Social workers are under direct financial and career pressure to take children away from their parents - today's Mail

[edam]

Anyone who has followed Bunglie's saga will know how frightening social services practise towards some parents can be. Hopefully not in every case, but the attitude of professionals towards mothers accused of harming their children left/leaves a lot to be desired in terms of objectivity and evidence-gathering.

Today's Mail takes this onto new ground. I'd already heard from my sister, who works in this field, examples of parents with learning difficulties being treated as 'guilty until proved innocent' in terms of their capacity to look after their own children.

In p. 8 & 9 today's Mail carries a story on social workers removing children from people with learning difficulties. They include an opinion piece by Prof Tim Booth, prof social policy at Sheffield who has some interesting things to say about discrimination by soc. services: '[this is] a form of abuse by the system whereby people are made worse off by the services that are supposed to help them. It is rampant, pervasive and destructive of family life, and far more prevalent than ... child abuse. ...system abuse, more than child abuse, is the precipitating factor behind the high rates of child removal.'

Together with the Government's policy to 'encourage' all mothers of young children back to work whether they want to or not, and proposals for massive database storing information about all our children (and sparking social services investigations if two 'red flags' are raised - like a health visitor saying a baby is 'not gaining enough weight' and a later trip to A&E because the same child falls out of a tree), I'm very worried. It seems the Government is, whether deliberately or not, undermining the private sphere of family life and turning itself into the childcatcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

What do you think?

I do understand and I know some of my advice I give can sound trite. I have been there and do want to help too.

I do know what you mean re depression can make us selfish but it can also stop us actually asking for help/ seeking help or even seeng the support that is alreday there. I know for me I tried very much to deal with it all without realising the love and support I had around me.

Thankfully I am through that part but having been there I have learnt alot. You have to look closley at yourself even the really horrible bits. I have to say counselling was temendous and I also had a fab cpn and supportive mh team. I know I am a strong woman esp with all the court proceedings i went through but have to tell my self i cant always get it right and it is ok to have a wobble sometimes.

I didnt mean to imply a 'romantic' meal with rectify everything but trying to gently offer advice and guidance as dont know full situation iykwim. I do agree that depression affects whole family tho and i am not convinced that as an illness it receives the recognition it deserves. IT occassional pops into the headlines when a celebrity has a breakdown.

I am rambling, think trying to avoid essay.

mt - dont think you are being harsh either. ADs help give the small release to gather inner strength to help fight the depression. Does that make sense? It is how i felt and saw things. It took a while for me to realise these pills wont make me better on I can do that. Counselling for Toads is a fantastic book and explains this much much better than I can.

I think we understand each other very well, Awen.

Ad's helped me see the wood for the trees. It was as though a fog that had obscured my whole life suddenly lifted, or muffled music suddenly becoming clear. A whole world I'd only ever glimpsed before. You're so right that they don't make you better. I don't even know if there could or should be a cure for depression. After all we need to grieve sometimes in our lives, don't we? We just need the ability to recover and put it in perspective.

I have to say though, throughout all of the time I was depressed (it itself had it's peaks and troughs) I knew it wasn't right somehow. I knew the person I projected out wasn't the person I was deep down. There was always a tiny faint voice calling out from the doldrums. That's me today.

Don't make you better on their own I should have said!

And I haven't had to deal with anything like loosing my children. I can't imagine how difficult that must have been.

sorry i didnt reply - been trying to do essay. not happening tho. Will sign off again as collecing ds now so wont get opp to go online again i expect.

Awen-no problem, you did'nt overstep the mark at all

Monkeytrousers- I know what you are saying and a lot of it I thought myself.
I just feel that I know I have to take responsinility for my problems but surly dh should be trying to support me for the sake of our children and not adding to my anxieties .
He gets a choice every night when he finishes work whether to come home and help out or go to the pub.He chooses the latter most of the time and i have to struggle on no matter what i don't get that choice.

I know it must be difficult for him but that does not excuse him to go and get drunk and come home and tell me what a bad mother i am and to pull myself together.When i bring this up he just says don't deflect the issus we are talking about you.

I am so pleased you are feeling much better.Like you say it's about learning to now when you start to feel yourself slipping back into the depression and changing your way of thinking about it.I just find that so difficult when dh and his family only ever to criticize my mothering skills.They are saying it so it must be true.Hardly confidence building is it?

You made a lot of sense in your posts and i suspose it's about knowing when you are in the wrong and doing something about it.
It does help to have positive messages from those around though and as for my anxiety i like to have things planned to a certail extent.Which with my dh ,i never know when what tome he will be home,how drunk and that just sends me over the edge.

My dh is probably right,i have'nt progressed very far in a year,but in the past year have been told my ds may have dyspraxia,have been referred to ss,case now dropped,which i had to fight for as it should never have happened.
Also my oldest brother died,which was drink related.

Reading this back i sound very defensive,angry,bitter and i just feel it's me againest the world sometimes and am very misunderstood.

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It's so tricky Tatler. I don't know your exact circumstances so am just going on my own experience and from that I'd say yes, your partner should be supporting you, but I suspect he already is. I?m a SAHM and DP's life outside of the house is just a blank. I try to be more supportive but home life demands all my attention and imagination. I never wonder what he's up to during the day; I'm far too busy. But he is working and working hard - that in itself is a support to me though I don't often seem to appreciate it and that pisses him off at times. I?m jealous though. His life seems much more preferable than mine. At least he gets to talk to people in real life. It?s just as hard though, if not more so. Where looking after the baby is my job, his job is bringing in the resources so we have the basics and more. But I feel lonely at home, I imagine all SAHM's do. The endless repetitiveness sometimes drives me quite literally nuts and that frustration always erupts in me when AF is due. During that week, DP can do no right basically. If I find anything somewhere it shouldn't be, then I?m off like a pressure cooker berating about how it's all too much and I can't cope and it's driving me mad and I feel invisible and useless and servile and he?s a man who doesn?t understand because if he did he would pick up a towel once in a while.

A few days later I get my perspective back and I feel ashamed for treating him so contemptuously. Like it?s my right to have the things we have. Not that we earn them. Not even knowing we only have them because we both make sacrifices and compromise on so many things. But that we do it, paradoxically, because it?s easily the best way to be happy.

In Alcoholics Anonymous (DP?s dad was an alcoholic) they say to get well you have to give yourself over to a higher power, be that god or whatever. I gave myself over to my DP and he helped me save myself. I?m not saying it was easy or that we didn?t hate one another at times. DP once told me to stop being a fantasist and to learn to settle for less. I couldn?t accept that for a long time, it seem too defeatist but I just hadn?t understood him. Like I said before that?s the illusive secret to being happy, or it was for us anyway, to just stop wanting. Society confounds us at every turn of course, giving the opposite message. Maybe that?s why we?re all getting depressed in record numbers. But maybe you have to forgive you DH for getting drunk and running away to the pub for a greater good. Not forgiving him isn?t working either, in fact it sounds like it?s driving you further apart. You both need a new strategy. Maybe let him read this and sees if it rings any bells with him too. You?re trying and he?s trying crucially not together. You might not be in sync for a long time to come, but if you stay committed and focused, and that may sometimes be as little as being under the same roof if not actually interacting you might get over this. Some people would say if it?s that difficult then why bother. But if it?s worth having it has to be worth the effort too.

I don?t really know what my point is here. I?m descending into cliché. Just tell me to f? off if I sound too patronising. I don?t mean to but I?ve picked up the patrician academic style, I think. I?ll stop and try to have a think as I don?t want to write an essay about it, unlike Awen .

I used to work for a charity ans was assigned several cases of famillies with children directly within the category of high risk, that I wanted personally to have removed from their famillies, as I felt (and feel) very strongly that they were in danger. I found that the hands of SS were tied (we were as a partnership- they contributed towards my funding, I helped with their caseload) and it was alomost impossible TO remove children! The case that sticks out most was an alcoholic drug user who spent several hours a day comatose with a seven year old, baby and no partner. The seven year old would go for hours at a time and come back after 11 pm.

My personal experience of SS is that they do everything they can do to keep children from care. There also is a severe shortage of foster parents which make placing children a challenge (no professional wants to put a child in a home).

Also, my son has had extreme weight gain issues which were monitoreed by Paeds (turned out to be lacyose intolerance0 and has had accidents which could I suppose be regarded as suspicious (eg, his AS brother taking him into his bunk bed in the early hours then letting him fall) and I never had any concerns raised. Even parents who are supported as struggling, this wouldn't involve any mention of removing a child from parental care unless things diminished suddenly.

My experiences are of course restricted to my previous home county of Somerset.

Finally, I have actually been trying to get a S Worker for my AS son, and there is a massive shortage of both professionals and cash whcih has prevented them from supporting us.

Hi monkeytrousers-Yes my dh does support me and works hard and your right I probably don't apprieciate him as much as I should.
It is very difficult to apprieciate someone who is forever dis respecting me.I make an effort every evening to orgainise dinner so we can all sit at the the table together as a family and talk about the day but more often than not his dinner ends up in the oven as he is late.
It is now 9.00pm and he phoned at 6 to say he was on the way home so I put dinner on ,still no sign of him.I have tried his phone which he ethier swithches off or leaves in the car so he has told me.Probably a silly example but to me it's important that we all sit down as a family at the end of the day.This has been 4 nights out of 5 this week he has gone to the pub after work.
I work hard to I don't get pais for what I do though.
Sorry if that sounds harsh it,s not in any way aimed at your post you sound like you have a dh who listens to you and you can at least reason with.It's almost impossible to do this with someone who has had a drink.

You are not patronising me at all,you explain everything so well.

I try to get through to him and sometimesthings will be fine for awhile then we are back to square one again.
I now it's not all about his drinking and i have to take some of the blame but i am doing my best,seeking help with a therapist,getting tablets from the doctors.
I just don't see him contributing in anyway apart from fianacially.
If he would just cut down going to the pub maybe twice a week but 5 out of 7 most weeks is just unacceptable.
Still no sign of him,children asleep and I am sitting here getting more and more anxious wondering what mood he will be in tonight when he finally gets in.He could have had an accident for all i know he is not answering his phone and never rings to say how late he will be.

Now I really sound negative.What else do i do.Just let it ride over me and don't get annoyed just carry on with my evening and relax.But somewhere inside me says why should I let him get away with this night after night.
It's not fair on the children or me.

Peachychair-ss probably vary from county to county and I assume some areas have more resources than others.In fact we were offered homestart which i turned down as i felt their resources could be used better with another family as I was coping with the children day to day and the housework it was more help mentally that I needed not physically,if that makes sense.

I think that there is a misconception that HomeStart volunteers help physically- strictly speaking, they don't, although some will if they choose to but we never ask it of them.

Their exact role is to provide emotional and motivational support for parents, thus allowing the positives to filter down and benefit the kids. So, a Mum with PND might spend time with a volunteer chatting over coffee or trying out toddler groups (it's often easier to go as a pair initially), with the idea of building self esteem and a support network for Mum. A Vollie (volunteer) with a family with a disabled child might accompany them swimming, help them phone for benefits advice, etc. it's about supporting the parents in building a self supporting life for them and their children, IYSWIM.

In fact, the misconception did cause problems: quite often volunteers would go into a new family armed with ice breakers to caht over a coffee and then find a pile of ironing waiting for them! That WAS NOT their role, though TBH sometimes we suggested they get on with it and try to chat over it, but just do it the once.

The truth about Hoke Start is that some of ur parents were the best parents in the world, they just had a lot of bad luck and needed a friend for a bit occasionally, to stop them not coping.

As I have a child with AS and a Dh who has depression sometimes, I would love a HomeStart vollie if they were nearby, just to give me break from the know nobody, on my own monotony of being somewhere new. I am coping well (usually) but that would quite within the HomeStart remit.

Peachychair-It was never really explained to me in that way and so was unsure what their role would be.In my case I felt I did'nt really have the strength to open up to someone else on a personnel level.I was seeing a therapist and hv and a social worker which was pretty hard going at times and very upsetting and draining.I can see that somebody who has no other support network to rely on might find homestart very useful.

Is their any other orgainisations similar to homestart near you that might be able to help?

there's nothing near be but that's not a wory- start Uni in two weeks- will make friends then (as I will after all be onkly one with both a kitchen of my own and the know how to cook a proper meal!!!).

Can't reply in full Tatler, but just wanted you to know I will soon. Take care. x

When we were in the thick of this my dh didn't listen to me at all, he'd heard it all before by then, all the endless rationalisations. We just plodded along for a while, me feeling humiliated and him just trying to weather it. I stopped drinking as the depression just unleashed itself even more then - DP insisted I do that actually. Like I said I gave myself over to him completely because I believed him when he said he was doing it for the best. I didn?t do this blindly I have to say. It was one of the reasons I loved him that he also happened to be the most intelligent and honourable man I'd ever met.

He said the course of a relationship that would hopefully last a lifetime, I needed to stop trying for quick fixes. Things would come together in time and with effort, but no intimacy could be forced ? by that I don?t mean sex, but the time we shared together, the way we interacted and talked to one another, the general atmosphere. And he was right. I realised that I wasn?t looking at us as a long-term relationship but as every other relationship I?d had and was constantly panicking at every crisis as though it was the end. That was an insecurity I?d carried since my dad died. He was depressed too but thankfully not clinically so. He?s always been very emotionally robust and I tended to take that for granted and think he wasn?t suffering, but of course he was. Again the depression stops you from seeing that. It wants al the attention itself. I don?t know how robust your DH is though. He might be in as much turmoil as you. And as it makes us selfish it will also make him. It must be a kind of survival instinct. Do you think your dh could be depressed too Tatler? If both of you are fighting for emotional precedence then you've reached a tricky impasse. It may only push you both apart to keep pressing the issue.

I sat down and asked myself some very difficult questions. Or as DP put it, make a fearless moral inventory of my shortcomings. He helped of course, adding any that I wasn?t aware of (that was hard as it made me feel innately messed up and like there was no point in even trying, but more on that below) I needed to ask if I loved him enough to tear myself inside out? Was it worth the long haul? And probably most importantly, did I actually want to get better? That may sound odd, but I do know a lot of people who are very attached to their depressions as it gives the perfect excuse not to succeed in anything, so they never have to try. It can be scary coming out of that comfort zone. I?ll stop now. I?m just trying to talk through it in the hope that you might be able to glean some similarities. In the vain hope that you might be able to benefit from my experience.. Like someone said on another thread, I don?t want to hog the thread, but it has turned into something else now.

Apoligies!!!

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Apologies?

Apoligies for hijacking the thread and changing it from the original subject.

Edam, do you forgive us?

Here's a very sad story from the Torygraph about a couple whose baby was taken away for adoption on what appears to be very flimsy grounds. It also mentions govt policy for increased and speedier adoptions, as does this item which mentions a govt target of an extra 40% of adoptions, which is being met by the adoption of easy-to-adopt young healthy and white children rather than older children, those from ethnic minorities or with disabilities.

the Torygraph . . . LOL .

Sorry but I have not read all of this thread but what I have read has made me feel that I think you do not all realise what is really going on out there in the big world of the Social Services.

Firstly I can tell you of 3 cases where children were removed simply because the parents had a learning disability. They give drug addicts support when they have children, but they will get better, (that is their view, not mine) so it is worth it. Someone with Learning disabilities is unable to care for a child, even if they are borderline, and they risk loosing their baby if they do not have a close family support network and a member, normally their mother who says that they will be the gardian.

Finally Yes, the Social Workers do have to meet adoption targets. They are more cautious since Meadows was struck off, but he is appealing so everything is 'on hold' by Social Services and parents who were his victims until we know the outcome.

My opinion, they have too much power, why take a child from its natural parents, adopt it and then refuse to acknowledge that a mistake has been made, because that is what the Social Services have been doing for years and something has to change before more families are destroyed and they find another person like Meadows or Southall et al. This is just my humble opinion, and it really saddens me when I know so many good social workers who do have childrens best interests at heart to feel the need to write this.

P.S. Bunglie is back