Calling social services on friend

[Abbiie]

This happened a few years ago now, but every now and then it plays on my mind and I wonder if I did the right thing?

My daughter made a friend when she started primary school and me and the mum became friends too. At first it just started that we would help each other with school runs. But then we started having each other kids around and eventually we started spending time together. Now we both had quite different parenting styles and although I have been guilty of " losing it " every now and then with my kids. I am quite calm, mostly. Well this mum yells all day every day and there was a few incidents when I saw the girls mum and dad raise their hand as if to hit them. The kids would also flinch a lot. Honestly never really thought much of it at the time. Anyway, one day on a school run the mum opened up to me, she said she had found her daughters knickers stuffed down the headboard of her bed "hidden" with blood on. She was six at the time. I obviously said that’s worrying, but she said she had spoken to the school and called the doctors etc and never mentioned it again. I obviously saw red flags then, but also she seemed a really happy child and nothing really called out to me with her behaviour. A few months later she is playing over after school and she is refusing to go home, crying and just point blank refusing to even leave my daughters room. I called her mum to say she won’t come home, her dad came and got her and in the end had to lift her over his shoulder to get her home. But he went to hit her, looked at me and stopped himself. Anyway, a year or so later her daughter stays over for a sleepover. All is going well until it’s time for her to go home the next day. She refuses again, this time crying hysterically, saying she can’t go home because they hit her and treat her badly. She was shaking and she showed me a bruise. She said she wanted to call the police. Now at the time I worked for Barnados and my best friend worked with children from abusive households. I wanted to help her but it also wasn’t easy, as if I got this wrong it was my friend and my daughters friendship would suffer. Anyway me and my daughters dad were really stuck but I sought advice from my friend and colleague. They both advised me on some questions to ask her and then depending on her answers they said I needed to take it very seriously and call the police. I ended up calling them anyway. The police then advised me that she had to stay with me until further notice. Anyway long story short, she ended up going home and it all ended up apparently that the girl had lied. I was obviously made the bad person and all the school mums stopped talking to me or associating with me at all. I just wonder, would you have done the same thing? It wasn’t an easy decision for me to make but at the end of the day, if my daughter was being abused in anyway, I’d like to know that there is someone out there ready to help and protect her. Was I in the wrong?

I would have done the same thing and you don’t know that girl didn’t say she’d lied because she was scared. It’s very normal victims recant.
any teacher, dr etc would have reported too

Your safeguarding training with Barnardo's will have informed you that your role is to report concerns not investigate them or question the child or gossip with friends about the situation.

Sounds like you did absolutely the right thing. If anything acting on the earlier red flags was necessary rather than waiting as long as you did and you shouldn't have needed to get advice from anyone else to raise a concern (although I appreciate we don't have all the context here and perhaps you genuinely did not have enough to go on beforehand. It's also harder to see the wood from the trees when it is a friend).

Any world in which someone is demonised and dropped by friends for believing the words of a distressed young child is a pretty awful one.

Yes, children sometimes lie, but far more children have been disbelieved or ignored when they are at genuine risk.

You also don't know for sure that the kid made it up - just that this is the narrative that ended up being accepted by whoever looked into it all, or that was supposedly accepted.

A child isn't likely to say those things unless something is wrong in their life - whether it is genuinely that they are being abused or made to feel unsafe in some way, or whether that distress is coming from a different place. Either way any child who says these things deserves to be listened to and supported and have the situation explored. Easy for me to say as it hasn't happened to me but if my DD made that sort of accusation about me, I'd want other adults to listen to her - having to speak to social services and police and to have to deal with suspicion would be awful but at least I'd be aware that something was wrong in my DD's life, would be alerted to the possibility that I've missed something about what she is going through, and would know her wellbeing is being taken seriously.

I might not have done it in the same way but i definitely would have reported this.

Thank you but I was in absolutely no way gossiping about it. It was purely to get advise on how to protect this child. I should correct my statement, I was volunteering for them. Not working for them.

I wouldn't have gone about it the same way, but I certainly would have reported it.

Ok, what would you have done differently please?

I bet the child wasn't lying. It would be that she couldn't face the upheaval and uncertainty around what would happen if she stuck to her story. There were several red flags prior to the last incident. You did the right thing, although I might have done it sooner.

No there is a lot more context to it all, but I’d be here all day typing and yes I feel when it’s a friend it is a lot harder decision to make. Not that I didn’t want to report it, because of course I wanted to help. Just there is real life consequences to these things and I didn’t want to get it wrong and yes I felt I needed more to go off.

Your thread title says social services but your OP says you called the Police. Why the discrepancy?

Best case scenario with children protection is that you are wrong and then nobody is being hurt. As long as you do what you do with the best interest of the child in mind then you are always right.

I'd have reported the blood on knickers incident to be honest. Also, don't believe the child lied.

Called the police and the obviously social services were then involved. I tried to change the title when on preview, but it wouldn’t let me at that point.

This is ridiculous. No professional (the OP’s colleague and her best friend) would ever advise someone with concerns about a child to ask a few questions and depending on the answers go to the Police. That goes completely against all safeguarding training, as the OP will know very well if she works with Barnardos in any capacity.

Yes I agree, however when speaking to the mum, it sounded like she was dealing with it and taking all the right steps. But yes, looking back I probably should have reported it then. I also deep down don’t believe she lied either.

I would have raised concerns when told about the underwear.

I’d rather be wrong than do nothing.

Really odd advice re asking questions. What kind of questions?
Was your child staying over there?

it was more to figure out if it had just been a slap on the wrist for being "naughty" or if it was proper abuse. Not as if if I was interrogating her, jeez! It was a big thing to do and I just wanted to be sure.

no my child never had a sleepover there thankfully. But she would stay at mine often. Also not like it was interrogating. Just to figure out if it was more than a little slap on the wrist or proper abuse. Because also the bruise she showed me could have been from falling over etc. It wasn’t an easy decision to make especially because her mum was my friend. But yes in hindsight, I probably should have reported it all sooner.

I disagree with PPs saying professionals would not advise asking questions. Asking clarifying questions is OK and necessary. Investigating or asking leading questions is not appropriate.

"Dad hit me" is not always appropriate to report to social services. A simple "what happened?" might lead to a cheery "he was picking up a box and hit me by accident!" SS don't need to be involved to clarify and to safeguard the child.

Yes thank you and that’s all it was. It absolutely was not to try and investigate or anything more.

OK, but I'm not sure why you would have called the Police first. However, why drag this up now as it happened years ago ?

Because it was around 7:30pm and a weekend. I also stated right at the start that I often wonder if I did the right thing. The reason being, because I was the one that was made the bad person by all the other mums in our circle and they told me I shouldn’t have reported her and was to speak to her about it first before police. My daughter also lost a friend from it all and there were other things that happened from that girl towards my daughter, that her mum told her to do, because of it. So yes sometimes I still think about it and wonder and wanted other peoples options. Is that ok?

Sorry, she said she found her 6year old daughter’s knickers with blood on down her headboard and you had witnessed them attempting to hit her before then stopping and the child flinching and you didn’t do anything at any of them points??!!! Well done for FINALLY doing something, I guess, but fuck me, the police ss everyone should’ve been involved from the first point and you left it because the friendship would’ve suffered? Yeah, you were in the wrong for not reporting it in the first instance. I’m struggling to comprehend how she’s back living there now as if nothing happened, based on what you said that YOU witnessed and heard first hand. This country really is diabolical.

I don’t think you should have created this thread or gone about things the way you did.

Honestly this thread has really shook and disappointed me in humanity. How on earth, can this person tell you she found bloodied underwear that belonged to her 6year old daughter down her headboard AND you witnessed these so called parents attempting to hit her and are asking for justification that you done the right thing on the internet?