Social services in bedrooms

[Ythough]

I have two children from my first marriage who are late teens/adults and one child from a subsequent relationship.

Youngest child’s dad lives at the opposite side of the country and my child spends time there in the school holidays. The ready of the time they live with me.

There has been an issue at dad’s house that may or may not affect my DC, as such social services want to be involved and make an assessment regarding wether or not DC should be having contact at Dad’s.

I have agreed that they can come and speak with DC here, at school, speak with their doctor, whatever they need. To have these meetings I am having to take time of work but it’s important so I am just doing what they ask.

Now on their first visit they explained all the issues, then said, right we need to look around the house and see the children’s bedrooms.

I allowed this but I am wondering why they needed to look around my home considering this investigation has nothing what so ever to do with me other than being DCs mum and more so, why they needed to check my older children’s rooms when they have absolutely nothing to do with youngest DCs dad.

Teen DD was horrified as she is a messy teen, older DC was away at uni so they just went in to look around and came back out.

so AIBU to think this wasn’t at all necessary?

Why when there has been no reports/safeguarding concerns regarding mum or her house hold!

It's normal. When SS come to do an assessment, they have to check the bedrooms. Same as if you go to a health visitor or midwife appointment they ask where your dc are and if you go to a hospital appointment the Dr will say in their letter to your gp who came with you.

It's for the welfare of your children. And because if something was amiss and they had been in your home and missed it, they would be in trouble.

And yes, I have had social workers visiting. They asked to see the children's rooms. Yes, it felt intrusive and no, I didn't like it much but in those circumstances you sometimes need to suck it up.

It seems as if social services are having to do an assessment due to something that has been disclosed to them.
If they are assessing something to do with a child, they will have to look at all aspects of the child’s life. It looks like they are just being thorough.

They live with her. Seems a bit ridiculous to all of a sudden come and see if they are ok at home. I can’t see why they would need to check on her if the issue is with one child’s father.

They have looked now so that's done. You don't have to agree. My son is under the children with disabilities socail care team and had a ever challenging stream of sw. I said no at the last two home visits. I'm not under a child protection investigation and neither are you.

When you have a new agency socail worker every six months looking around your house itdoes get invasive especially when your also bearing your soul to them about coping with your disabled child then they never come back.

Fwiw I think they have extremely low bar when it comes to what they think is OK.

They have never talked to or asked after my other kids even whrn the disabled boy couldn't talk and his eldest brother was suicidal and school refusing. It's just box ticking to see they have a bed made up and clean clothss

Police. Always blame the Social Workers. Don’t take responsibility. It is a multi disciplinary decision to remove a child but I suppose you are too busy falsifying evidence….

Could it be incase there is any obvious (to them) signs that they are suffering a trauma (even if it’s from dads house it will still affect them emotionally and there may be signs at home?

not anything you have done wrong but clues as such about emotional state

We had social services involvement due to my DSSs mother. I found it incredibly invasive when they wanted to review my DCs (who were small at the time) sleeping arrangements and their care and my DSSs couldn't fathom why they were looking at our home / why they had repeat visits to discuss their living arrangements etc. The rationale for it is sound but it doesn't make it any less invasive to have strangers prying into your home and life when you've done nothing wrong.

But why the need to look in an adult siblings room. Especially when the issue is not with that household

Over zealous reaction, which sums up social services response to many issues.

I suppose they have to tick all the boxes. So they can say they are safe at your place.

Yes this is weird, when I was assessing I would generally not look in any adults bedrooms, I can’t see that it’s necessary at all.

My ex was removed from our home because of his behaviour. The behaviour took place away from the home but me and the DC were still subject to a social services visit and an assessment of the DC's wellbeing. Not going to lie, it was horrible and stigmatising even though they found nothing of concern with me and agreed that the children were not at risk. There is a stereotype of families who have social services involvement and mud does stick. When I now have to answer yes to the question have you ever had social services involvement you can see people thinking "here we go again, another one of "those" mothers!". I get that they need the full picture and that they would be hauled over the coals if they missed anything due to trying not to upset anyone but it is not nice feeling under the spotlight.

Regardless of who social services are investigating, the child's been brought to their attention. So the welfare of the child is looked at in general.
Yes they would need to go to court to secure an order if social services want to stop contact more permanently or for it to be supervised. Social services threshold is very very high. If you were unhappy with the outcome and felt the child was unsafe but it hadn't met s/s threshold, you could take it to court yourself, where the threshold would be lower as this would come under civil law rather than public law. I have been in that situation myself. S/s left my children in a dangerous situation with their poor investigation and inadequate report. They dropped out saying it didn't meet their threshold (which it did). The case continued under civil law and a no contact order was granted after a fact finding hearing.
I'm sure the social worker told me they tend to go in really dramatically/heavy handed, rg cutting contact until it's been investigated. They have a certain amount of time to investigate and report back. Did they say what section it was under?

Yes they would need to go to court to secure an order if social services want to stop contact more permanently or for it to be supervised. Social services threshold is very very high. If you were unhappy with the outcome and felt the child was unsafe but it hadn't met s/s threshold, you could take it to court yourself, where the threshold would be lower as this would come under civil law rather than public law. I have been in that situation myself. S/s left my children in a dangerous situation with their poor investigation and inadequate report. They dropped out saying it didn't meet their threshold (which it did). The case continued under civil law and a no contact order was granted after a fact finding hearing.

If there is a safe parent, social services won’t go to court - they bring proceedings under public law (care proceedings) not private law (decisions over time spent with parents). Unless social services felt you were not a safe parent either, they won’t be able to step in - they’d expect you to exercise your PR to make decisions for your child to keep them safe. Only if you didn’t do that would they be able to step in, but then you’d be facing child protection procedures and possible care proceedings. That’s what they mean by not meeting threshold - they felt you were able to act to keep your child safe, which ultimately you did. They can’t get involved with arrangements between parents, nor can they dictate (but can advise) whether contact should be stopped or supervised or apply to the court for this - only if neither parent is able to keep the child safe will they get involved.

In my children's case s/s wanted me to drop the case and for it to go back to the pre existing court order. Rg children live with me but see their father unsupervised. They weren't relying on me protecting the children, they had done such a poor job they didnt realise there wasn't an issue! Thank God for the cafcass Guardian, who totally got it. It cost me a pretty penny, but money well spent.

Yes that does sound unhelpful for you at best, well done for sticking with it and standing up for your children.

They didn’t mention any sections.

There was an incident or allegation which requires a police investigation. Ex rang to tell me that DC couldn’t visit this half term and to expect social services to call. (DC wasn’t at Exs at the time of the incident)

A couple of days later the did indeed call and said they needed to do an assessment to see wether DC was safe to visit or what safeguards would need to be put in place. They want to build up a relationship with DC to see if they make any disclosures and speak to their school etc.

They came out for visit one, looked around the house, one worker chatted with me and DH and one chatted to DC about their hobby in another room. No questions or anything just building a rapport.

They might if the situation with the child had just come to light.

They might be double checking that you have facilities in the event they deny visitation to your DC and exJ at his house.

I can definitely see the case for thoroughness, but they should be clear what they intend to do ahead of time. Bedrooms are private spaces. It's also horribly ignorant of neurodiversity. My automatic response to such a request out of the blue would be a 'no' and to get the person out of my house asap. Can imagine what cycle that would trigger. And I'm an adult on the spectrum. For neurodiverse kids in particular, Invasion of private spaces and routines can be particularly rocking.

So yes, i think they could have done this better and at least advised you what to expect from the process. As a Service they seemingly pretty unaware of concepts such as dignity.

This. Is either an all or nothing response with them. They do have a bit of an attitude as well from my few interactions with them. For a service that claims to value reflective practice, they do not react well to having a few issues in their behaviours pointed out.

I've worked with Social Services and Police for years, my sister-in-law is a senior social worker but in my experience, this is overstepping the boundaries of theie statutory duty. Why would they need to be reassured that other children in the home, unrelatwd to any incidents or investigation were looked after? Nobody has said any of the children aren't being looked after in the mother's home, so why look at the other childrens rooms? It's overstepping their authority and the scope of their investigation into these accusations. Gathering evidence is one thing, but I feel this was too much. As this home wasn't subject to any investigation its not justified and the rules for social workers are similar to the Police with a search warrant, the search has to be specific. I would speak to their manager if they return with a similar request

It's nothing to do with being suspicious about your environment, it's more like a tick box exercise which SS should do to save children lives which should have happened with Sara Sharif, Arthur Labinjo-hughes and may have saved lives

It’s become a little clearer after today’s visit. The first social worker is a student and the second is his manager, it seems that he is “practicing” on us and building his confidence.

Two of them came round today to write out our family tree, mine, DHs and EXs. He spend maybe 5 minutes talking to DC and said they would visit again later in the week.

They had a cup of tea which is reassuring, if they were concerned about hygiene they would have declined I assume!