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 need to be able to give more information than that op. The best thing to do, as you saw it, was to contact the school. Which you did eventually.

Sadly, when cafcas can't even protect children from a paedophile father, they certainly can't address a situation like this.

Have slept on it and remembered MASH.

Useful advice here for Oxfordshire:

www.oscb.org.uk/concerned-about-a-child/

Police, schools, GPs, healthcare and social care do all work together so don't assume that contacting one rules out the others. Having read your op again, you have such limited information for them to go on though that you would have been best to track down the school and contact them. Not sure how schools work but in healthcare and social care will log that if they can if they know the person. Safeguarding concerns can be flagged by any of the agencies. I had a patient the other day who had five safeguardings from the GP, social workers and police. That was a fun one!

Sorry realised I didn't clarify

The call rather at children services won't be a social worker who does enquiries (investigating). The call taker will have a wall of phones ringing so they take the full info raise on an electronic file in children's names/ addresses/DOB etc or add to an existing file and add the Concern incident

And that electronic file gets sent onto next step for further initial enquiries such as contacting school GP HV screen by police in MASH etc to gather information before a decision is made whether to progress to statutory s.47 child safeguarding enquiry (ie allocate case)

Without actual details full names sob address of children there is nothing to stick that information into as referrer (op) was unable to say who the children were etc

That's why incidents in public with unknown alleged victims even if children and unknown alleged perpetrators is for police to investigate if the police feel it is warranted

Hi Op

You could have just caught that shouty mum at a really stressful time, and her way of handling this is being like that,

Some people 🙄 just are shouty like that, it doesn't necessary mean her children are being traumatised/abused ,

She could handle stress of demands better, as calling them names is wrong too,

Saying that I have mixed feelings about this,

Saying that having a re think name calling is emotional abusive,

has a drip drip tap effect

So you could have a point Op

I think there is merit to what you saying

As it does effect people long term emotional abuse really

You did 100% the right thing and thank you for looking out for those children. Reporting to the school directly was fantastic as they will know more and be able to keep an eye.

So neighbours reporting concerns for children living at Number X street in Y town can make referrals as the address is a unique identifier - police can do welfare check gather info about children too

but Children being on bus 22 and attending Y School isn't a unique identifier

OP did good thing to ring school as a concerned member of public as it is vaguely possible school may recognise family from description .

WTF are you for real? ......I was a 'shouty' mum ......but I didn't call my children cunts or threaten to knock their teeth out....of course its abuse when she's doing that 🙄

reporting to the school safeguarding lead is the right thing to do here, and all safeguarding concerns should be reported without worrying whether you should MYOB because there's no negative consequence if you report something to a safeguarding lead and there's actually nothing to worry about.

the safeguarding lead gets to collate information and can make the report to SS with all the required full names and dates of birth if all the little bits on information from teachers, lollipop ladies and random strangers on a bus all add up to a pattern of abusive behaviour.

reports to a safeguarding lead should just a simple and factual statements of what you saw and heard and when, with no speculations about causes, motivations or appropriate actions. they just need to know the facts of what was seen and heard.

In an ideal world yes but in a broken and understaffed, underfunded policing system full of incompetent officers they just wouldn’t give this the time of day. They’d fob it off to social services.

If every single person who saw this type of thing every single time the whole country population would have to be social workers in order to process it all

So you have decided something has to be done, it wasn't done the exact way you want so they are in the wrong?

Sure it is great 100% of parents act perfectly towards their children but it is totally unrealistic to expect SS to be able to do anything about this

@TheObstinateHeadstrongGirl

In an ideal world yes but in a broken and understaffed, underfunded policing system full of incompetent officers they just wouldn’t give this the time of day. They’d fob it off to social services

In which case you can relax and breathe easy.

Sorry I don’t understand? You think I can breathe easy knowing we have a shit failing police system? I don’t get it?

Also I presume for the people to be identified other people or organisations would have to be in a position to give out private information on the grounds '"I am social services and someone on a bus saw parents having a go at their kids so I am contacting you to just freely hand over information so we can...well...not really sure what we can do"

If they said they couldn't take a report without full names and dates of birth, then I do think that's a bit much. I know the names of children I've met at baby groups etc while on mat leave, but I don't know their birthday. Would I really not be able to report anything, if I had concerns? Ditto the family who live across the road, but maybe in that case having an address would help.

Anyone who calls their child a bitch, slag, cunt is evil.
Being stressed doesn't suddenly make you name call or threaten to knock your child's teeth out.
There is not any situation in existence that would call for that type of behaviour.

Since children are being murdered in homes where relatives/grandparents have been on their knees begging social services to intervene, to no avail, they are hardly likely to start looking for a frazzled woman on a bus trying to keep her kids under control

I would video it covertly next time, or at least get the bus driver's details as a secondary eyewitness. Give them something concrete to follow up on.

All kinds of weird people exist. There are many people who call in to public services with exaggerated or totally made up testimonies, on top of vague actual details of the subjects' identities ("a British woman"... that narrows it down!). Social services are not private investigators. They shouldn't have to spend hours (it doesn't just stop at Googling - now they'll have to interview others, look for other eyewitnesses, etc) on a wild goose chase with such limited details and questionable veracity.

Sorry realised I sounded like I was condemning you, far from it. I mean just from SS' perspective

Back to your original point. Your thread title says 'disappointed'. YABU to be disappointed.
"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? "
Yes. You are unrealistic in what you are expecting SS to be able to do.

Yes- that's absolutely right. You couldn't refer to children services with just a full name . You'd need address and date of birth (because people move addresses and also change names) and a name only isn't unique identifier

Because how would call taker (it is screened before going anywhere near a extremely busy social worker taking very serious allegations) actually be able to work out which of the 245 Emily Jones with case files on their system to add this incident to? They can't put it on wrong one... they may have an already open case so don't want to make a new file & this info not be married up. As much of that key info including GP school or nursery DOB addressfull names are key details. Remember op barely even had a first name.

If you were witnessing severe mistreatment In public of a child you don't know , you report to the police who have powers to investigate and get copies of any cctv evidence if was serious enough and a crime, and then identify child parent by taking to the school for eg

Including if neighbour overhearing from someone's house- police can take along MASH SW to welfare check. But where do they welfare check Emily Jones who is about 1 and can live anywhere in... the police take witness statements and investigate if a crime.

YANBU.

You did absolutely the correct thing.

It's just sad there arent more resources available.

In my experience things have to be almost dangerous before social services will get involved. There just isnt the capacity to deal with low level risk.

Ok well the call handler could have said it might be better to report to the Police.