Starting my Social Services parenting class today. Filled with rage. AIBU?

[BigSmallFigBall]

My 7 year old daughter told me about abuse by her father - weird controlling stuff about toilet use and being strangled when he was angry.

I reported the abuse and there was no negative consequence for him. The idiot social worker suggested to my daughter's face that she was lying because my daughter didn't demonstrate that she protested forcefully enough when being strangled. I was told I need to support the father/daughter relationship more.

My punishment for reporting the abuse is that I have to attend 20 hours of parenting courses, starting today. I could have used this time to do things with/for my daughter.

AIBU to feel rage over this?

I’m sorry Op. Unfortunately not all Social workers actually know how to do their job properly.

If you can, stay calm and email your MP and SS themselves, there are team leaders, ADD and Directors you can speak to. State your facts and evidence clearly as possible and, how the SS made you feel and your DD feel.
If you keep to the facts the SS will have to defend their actions.

While you continue to support your DD, try to encourage her to also talk to her teachers and collect all the evidence you can. He most likely do this again unfortunately.

Sometimes women are court ordered to facilitate contact on a practical level eg drop offs etc and therefore cannot avoid their abuser.

A girl I worked with did. Her dad used to batter her mum, took all her money and other abusive issues. She was forced by a court order to spend every weekend with her father, who in turn abused her to get at her mum, he’d not take her home on time, not take her to school, refuse to answer the phone then in turn began being aggressive to her. She sued the LA.

I’m only too aware. 😢
But a drop off, horrible as that is, isn’t comparable to having to be with an abusive parent for an extended amount of time / overnight. For years. 😭

How awful 😞 for her. I‘m glad she did though. It’s horrific some of the stuff I read on here and the abusers and SS just seem to get away with it and not be answerable to anyone.

I think that you've taken that the wrong way. I've been on here since 2011. I started to post because of the minimising of the effect on children living withDV/EA/DA. Even over the last few months I've had to ask why the OP is wanting their child to have contact with both their abuser. It wasn't court ordered, but they'd internalised this idea that two parents, at any cost, is the ideal.
OP as well as trusting you, you need to be telling her that neither you or her will ever get into trouble for telling the truth/making a allegation and that she will never be removed from your care, or you go to prison etc.

I note it has been “an awfully long time” since you retired but I’m interested in how things were then as opposed to now.

When you were working would you have taken any interest in the abusive parent’s prior history of domestic abuse against the mother?

I'm sorry but your post makes little sense in the context of this thread and the OPs situation. Particularly as in the OPs case she does not want her DD to have contact but it is being forced and she is being punished for trying to protect her child through official channels. She cannot promise what you suggest while their abuser has the whip hand, and the authorities are dismissing her concerns.

Absolutely we would. Also, if there was any doubt we would always come down on the side which offered the child the most protection. There is child care law, social work practice, and common sense and you need all of that to make a good assessment. Unfortunately common sense is all too often ignored.

i retired in 2001 so a long time ago now. I can only speak about what was practiced in my area and I do appreciate that other people may have had different experiences. Fortunately we had a sensible head of department. I also wonder about the selection of social workers these days. When I trained only people 25 and over were accepted for training. It was deemed necessary that applicants had some life experience. Nowadays people can go into social work straight from university and I sincerely believe that has been to the detriment of the profession. Book learning and academia is one thing but it is no substitute for life experience. In this instance I wonder how old the social worker was who made the decision. Although social workers are accountable to their line managers the line managers have to be more careful with scrutinising the assessment. Unfortunately, due to massively increasing workloads and lack of funding this isn’t always possible, even though it should be.

I could not be a social worker these days, I’m not woke enough. It was bad enough in my day but you could argue your case strongly and not have to pussyfoot around abusers.

“Absolutely we would. Also, if there was any doubt we would always come down on the side which offered the child the most protection. ”

Both of these are now the opposite.

There’s zero interest in any prior history of domestic abuse and if in doubt they perversely trust the one currently accused of abuse.

I wonder what caused the change?
Perhaps the tendency to view every non-abusive mother who raises concerns as guilty of “parental alienation”?

”Book learning and academia is one thing but it is no substitute for life experience”

totally agree- although in my experience SWs are not always very academic either.

One (very young) SW compiled a “Our Story” book for use by children in one of these situations and it is a full of inaccuracies, spelling and grammatical mistakes. Yet she’s the “professional” wherein the power resides.

It’s galling to have to kow-tow to someone who, after half an hour deems herself to have the full grasp of what’s going on, when one suspects she’s either been easily played & manipulated by a charming & accomplished liar or else is just seeing what she wants to see, ticking boxes and clearing her workload.

Either way the children continue to suffer. And will likely never disclose anything again after the punishment meted out to them by their furious father for “telling secrets” 😞

The comment that comes up time and time again with Social Services, and I have dealt with them professionally is lack of critical thinking and victim blaming.

You can be brave and make a formal complaint, what are the reasons for me being made to do this course? What are the issues with my parenting?

Op cannot tell her daughter that she can never be removed from op's custody or get into trouble for telling the truth/making an allegation. It is not true unfortunately.

Unfortunately, you can't change what place you are now you need to just suffer with possibly the same as the other parents there miffed at having to do parent course
Just humour SS keep quiet and take it as a learning curve
As for your other question be very careful what you say about the abuse to your daughter not conducted properly this could cause lasting damage

You are right. I did an Access course around 20+ years ago and several students wanted to go into social work. You had to be over 25 (most were as it was generally mature students) and every single SW course at uni you had to have done some hours of voluntary work, IIRC some asked for 1500 hours with proof. I think the lowest was about 600-700.

OP please try to see what benefit you could get from the course rather than seeing it as punishment. In my experience parenting courses are often run by experienced family workers, who have huge amounts of hands on experience with families and are very savvy. They may well be able to give you support and advice about the situation you're dealing with, and they may also be able to provide evidence for the future, if they can see that you're genuinely worried about your daughter rather than being focused on getting back at her father.

You report physical abuse to your daughter and as a result you get a punishment...I'm shocked. .. please take this further. That's awful!

I don't talk to my daughter about the abuse. I am pretty worried about the effect on her of it all being swept under the rug though.

I think she knows what her father is without my having to say anything tbh. She is a bright girl and we model very kind and respectful behaviour in my household.

I did engage with the course and I am not angry with the social workers. I told them that my daughter is subject to ongoing emotional abuse and it's affecting her self-esteem, and I am looking for strategies to help her. Which is true.

They said this is sad because I don't have any control over what happens outside of my household and that they hope they can help.

That's a small mercy I guess (he has to do the classes).

However I would still contact MP. SS seem to have written this off as an attempt (by you) at parental alienation, rather than child abuse, therefore putting your child at further risk. Insane.

Also, I respectfully disagree with those saying "smile and agree with everything and slide back under the radar". In most cases, yes, this is the only route out of the hell, however in OP's case, anything involving a victim's neck is a very serious red flag, suggesting fatal escalation is a very real (indeed imminent) threat.

I don't think OP can rollover on this one.

And that's why some woman stay with abusive partners.
Petrified that if they leave their children they will be with the abusive father on there own.
Because unfortunately a lot of these men are very good in portraying the innocent party.

I'm so sorry op that you and your daughter are going through this.

Sorry OP. Having dealt with SS on the run up to adopting one of my DCs, I now know not to trust all social workers. Some are great but some are very very poor. This is quite scary when you realise they are dealing with vulnerable people.

One SW was very condescending and it felt like she was trying to trip me up during the application process, making stupid comments on how many plugs sockets where in the house and that we had a step in the garden which would be a hazard to a child (we already had bio DC). DH and I quickly learned not to react and just nod as she was on some weird power trip. We eventually asked for a new SW and she was swapped out of an amazing SW who was a mother and had common sense. Another spoke very negatively about my adopted DCs birth mother who wasn’t a bad woman, just vulnerable and a care leaver. The SW seemed to relish in the fact DC was removed from her. It left a bad taste.

As an educated professional, I realised that if I was at the other end of the spectrum i.e someone lacking education and under investigation, that it would be the luck of the drawer as to whether I got the support I needed or was treated like a criminal and had my kids taken off me. This sliding door situation would all boil down to whether I had an empathetic SW or one of the shit ones.

I won't quote the posts from GeorgeCrabtreesAuntBegonia but agree with everything. Things have changed a great deal, in both training and wokeness.

There is a contradiction in the child safeguarding arena, as DV is considered of significant harm to children within the household and yet when it comes to contact with the perpetrator, it isn't seen as a factor at all.
I wonder if Jess Philips is considering this.

Anyone moved to do.so, please see this MN campaign on Family Courts and leave questions for the Minister for VAWG.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/mumsnet_campaigns/5180070-mnhq-here-we-need-your-help-meeting-with-the-minister-for-victims-and-vawg

I’m glad the first session is over, I hope it will be a supportive space for you and that they can offer some useful strategies.