What happens if social services receive a serious complaint about a family?

[ELF1981]

What happens to the child?
Are the removed immediately?
Are they removed to other family members?
Or placed in care?

It depends on the accusation

Social services wont take a child away from family unless the child is in danger they will always try to mediate before hand.

drunken mother
child allowed to roam the streets late
a new partner who child hates, suspect abusive, def threatening

I will point out that it is not me making the call, nor is it about me!

It has been going off for a LONG time now but family are very worried about my cousin, my aunt is always drunk, this bloke is always coming and going, my cousin is frightened of him and spends all her week crying. Family have tried to talk to Aunt who doesnt want to listen. Police has been involved in the past but not an SS issue as at the time she was still with her husband (the guy threatened my cousin).

Very frustating. Cousin has been floating from house to house to get away from her mum and this man. But Aunt refuses to listen

It may take a while......

Elf

I had a family ike that in my last job, the seven year old was out at 3am, several other kids, dad left, Mum was pg and in a drunken coma almost all day- ahd to cisit early mornings as only time she could speak, even then she'd fall asleep mid sentence

Kids rarely attended school as the 10 minute walk was deemed by Mum too far

what happened?

I recommended removal of children

Social Services put in a volunteer visitor (through my workplace) once a week, we ahd to withdraw visitor due to distressing case- and then SS sent in someone once a month

God, I really hope they do something. Ideally I'd love for them to remove her (as I think it would really shock my aunt into doing something positive) and place in other family care.
So sad

My sister has recently had her 3 children removed. Two went into foster care and another with my father. This is the result of about 2 years communication with social services regarding my sister (and her DP) drug taking - she was always seen wasted in the front garden at all hours of the day, the children missing school, filthy (I mean DISGUSTING) state of the council house, being up until all hours with loud music, neighbours complaining, an apparently abusive partner and all manner of other things.

It took her doing something terrible (I cannot say what, it is too awful for me to say) for SS to even be interested. Now they have been taken away, she is still the same, pregnant again, and SS are talking about giving the kids back.

Hopefully you have a helpful social worker.

In my experience- nothing happens.

I reported a family member who was taking hard drugs (heroin and crack) around her daughter- also taking her daughter out in uninsured car, shoplifting-
Lots of things ( I was on the phone for two hours to SS)

They said that they would investigate ( this was nearly two yrs ago) - Child is still there, although I did hear that the mother was asking neighbours etc to foster the daughter as she was going to be taken into care ( yes, asking neighbours)

Social services have a hard job- unfortuantly they get it wrong. A lot.

Our old child protection guidelines said that if one apent was severe drink or drugs, was only an issue if the other parent was as well, or was too useless to protect kids 9eg remove needles)

at SS.
Well, the phone call amounted to nothing

What frustrates me is that I have a friend who has three kids, the middle one born very poorly, SS took him off my friend becuase they felt she wouldn't be able to cope with a poorly son and DD who was ADHD and he has now been adopted out of the family (he was only a month or so old when taken).

Found out a few more things about Aunt and Cousin yesterday, including the line of "if you dont start liking my new fella then I'm going to stop you seeing your dad" which has resulted in my cousin being terrified to say anything incase her mum stops her going to her dads at the weekend as that is the only thing she looks forward to.

elf, is there any possibility of the father seeking a change in the custody arrangements?

SS are a bit useless, IME, sorry.

depending on abuse though this might make a difference

agree they won't do much about alchol dependency

Do you KNOW that the cal amounted to nothing?

you could consider writing to them, IME they are marginally more likely to take action then, if only because there is a better chance of their supervisor seeing their letters when files are reviewed!

Filly, it was my sister who made the call, SS said that they could only follow up with a phone call to the house and my sis didn't think that would be enough / do any good so decided to tackle herself.

My mum has spoken to the father about everything that is going off and he is livid. Not sure what his next step is going to be though.

The sad thing is, if I were ever in the situation my Aunt is in, I would hope my family would interveen because I love my daughter too much to inflict that on her, even if I couldnt' see it at the time I'd like to know represpectivly that my family did everything possible to help

Even though my Aunt hates us.