To think a lot of posts on this social services Facebook group can’t be entirely truthful?

[TheObstinateHeadstrongGirl]

5 years ago, my DD made a disclosure about a family friend which we reported to the police. As a result we had children’s services involved in our lives and had a horrendous excuse for a social worker who cast doubt of my DD’s experience. FWIW: I know the vast majority of social workers are excellent, sadly we had a very brief experience with a really incompetent one, so I’m not in the “all social workers are evil” camp. I can’t imagine how hard it must be to do that job in a broken country with failing systems.

Anyway, at the time I joined a Facebook support group for those who have children’s services involved to get advice on how to handle everything that was going on. I never left the group, for no particular reason. And for some reason Facebook’s algorithm have been putting the posts on my feed more recently.

Some of the posts are very strange.

Posters claiming they’re on a child protection plan because their relatives are in the army. Or because they have a messy house. Some claim they don’t know why they’re at PLO level (which is a pre-cursor to court action). Loads of posts claiming SS are involved for no reason whatsoever, including pregnant women who look like they’re gonna have their babies removed and they don’t know why. Not all obviously but a large amount claim this.

AIBU to think that children aren’t placed on the child protection register for living in a messy house and there must be more to it?

My point is quite clear - you said no children are removed due to future risk of harm.

Im saying that is incorrect because babies are removed at birth due to future risk of harm.

I'm going to start this by saying that I absolutely accept that I needed SS/professional help. I can see now (13 years later) that I definitely did. I didnt at the time though. I was very very depressed and wasn't thinking straight. This also meant that doing the obvious like "wash up" was beyond me. It's totally different, mentally, looking back to how it seemed at the time.

I also realise now that SS can't just "take" your DC. But when they told me that's what they'd do if I raised a complaint I believed them. I had no reason not to.

SS were involved because of the state of my house. That was their only concern. And, being honest, the house was a state. However there WERE NOT any drugs/ needles/ animal faeces/ used nappies etc.

There was clean and dirty clothes all piled up. I knew which piles were clean and which were dirty, but others didn't. To cook dinner I first had to wash up what I needed rather than everything being clean and washing up after the meal. There was a leaking pipe in the kitchen, but it was so messy I couldn't get a plumber in so I had some old duvets on the floor and didn't go out there without boots on.

Like I said, I needed help. The house was disgusting and my children never deserved to live like that. I have no excuse for it. Other than being very mentally unwell.

However. The SW was horrendous. According to her report my dc didn't have beds. They did. It just so happened that the day they came the dc had taken the mattresses off and were making dens/ jumping off the bed onto them.
She reported that there was broken glass on the floor. There wasn't. When my friend, who had helped me do the initial clean up and attended the TAC meeting with me asked where it was, the SW admitted that she never actually saw any, but that the person who made the initial referral (who had also not been in my house) said there was some.

The SW said on that initial visit that they(rightly) couldn't leave my DC there, and my mum came to collect them. They were with her for a week whilst I cleaned up, I saw them every day they just weren't allowed in my house. However, when The SW told me they were being removed I broke down and said "please don't take my children away". I think that's probably a fairly normal and understandable reaction. They tried to use this against me as evidence that I was mentally unstable.

Anyway, dc weren't there. My friend moved in for a few days, and other friends/ family helped out where they could. We blitzed the place. For example we dumped all the laundry in the bath and then bagged it up and a friend took it to the laundrette and bought it back washed, dried and folded.
When the SW came back a couple of days into the clear up, she added to the report that the boys couldn't come back as we didn't have a usable bath. Which was true, but there was no recognition that that was a temporary thing.

One day when she came we had upended the sofa to clean under it. Again, listed as "no sofa to sit on."

The boys were allowed home after a week, we'd tidied, cleaned, scrubbed and painted. SS decided I needed ongoing support. Fine. I did.

But again, the SW just made reports littered with lies. DS1s name was constantly spelt wrong. The girls version. When I mentioned it I was told it didn't matter. It did to me. And him.

One of the reports mentioned that "Miss Higgins has set aside time every day to do homework with DS1, however she hasn't done the same for DS2 and can't understand the importance of this"
DS2 wasn't at school and didn't get any homework! Ffs!
She came round one day in half term, the day after DS2s birthday, and asked why there were toys out! The DC were quite literally playing with them.

She'd leave her diary open on the sofa and I could see the names of all her other clients. Including someone I knew. Luckily I knew she had a SW!

When I raised all of this it was heavily hinted that if i complained they would take my dc permanently. So I didn't.

If I'd posted about this at the time I probably wouldn't have admitted that I needed help because I wasn't in the right place mentally. And i didn't want to admit i was failing. Looking back I can see I did. So whilst the stories on Facebook probably aren't the full truth, the people posting them are probably unable/unwilling to admit they need help.

And I think most SW do an amazing job. I know I couldn't do it. But people who have had, or claim to have had, a bad experience aren't necessarily lying.

You are absolutely right.

I’ve been present in court as a support worker when a one year old child was removed from her mother due to risk of future harm. It absolutely happens.

@MillicentTrilbyHiggins I'm sorry you had that experience, it sounds awful. Getting someone's name right and spelling it right in a report is one of the most basic things a professional should do, and it is very disrespectful to get that wrong and especially so to tell you that it isn't important. If a social worker can't get the name right, how should the parent or anyone else have faith that the rest of the report is correct?

It is also a basic part of safeguarding social work that the worker is honest about what things could lead to seeking advice about removal, and what things might have been identified as a concern but wouldn't. Social workers should be really, really careful about ANYTHING that a parent might interpret as a threat/factor for removal, let alone 'heavily insinuating'.

I know it doesn't help you now, but for anyone else reading this - any local authority should have a formal complaints policy and information about how complaints are dealt with. In the council's I've worked in, informal complaints would be dealt with by the line manager, but I've always been encouraged to make parents aware of the formal complaints route. I don't know if it's standard, but everywhere I've worked so far, formal complaints are dealt with by a senior manager (usually one level above a team manager) but crucially not the direct line manager. Basically to ensure the person dealing with the complaint is not directly involved with the person/decision you're complaining about. They are also responded to in writing, with information about how to escalate further.

Given the experience you had it sounds like you did bloody well to change things for your children, it's hard enough when dealing with mental ill health let alone with social services 'help ' adding more pressure not less.

I used to take a lot of this stuff at face value when I was younger and I think I did believe SS were evil. But now I'm older I know a few people who lost their kids and I think it was justified tbh.

Person 1 - Abusive partner and father of her 3rd child. Used to beat her and was on drugs. Started getting rough with the kids too. She was given so many chances by SS but every time she let him back in. I think she did begrudgingly admit that she was in the wrong though.

Persons 2&3 - Dad has been in prison for GBH. Not the most intelligent person either. Mother has severe learning difficulties and was already known to SS. Can't even hold a conversation with another adult and constantly comes out with racist/generally rude and inappropriate stuff. Not entirely sure but I think she and her sister may have FAS. Their house is covered in rubbish, they drink all day and live off kebabs. Their son was taken at birth. They won't admit their son is in care and have been pretending he's in hospital for 4 years (I know) but I would hazard a guess they have no idea what the problem is with their lifestyle.

My stepsister is a social worker and she says they will generally do their utmost to support families and help them stay together. Not only because removing children is expensive. However I know social workers are human so of course there are awful/corrupt ones.

A “friend” of mine had their baby removed at birth. She often posts pictures of him in the labour ward saying how much she misses him and that SS are the work of the devil.

I just went to look for a CPD course for Gaslighting.

Doesn't seem to be mandatory to social workers in my area.

The impression I get of social workers where I'm from is that they may not swoop in and take kids straight off, but they are very hard to get rid of once you've got them (even if it's because your BPD ex called them out of malice after you asked for supervised contact) and they cause the parents (who may already be mentally fragile) a lot of stress - kids too, if they're old enough to grasp why they're being pulled out of class to get interviewed by some random.

Good. Glad to hear they’re being thorough.

Rather that than them close the case too early for a child that is at risk.

Hi,

I've posted an image on Facebook of my kids. Of course, my Facebook account is private, so only friends can see the photos. If someone dislikes the photos, they can report them on Facebook, which is the usual procedure.

But instead of reporting the post on Facebook, someone contacted social services because of the image. Why would they do that instead of reporting it on Facebook?

When I googled the number she called from, it was unrecognized, but she mentioned Walsall MASH. Why would she do that? She also said on the phone that it was an anonymous referral and that she had a few concerns. All of this because of what she considered an inappropriate photo on Facebook, but it wasn't.

What would you do?

I’m sorry to hear that, it must be really stressful but I’m not sure there is much you can do except cooperate with social services in whatever investigations they are doing and explain that the photo has been misrepresented?
Also I think you should start your own thread as this is an old thread about a different topic and so people probably won’t see your post to be able to help/ give advice …