Disability Social Workers

[OoopsOhNo]

When you have a severely disabled child, you are eligible for a bit of respite. If you need anything above the bare minimum level of respite, you usually need a social worker.

What this means, in some areas, is even if you have done nothing "wrong" as a parent, to get any rest you need to:

• Agree to be on a Child in Need plan (and go to meetings)
• "Safety score" your family at every CiN meeting, and believe it or not there is a right answer as '8' means you don't get services and '5' is child protection enquiry. Professionals also score you.
• There is a note at the bottom of the CiN that says although it is voluntary, if you "disengage" the LA can choose to step it up to a Child Protection matter.
• Agree to visits of your home (usually every 6 weeks) and you have to show them your child's bedroom. There is also a little box on their forms which asks if they have seen the child alone.
• Tell every hospital you take your child to that they have a social worker.
• The schools treat you differently (sometimes there is a big advantage to this, for example our schools remained open during strikes to children with social workers) but sometimes it comes with an extra level of sort of concealed monitoring that you can tell is safeguarding tick boxes.
• They haven't with us, but they can and do make comments about parenting which wouldn't meet the normal "thresholds" for intervention. I know MN always says Social Care don't have time for this, but perhaps there is an exception for people already open to them?? I have several friends who have experienced this.

I hate it. It is completely humiliating and it makes me just want to run away from it all (which of course we can't because we have a social worker...) Now, I understand some of the reasons - in theory - why it's like this (disabled children are particularly vulnerable to abuse) but it also feels like using a risk factor to exert coercive control over parents who happen to have had a disabled child.

I also know many parents who don't ask for extra respite because they don't want this.

AIBU to think it shouldn't be like this?

Dd not dad 😂

Disabled children should not be classed as CIN there should be a separate category. We refused the offer of a disability Sw for this reason . Thankfully where we live all autistic children receive 3.5 hours a week respite via social services but without having a social worker just one initial meeting that doesn't have to take place at home.

That won't change any time soon because one of the three definitions of child in need in the 1989 children act is children with a disability - what should change is how some LAs approach children with disabilities who are children in need - I am shocked by this thread by how some LAs are treating all child in need the same - it's not this way everywhere.

But it's only enforced if you request additional respite. As I said my children receive 3.5 via social services as standard they are disabled. Requesting more respite would not change their disability so either all disabled children should be CIN or just those who would be regardless of disability. The children's act does not say disabled children whose parents require additional respite are CIN.

As @toddlermum27 posted, all disabled children are CiN. Whether LAs officially have DC on CiN plans or not doesn’t change whether the children are CiN. The law states disabled children are CiN.

Exactly, so by extension when LAs decide to assess dc for a service (respite etc) above what is offered as standard (which will differ by LA) they'll have them on a child in need plan (rather than a different category) because they're a no questioning in law that they are children in need.

I agree. I think the problem is sometimes the term CIN is portrayed negatively and has negative connotations attached to it, not taking into account the definition is set out in legislation and legally it isn’t a negative term.

That is incorrect CIN is a legal status only disabled children actually on CIN plans are CIN. It's basically used as if you don't ask for help we will prevent your child isn't disabled enough to be classed as actually disabled. It's money saving and parents go along with it because they do t wont to be treated like they are abusing their children.
As for disabled children being more vulnerable or so they have to check rooms etc an autistic 10 year old is not more vulnerable than a NT under 2 year old but nobody is checking their bedrooms or scoring them in meetings. The normal safeguarding measures from CIN for non disabled children should not be applied which is why we need three separate categories.

No it’s not incorrect.

Section 17(10) of the Children’s Act 1989 states:
“…a child shall be taken to be in need if—
(a) he is unlikely to achieve or maintain, or to have the opportunity of achieving or maintaining, a reasonable standard of health or development without the provision for him of services by a local authority under this Part;
(b) his health or development is likely to be significantly impaired, or further impaired, without the provision for him of such services; or
(c) he is disabled…”

This Contact booklet explains it further and also states:
“Social services departments have a general duty under Section 17 (10) of
the Children Act 1989 to safeguard and promote the interests of ‘children in need,’ and to promote their upbringing by their families. The law recognises disabled children as being in need.

‘Children in need’ are children under 18 years of age and:
are ‘unlikely to achieve or maintain, or to have the opportunity of achieving or maintaining a reasonable standard of health or development without the provision of services by a local authority’, or
whose ‘health or development is likely to be significantly impaired or further impaired without the provision of such services by a local authority’, or
are ‘disabled’.

Section 17 (11) of the Children Act 1989 states that a child is disabled if they:
• are blind
• deaf, or
• non-verbal,or
• suffer from a ‘mental disorder of any kind’ or
• are `substantially and permanently handicapped by illness, injury or
congenital deformity, or such other disability as may be prescribed’.”

I’m sure you are not saying the legislation and Contact, a well regarded charity, are legally wrong.

You misunderstood what I said disabled children are CIN under the children's act but only if they have a CIN plan. Otherwise they are thought as "not disabled enough" . You can absolutely be blind under 18 and not classed as CIN.

No, I haven’t misunderstood. A child who is blind is, legally, a child in need as per s.17 of the Children’s Act 1989. LAs sometimes act unlawfully and say DC aren’t a CIN, but that doesn’t change the legislation. Children in need are legally children in need regardless of whether there is an official plan.

"As for disabled children being more vulnerable or so they have to check rooms etc an autistic 10 year old is not more vulnerable than a NT under 2 year old but nobody is checking their bedrooms or scoring them in meetings. The normal safeguarding measures from CIN for non disabled children should not be applied which is why we need three separate categories."

I agree with this regardless of the interpretation of the law. Can you imagine if we took another risk factor, like postpartum depression, and treated it like this? Said to new mums, "well if you want support for your depression, you have to have 6 weekly visits, bedroom checks, declare to health professionals and now you've come forward, if you choose to disengage we might step up to child protection"??

DD had a social worker from the Disability Team, and later the Transition team from age 14 - 22. None of that ever happened! Nobody ever asked to see her bedroom? I didn’t let them see DD on her own; but did agree to an independent advocate getting her views, when she was leaving school about whether she wanted to go to FE college.

They came to our house for meetings, went to annual reviews, went to meetings with me at the FE college at my request; and came with me to look round residential options, when Dd was moving on from college.

Wish this was the case for us. On the CiN assessment and plans there are two little boxes to fill out:
[ ] Seen child's bedroom
[ ] Seen child alone

Yes they should. But I have disabled kids and can't even access a sw. I think it's peoples attitudes that should change though. Social workers are associated with being a crap parent and this isn't just what they do,

The only contact we've had in a long time was to arrange for me to be being made DS Appointee when he turned 16.

We turned down respite ages ago as he just doesn't cope being away from us overnight and were told there was nothing else they could do for us.

Our son has a DSW (used to be a standard SW but they finally split the disability side from the safeguarding side in my LA last year). Yes they have to see our house every three months. Yes, that includes seeing our son's bedroom. We make a joke about it, the "obligatory bedroom check" so they can see that "we haven't installed manacles and prison bars". If we didn't laugh, we'd cry ... Its horrible feeling judged, but it's a necessary evil because only the DSW team can persuade the local Short Breaks team to give us access to summer playschemes and respite.

I'd refuse to show them the bedroom in your situation- they're not going to step up to child protection based on that and your level of need is clearly the same so there's no justification for refusing support. They'll say they have to see it but they can't enforce that - and the box not being ticked would help to demonstrate to managers how invasive the process is for children with disabilities where there are no safeguarding concerns.

This has been a fascinating discussion, as a very involved and affected parent. So, my six million dollar question - to the experts here - is do I push for my DD(15), who is blind and diagnosed with ADHD, autism and binge eating disorder, as well as being adopted, to be assigned to the children’s disability team or to continue on the path of MAST/children’s assessment team/CIN? As mentioned before, my DD has no intellectual disability, in fact, she attends a selective state grammar school. She is violent and aggressive and the police have been involved with us before. I also have DD2(7) at home and she is often the target for her big sister’s foul verbal and physical abuse.

Soontobe60 · Yesterday 08:46
I do know of several families via my role as Senco where they get respite, some regularly (ie 1 day a week), some intermittently (ie 2 weeks a year). Yes, they have a named SW, but they don’t have this level of intrusion.
I would assume that there needs to be some level of SW input if a family need such a degree of support, which is what respite care is. Perhaps there are different practices in different local authorities.

I did this job .
Although different la s may handle things in different ways ( in addition to the statutory legal obligations) ..the skill of the sw , despite some of these uncomfortable levels of intervention , should be as such that the family feel in partnership and also supported in these interventions not put under pressure.
the need for respite is often really paramount and it would be terrible to miss that support in order to avoid the the intervention . As a sw i used to share with parents the crap ness of that sort of thing !
op i really feel
for you .

@EmmatheStageRat that sounds incredibly tough. In my experience safeguarding team sounds more appropriate and are likely to have more (although often still insufficient) experience of trauma/ adoption etc than children with disability teams. Also (may vary by LA) children with disability teams usually only accept asd alongside intellectual disability. Good luck.

@EmmatheStageRat I'd definitely push for the Children with Disabilities team, I mean she is a disabled child right?

I know someone under the safeguarding team with multiple disabled children and social services provide literally no actual support to her whatsoever. Nothing except oversight. It was my understanding that the idea is meant to be to offer support and resources to empower families to improve the situation, not just monitoring.

I mean, they must not have a conscience because if anything happens social care will know they did absolutely nothing to help except sit and watch a family fail.

I have had this experience at all quite the opposite but my son's disability social worker has a child with the same disability so totally understands some of what we deal with. My son has an additional medical condition that makes things harder. I don't think thisrbrl.pf intrusion is normal from the disability social work team as I have never heard of it before. I could understand if it was the family team you were under.

This is meant to say I haven't had