour tracking someone down.

If they tracked the wrong family down, the responsibility for upsetting a family would be down to them. Many people would run to the newspapers and stories would start about incompetent SW upsetting decent families. Or even how SW are malicious and trying to steal children from normal families. Not right, but that what happens.

Now you have found the school, so they can identify the kids, if it turns out it’s the wrong family they have the backing of ‘we have to investigate reports and the details were enough to identify this family. It may have been a malicious report’ You have given enough information they can’t take the blame for targeting the wrong family. No one will contact you to reprimand you, but they have the report.

Well done OP. The school was probably the place to deal with this - easier for them to work out who the children were and they can then put this information together with other things they’ve noticed and submit a referral into Children’s Services. It may well be that the family are assessed as needing Early Help that includes parenting advice, and hopefully that might help to stop things escalating to where a Social Worker needs to intervene.

Calling school was a good idea. They know the children and what you reported may be added to any concerns that they wish to report

it wouldn't have taken them an hour, though. It's much easier for SS to access information quickly from schools than it is for Joe Public.

WTAF? They’re clearly not following their own safeguarding procedures there. If it wasn’t ages ago I would complain & cc your MILs councillor.

Reporting to the school was the right thing to do, and in the future should probably be your first port of call. They can add it to any information they are already building on the family, as it is likely they are already on their radar.

I think you did the right thing.

but the police are going to investigate an actual crime before they investigate a mum for swearing on the bus 🙄 and rightly so as well

@TheObstinateHeadstrongGirl

The first duty of the police is public safety with vulnerable people (children) prioritised.

You keep minimising this to swearing.

Swearing, shouting and threatening to hit children to the extent that other adults are concerned - driver and OP at least is of concern to many.

If the police don't think this is a concern they won't do anything. So no need for you to worry.

Bad things happen when good people do nothing.

it wouldn't have taken them an hour, though. It's much easier for SS to access information quickly from schools than it is for Joe Public.

No it isn't!!!
Where do they record it? All Children services records are individual named ones with DOB addresses and parent files with full details including current and past names DOB etc There isn't a file to process for "mum and three DCs who have brown hair and catch number 22 bus and two of the children might be called Sammy or Tom who could live anywhere in this town" It's not a piece of paper it's an electronic record of specific people to be added to. You can't add a referral that has nothing but vague description of who should be concerned about and no address as there isn't anything to create.

Referrals come from police , hospitals GPa HVs teachers with full details of the children so that the SW can investigate the allegations of abuse - its the police who would be first call to do welfare check on incident that took place in public with children that was concerning

Other PP are correct, awful though mums behaviour was, it is nowhere near level of cases children that Social workers are safeguarding