Social services

[Louiee11]

So need advice I am 38 weeks pregnant I was honest to ss about a situation but they found more lies out and now know who the baby’s father is too , they have said about a legal meeting is needed I’m now worried what’s going to happen
any advice please

They won't give your baby over to it's father if they're an alcoholic will they op.

You have a chance of keeping your child so long as you wake up and grab any and all help SS is offering you.
You need to accept that you are not able or capable of making the right healthy choices for yourself or your child at the moment, your history shows that, you must accept that about yourself and follow the advice SS and any other services give you.

Please also consider having a long term contraceptive put in place at your 6 week check up.

All the ss said was a cp plan will now be in place and there will be a legal meeting she will be attending so I don’t know what’s going to happen

Seems like you have men in your life who have alcohol and drug issues and at least one is a convicted criminal.

Have nothing to do with these men at all, not even a text msg ever and then you may be able to keep your child. Make promises and then have contact you run the real risk of losing your child. They are trying to work out if your child is at risk if it stays with you because of your actions.

Ok, request an explanation- ask it be written down. Ask options be explained and what is expected of you
Understandably it’s hard to retain and process a lot of information, stressful and your pg
Stay calm,have a safe pg and do everything your required to do
Take care

Ss job is to put the child first. If they see a risk they will step up the level of need the child has. It’s hard to say what will happen but you need to start by being honest and making better choices.

Do you know anyone who can advocate for you and talk to the social worker?

Zone2northlondon has given you good advice. I wonder what would have happened if you said she couldn't look through your phone. It's a horrible situation to be in. You have to start feeling shame because then you will learn and stop doing it. 9 years is a long time to be under ss. You have to self analyse and change for the better. Your older child will be back what do you want her to see when she lives with you?

Oh OP you sound very young and I’m sorry you’ve found yourself in the situation you’re in. I know that you realise you’ve made mistakes. I sincerely hope you can do all the right things so you can keep your beautiful baby with you when she or he arrives 💐

I'm not at all sure that the OP will ever get back full custody of her 9 year old child, or even the right to have the child overnight. She still is only allowed supervised visits with that child and the current situation is not going to help her to even get more contact rights.

Having a baby with an incarcerated drug dealer who is physically locked up and away from OP would not warrant SS to move so swiftly with legal proceedings to take another one of her children. The concerning issues flagged by SS are clearly with the OP which is why SS are removing any children from her care because she has been deemed unfit to be a mother, but to what degree remains unknown but either way the child was removed because of safety/abuse/neglect concerns. What happened to have your one year old child taken off of you? It must have been extremely serious for SS to think taking your child away was the best and only measure for their safety because usually SS would much rather work alongside parents as much as they can to keep the family unit together as they understand how important that is for the child but removing children from a mothers care is absolutely their last resort and such life changing decisions are only made in exceptionally dangerous circumstances. I just hope and pray you can get the help you need to get better because whatever happened to your child or what SS witnessed with that child in your care must have been awful for them to decide to remove.

Factual based on what? Some random person in the internet?

dk you know this person in real life? The OP?

There is never a need to drag someone who needs and is asking for help down

Why was your first child removed and why were they involved again this time, before they knew about the man in prison and the father with an alcohol problem?

Perhaps, but then mothers I've met like this are often 'supported' by those around them into believing they haven't done anything that wrong. It's all social services over reacting. Everyone does it, what's the problem?

As supported by the op being bewildered that social services are taking another child from her, when to most normal mothers her behaviour would be horrifying and shocking.

Some groups of people are surrounded by dysfunction, and coddling language leaves them there.

If you are doing something as horrific as having babies that you are willfully or incapable of looking after, even to a basic standard, then you should feel shame.

The OP has had one child removed from her care and is under threat of the second one also being removed.

In what world does this mean she is being ‘supported' by those around them into believing they haven't done anything that wrong”?

@Incadove I dont mean the professionals involved.

The op says they have a good family network. This usually means a large and very dysfunctional family or group of friends.

They often minimise or normalise shocking parenting and safeguarding hazards, and will be reassuring op with platitudes like its the systems fault, they are overreacting, everyone does it etc.

Op probably is only hearing that she is behaving atrociously from the professionals involved, making it easier to avoid confronting what she is actually doing. Being such a shit mum that ss has had no choice but to remove her babies.

Social workers are checking her phone like she's a child and can't be trusted. She is a woman in her mid 20's. Most young women her age are starting out in their careers. Op said she believes she deserves another chance. Why does she deserve it she doesn't own her child. Children are hard wok and she is not making good choices. She needs to grow up.

I've known mothers who has had a child removed and they have gone on to have 3 or 4 children and kept them. There is something wrong with the ops lifestyle.

This thread (and the others) show how far apart peoples' views of parenting/good parenting are in society.

OP doesn't sound like an intentionally harmful person or child abuser but it's quite clear there's what social workers call a 'lack of insight' into a child's basic safety needs.

OP is likely to have had some contact with ss as a child. She's likely to be from a community where men being drug users/alcoholics/ dealers/time in prison is entirely normalised.

She's likely to be surrounded by people who are distrustful of ss and advise her to lie to them.

It's very difficult for someone young naive & poorly educated to reject all the values they've been brought up with normalising anti social behaviour/family dysfunction and to listen to unknown strangers (posters and professionals).

She is at risk of having this child removed. Lying can delay this so obviously some close to her may encourage this! But long term it'll harm her & the baby.

She needs a whole perspective switch. To see that kids deserve to grow up away from addicts & prisoners etc.

That's a very long process. It may not happen in time to 'save' this child from removal.

Often Mums do learn from having one or more kids removed & create better lives for themselves (often far from where they grew up) and have other children that they keep.

But that's a long slow process.

First step is the op being able to recognise that certain people are a risk of harm to a child. As long as she doesn't 'get' that this cycle will continue.

There are thousands of pregnant women like op around the country atm. Some will be on ss radar. Many more will be flying under.

That's what's truly scary.

I agree with what you have said.

I have 2 adopted children ( both adults now). They were removed due to neglect. The birth parents did not understand that what they were doing was wrong. The birth mother's sister's children had already been removed. The birth father's family had generations of involvement with social services.

They only knew what they knew. Sws put them into a residential placement to teach them how to parent but after 3 months they admitted defeat.

The children were 1 and 3 when we adopted them and scarred for life by what happened to them.

Op I appreciate you don't want to put every last little detail on here however I feel there is abit more to this than your letting on .

The fact you've ve had a child removed prior to this pregnancy, speaking to someone in prison and the babys dad liking a drink /you concealing who babys dad was doesn't particularly add up to me that they'd go straight to CP or by the sounds of it seeing if they've grounds for pre proceedings.

If you were after a relationship with the guy in prision thats a totally different story and yes would be deemed a huge risk factor.

As for them being shown one string of messages and then going through more messages that you hadn't actually given permission to is this even allowed?

Im not going to post my personal experience on this here but if you'd like to PM me your more than welcome to. X

"As for them being shown one string of messages and then going through more messages that you hadn't actually given permission to is this even allowed?"

Yes it is if they have reason to believe there is a welfare risk to the baby. She could have refused and then they would have got a warrant for the phone. She could delete messages but they have specialised software to retrieve the texts.

There isnt. But also we need to be careful not to validate anything the OP states, as often in these situations the full facts aren't disclosed. Best advice is for the op to fully co-operate with SS, rather than seek reassurance from unqualified people on MN.

@Louiee11 Your only (and it is your only) sensible course of action now is to be totally honest with Social Services and acknowledge that you're lied to them. You also need to stay no contact with the jailed drug dealer and be entirely no contact the the father of the baby if they say he is also problematic. You need to listen carefully to everything they say and stop (as your previous thread demonstrated) trying to find ridiculous ways of pulling the wool over their eyes because as you've discovered it doesn't work and will just make them doubt everything you say. Their focus is on a helpless baby that is arriving soon and that is as it should be.

It doesn't sound as if you fully understand the processes that are going on and you need to, ask for them to be explained clearly and if you're still struggling, get someone you trust to go over things with you.

Noone can say "there there, it'll be OK" because none of us know the full details of the situation and what you've said doesn't sound great and I also suspect there is more going on than you want to share, which is your right. Any chance you have of turning this round is going to involve a lot of scrutiny and you need to focus on cooperating.

I really hope it all works out for you - however you are not doing yourself any favours by lying and trying to trick SS.
Positives are you've been honest, well as much as you thought you could be, I didn't know SS could go through your phone but as safeguarding children goes, anything is possible.
Stay away from these men, cut them off completely no texts, no secret meetings - this baby is your priority, men come and go.

I hope the meeting goes well, as long as you listen to their concerns and do as they say (and more) you should be ok, but I obviously can't guarantee that.
I really do wish you well, I could not function without my son and I know I don't know you, but I don't want that for you.
Good luck x

Thats fair enough. I've never heard of them requesting to go through someones phone /messages before.

I have just had a quick google and from what I've read it suggests that this is quite a rare occurrence and usually in extremely serious situations where a child is in serious danger or evidence towards a case and so on.