This fear that social services will come and take your children...

[willsurvivethis]

...it worries me!

There seem to be so many women out there who are afraid to seek help for depression and other problems out of fear that they will lose their children.

I have just asked MNHQ if they would consider doing something with this. Because surely if so many of us fear to lose our children something is going wrong somewhere! Surely we should all be albe to seek help with confidence?

What are your thoughts on this? I struggle with PTSD and even told my doctor that I tended to keep emotional distance from my ds when he's ill without even considering the possibility of that having repercussions.

I assume we are all "known" to SS.

My approach is going to be:

Head down
Nose clean
Mouth shut

Job done.

Having said that, given 350,000 assessments every year (not sure if they would do another initial assessment on someone who had been reported before?) lets assume not, and that 200,000 were brand new people (being generous).

Over 5 years that is 1 million new families looked at. But there are only about 6.5 million families in the UK.

Leonie i really don't think they will have the time to follow people around making trouble for them, really I don't.

Over 10 years 2 million new people looked at - that's 1 in 3 of every single family in the UK? No hold on there are new babies born... But still - it's a huge number isn't it? It seems all wrong.

dis - I was under the mental health team when PG and under a psych, even had the psych come and see me on the postnatal ward to check I was OK. SS was never involved. I found the mental health docs v. pleasant, and keen to support me, rather than seeing me as an adjunct to my baby.

Imsonottelling, I don't have the time to do your research justice, but the numbers of assessments are for each child, not per family. An initial assessment is undertaken if the referral needs further action and is a brief assessment. If any further assessment is needed, then a core assessment is made. If a cp investigation is undertaken (and this is agreed with the Police) then a core assessment is always made. Some assessments will be repeated on the same children ( new incident or circumstance requeing a fresh look)
I hope this puts the figures in context, we are busy, but we don't get involved with quite as many families as it might appear!

Am I right to think that it is usually (except in Nickname's case) NOT the MEDICAL professionals who refer to social sevices or do I have a skewed picture?

I used to be scared of SS, my ex had two children in care from his previous relationship.

However they did become involved with my children twice after we seperated for two very different reasons, and both times handled it really well. They never gave the impression of being anything less than helpful!

So I can totally empathise with ss phobia, but would like to say it is not necessarily justified.

I have just read through some more of this thread and have to agree that something is wrong if the volume of people scared of SS intevention is so high as this thread suggests... regardless of whether that fear is justfied...worrying.

So an initial assessment on a family of 5 will count as 5 assessments? And there may be repetition... That takes something of an edge off the figures!

It still seems like an awful lot though...

I have been interested to put our experience in context - the context appears to be that being investigated by SS is very very common - as anecdotally backed up by the nursery managers at mine and leonie's nurseries.

willsurvivethis - yes I think that is correct.

I cannot emphasise enough how much fantastic support I had with the peri-natal anxiety - I had a toddler at the time and was pregnant (obviously). Right from the initial woman at the GP surgery (a nurse), the community mental health person, the psychiatric department at the hospital, and the perinatal team... Everyone was supportive and kind and understanding, it never even crossed my mind that there might be an issue with the children and they never suggested it. It was all great.

The person who reported me. Was a person at an alcohol charity who I had (in a roundabout way) sought help with. When they contacted me I said that I had stopped drinking and actually it was all fine and I didn't need to see them but would contact them if I felt I did. We had a 5 min chat.

An hour later she called me back to say that they had reported me to SS on the basis of that phone call. I asked if they would take the children and she said they might She said that in her opinion the children were at immediate and serious risk of harm It turned out that she had completely misunderstood my home situation and thought that I was drinking a fair bit while in sole charge of the children. She completely overlooked the fact that my husband was here Anyway I could go on all day, I'm still so angry about it.

TBH I have a huge problem with them, and less so with SS. SS had to investigate, once they had the report, I understand that. It was a hugely stressful and awful experience though. We should just never have been reported in teh first place.

Ime it depends what you mean by 'investigate', for me it has a particular meaning in terms of child protection, whereas involvement /assessment could be for a number of reasons eg private fostering, request for payment of nursery fees, mother experiencing dv etc. We do tend to get most referrals /requests for services from a few areas, so it might just be the nursery has higher than usual proprrtion.

Another thing is that people often like to over emphasise how much their professional circumstances involve them with social services as weirdly it makes them feel more important, even if they then go round saying how shit we are! I don't get it myself, but there you are...

Sorry, really am going off now-lots to do.

I cried about tit this morning.I can't stop thinking about this thread.
I can't seem to get over the damage done to me. What does that tell you ?

I keep going on to MN threads which suggest ss referals. I am on one at the mo, suggesting neglect, over what i consider minimal grounds. saying don't do it. it causes so much damage, unless you have significant grounds. but this all falls on deaf ears. people want to shop eachother. and my attempts to express what damage this does, does no good.
I don't know what to do. what can we do ladies to stop this. i am at a loss.

And no.like ISNT and others say, I will never ask for help again. I will never tell anyone that i am struggling with parenting my 6 yr old.

and you think that pyschological damage has not been done to me?

and yet no one aknowledges this, or seems to care.

Yes same here actually, thinking about it.

Whenever the baby cries I worry that the neighbours will hear it and do something

If we are out and I suddenly notice that one of her snowsuit shoe bits has slipped and her sock is poking out I wonder who has seen it and what they think

I have been to the pub twice since I gave up drinking, just had coke, it was fine. Apart from I couldn't relax as I kept worrying that I would bump into the SW and she would assume I was drinking alcohol

Stuff like that.

Oblomov, that is really sad that it has effected you so much,
I wonder if unnecessary referals are more down to people feeling they should call SS, that SS themselves, as it seems from your comment about other threads on here? Maybe people in general are reluctant to offer each other help and so call SS instead?

Starlight, I am so sorry. I have no qualms with ss. they never took my case any futher. I was refered by my Gp when I went to ask for help. even though she said i wasn't depressed. I am making a complaint against my Gp and Hv, currently.

thanks ISNT.
mana, i think you are right.

It's becoming a culture isn't it - of 'child protection' and informing ss. My dh is a clergyman and the number of child protection courses he is sent on is huge. But with good reason given the history of the church let's be real there.

And something had to change. It is a lot harder for teachers today to do what my teacher did to me when I was 8-10 as his colleagues would hopefully spot things.

And most abuse takes place in the home.

But from reading stories on here we are heading into the other extreme.

I notice that quite a few of you with negative experiences have the huge grace not even to blame social workers but mainly the referring agency.

I guess for sw it's the same as with 999 calls - once you are told you need to go and see?