Social services dammed by judge for ruining the lives of an innocent family with a disabled child

[MrsJREwing]

I read it in DM. So sad ss ruined the children's and parents lives with false allegations of FII. So very sad.

I know of a lady who was disabled with our condition (undiagnosed then correctly) who was not offered help to care for her baby, they took the child and adopted it instead. She later was diagnosed and won loads of corrections, sadly the Judge couldn't undo the adoption, that was the only bit, they did send the adoptive parents the genetic information as the child had a 50% chance of inheriting the condition.

I know of a family who's child had care removed, they were cleared in court.

I know some professionals are being investigated due to making high levels of FII accusations especially about families that make complaints about the professionals, anyway I am sure it will come out in the wash soon enough.

I am wondering if they should scrap Social Services altogether. The police (with extra funding) should handle Child Protection issues. And there are enough quango's, such as NSPCC and Age Concern, who (with extra funding) could handle the day-to-day case load. The extra funding for police, etc. would come from the massive budget that SS currently has.

What does everyone else think?

I'm so sorry Barbie.

SS does need root and branch reform. Not sure it'd be a good idea to hand the role over to the police, though, their job is to catch criminals - their view of the world wouldn't necessarily be terribly helpful to children in need.

Problem with SS is they are completely unaccountable yet have incredibly serious powers - crap doctors can kill you but SS can take your kids away which is pretty darn close. At least crap doctors can be struck off. There's a theoretical power to strike SWs off, but it has never been used.

Here we go again. SS cannot take kids away, they can apply for an order for children to be taken into care which a JUDGE decides. SS case loads are massive, no one wants to do the job and who can blame them? Its a bit ridiculous to say SS should be scrapped and let charities take over, they would have exactly the same issues and worse as there just isn't the staff or the budget to manage cases properly. It is terrible what happens to some families, but you cannot tar all social workers with the same brush. They are human, and have to deal with people lying to them every day. I am not sure I would always know who was telling the truth (hence I don't want to work in child protection).

And yes SW can be struck off the same as doctors, they are not a law upon themselves they have a code of conduct they need to adhere to.

Problem with SS is they are completely unaccountable yet have incredibly serious powers.

That's the problem. The police are accountable, and if a parent is abusing or neglecting their child, then that is a crime. I would trust the police to investigate properly and according to the law, I would not trust SS to do the same, after my experience.

No SW has ever been struck off, not one (unless one person has been struck off since I last checked, not that long ago).

Fluffy, did you bother to read the story? This is a case where SS fucked up very badly indeed. Eventually the courts have recognised that. But it took 19 months.

I don't know where you are looking Pantomime, but social workers are barred from practising if judged to have malpracticed. I have seen various cases of this. You only have to read the news section of community care website to hear news of it happening from time to time.

I'm glad to hear it but last time this came up it turned out the general register of SWs had never struck anyone off. Do you mean barred from practising at all or just sacked by their local authority?

Pantomimedam -

Social worker struck off here
And here
Here again
And so on.

Social workers ARE accountable and are held to account (see my previous post).
Their registration holds them accountable, as do serious case reviews and court cases. Often the buck is allowed to stop with the individual social worker when it is the senior managers who made the decisions on the cases concerned and who should be held to account.

Individual social workers have less power than is commonly believed. Decisions are often made by managers, reviewing officers, child protection conferences, the police and the courts rather than the individual social worker.

Glad to hear it, selks, although I note that the Wales case was only the second SW to ever be struck off in Wales - in 2007!

Want to bet that the SWs involved in this hideous case won't face even the tiniest risk of being struck off, though? The Rochdale SWs were still practising last time the issue came up, about three years ago (satanic abuse people, not the 'prostitution is a lifestyle choice' idiots).

Seriously, it would be interesting to know whether any SW has ever been struck off for fucking up a CP investigation where the family were innocent.

Shit, I know her. Dd2 was in Marly's class in yr r. She's lovely. Omg.

It doesn't look as though it was instigated by social services in this case - it looks to rest upon Bursledon House, where Kane was undergoing treatment. So it looks as though medical professionals instigated the removal, not SS. Sorry to burst the SS bubble, I imagine they were just following orders after Bursledon House called it in.

The whole thing is tragic. I bet they thought the inpatient stuff at Bursledon House was going to finally mean some support, and boy, did they need it.

Poor wee mice.

Madwoman, sounds even more tragic from your account. And yes, health professionals do need to be held to account but SS should know better than to assume doctors are perfect and never make mistakes. When you are removing a child from his or her parents - one of the most draconian powers the state has - you need to look carefully at the evidence. Not just assume overbearing idiots like Roy Meadows are Gods who never do any wrong.

I am wondering if they should scrap Social Services altogether. The police (with extra funding) should handle Child Protection issues. Sorry but absolute garbage. Could they handle the support and respite care, care plans, assessments, referrals to other services, commissioning home care, working with people with LDs, MH, older people, vulnerable adults?

There are bad SWs and incompetent SWs and SWs with bad supervision. However, most SWs do an incredible job with little support because they are desperate to support people.

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Social workers cannot take children away, the decision is made by a judge.

Social workers are accountable. We have to be registered with HCPC. People can and have been struck off.

Court proceedings are private to protect the children. Ergo, you will never see a case in court handled well, because except in extreme circumstances, the only people who can chose to bring their case into the public eye are the parents. So you will always have a biased view.

Of course social workers are human. We are hugely underfunded, hugely demonised, and crumbling under the weight of our caseloads.

We cant do right for doing wrong.

Judges make mistakes too - look at the recent case. Where children were returned to parents by judge against wishes of SS - judge and media said it was great victory for the innocent parents hounded by the babysnatchers... parents went on to murder the child.

This is a very old thread!

Oh gah! Bitten by the zombie!!!

Social services/Cahms are the biggest fuckwaste of time and money EVER.

theyre ALWASY on the news after yet another tragedy with the same rhetoric.
''mistakes were made, we failed. we will learn lessons from this.''.

FUCK OFF! they never fucking learn.

and yes, I speak from experience of being falsely accused of not feeding my disabled child when it was the school not feeding her as they said she could feed herself even though she isn't able to because ofher physical sdisablities.

and cahms just dismissed her as a piece of shit under their shoes.

SS made things worse for us when I rang THEM because we were being tarhgetted by abusers and louts becuaes of our disabilities.

seriously. USELESS.

that poor family.

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