Social services I have found to be a minefield, and extremely unhelpful and incompetent to be honest.
My ex-husband was having regular contact with our children but was then arrested for sexual offences involving children. Understandably as a matter of procedure police had to refer to social services for a safeguarding review. This was highly instrusive but obviously I understood the reason. Case closed, concluding that both children are well cared for by me, loved, provided for well, safe and comfortable home etc, and obviously zero contact with him of any kind since his arrest and the police disclosure to me of his actions. However, the "team around the family" meetings we were promised were never set up, not even one. I asked for information on how to manage the situation with the children - what to tell them, how to explain in an age appropriate way - no support with this at all.
However, both children were traumatised by him suddenly vanishing from their lives when we had been co-parenting amicably with contact several times per week, and being so young that the reasons could not be explained to them, so I got them a private therapist to support them. She observed some concerning behaviour in my daughter (only 3 at the time) that may be indicative of having been abused. This was obviously devastating and I had no idea how to best manage this to support her and so I self-referred to Early Help. Her nursery also did a referral on our behalf, when I discussed it all with them.
Yet for some unknown reason - when they had already conducted a safeguarding review and established there were no safeguarding concerns - instead of allocating a support worker to help us, they allocated another one from child protection and did another safeguarding review (despite obviously their father never having had any contact, even a phone call, since his arrest. I would never allow that).
Both children were also going through autism diagnosis processes at the time also and so what I had asked social services for was support with this, with accessing OTs and getting school and nursery to make adjustments, with help in accessing therapy for the children's trauma, etc. Instead we had a completely pointless second safeguarding review. Apparently they are short of resources, so why are they wasting them like this? This second social worker requested we communicate by email as she was rarely in the office, but ignored my multiple emails for months at a time. She refused to provide any information on how we access help, or apply for direct payments, or to even contact the school or nursery. Ignored their calls and emails as well. I forwarded her reports from the children's paediatricians, their psychologist, reports from our nannies etc. All ignored. Still no team around the family meetings: instead I was having to forward everyone's reports to everyone else and nursery were told she had closed the case when she hadn't even responded to me.
During her first visit here she told me my children can't be autistic because they make eye contact and didn't have a meltdown during her visit. 🙄 She also asked why they should help me when I have a job, why can't I just fund therapy for my children myself? As a lone parent. Right, ok.
My son was one day too distressed to go to school due to a huge autistic meltdown (happening a lot at that time due to no adjustments, which may have been different had she arranged the team around the family meetings as she was meant to and helped to get support at school in place...). She then turned up at my house unannounced saying she was "concerned" that he was off school. He was in reception, with 97% attendance.
She then, having wasted resources harrassing us in such ways but providing zero actual useful input or support whatsoever despite me doing her job for her and sending her all the reports from professionals stating what help was needed, closed the case. And four months later I finally received her report. Littered with errors and factual inaccuracies, but obviously concluding there were no safeguarding concerns. Well of course there aren't, the previous report concluded that already and that's not what the referral was for! It was to help us access the right support for autistic children who've been through trauma. Her report stated on one page that the children need support with this, then on the next page stated children's services will not provide any support. No explanation. Apparently this report had also been reviewed by her manager. The mind boggles.
Her report also stated that "we might benefit from referring ourselves to Early Help", which is what I'd done in the first place before they allocated her to us. That whole debacle was completely unacceptable and incompetent, and has now been raised to a stage two complaint. The statutory deadline for the response to the stage two complaint passed a couple of months ago, but still not resolved. Utterly shocking incompetence. She even complained to me about how many children were in her caseload as an excuse for her ignoring emails for months on end: so unprofessional. Frankly, they say they want parents to "engage" but when you self-refer for help you get harassed and time wasted like this and a ton of extra work for me having to raise formal complaints but still no help for the children at all, so what is the point of their job?!
Following all of this I made yet another self referral to Early Help. We had to wait another 4 months to be allocated a support worker. This woman seems to at least have a vague idea about autism and trauma, and is now arranging a team around the family meeting. But this has taken 18 months, from when it should have happened. Meanwhile my children have struggled with no support, despite my best efforts. It's totally unacceptable. Ofsted says the local services here are inadequate, and I've pointed out to social services that they'd be better off spending the resources they do have on putting the required support in place rather than ignoring parents requesting help so that they are forced to escalate complaints to a level where resources instead have to be spent on an external investigation into their incompetence.
I do not know if the support worker will actually do her job and deal with CAMHS and OT and school and nursery to sort things out now finally. I really hope so. But I have lost any faith in their service after all of this. This is not what I needed in a traumatic situation as a lone parent with two disabled kids and a demanding professional full time job to do myself. I do not have time to do their job fir them also. The incompetence has been shocking and makes me very concerned for children who do not have a parent to advocate on their behalf like mine do. Hundreds of hours of my time wasted and so much unnecessary stress and yet STILL no support to date is in place except what I've paid for privately. It is beyond a joke and they all need to take a long, hard look at their standards of professionalism.