i am gutted the doctor wants to call social services

[superdry]

i have posted previously about problems i have been having with my dh, he is abusive and threatens violence, although so far has never hit me but has pushed me, threatens to chuck me out of 'his' house etc etc.

Following advice on here i contacted womens aid, following their advice i went to see my doctor to report it, so it is officially logged - i guess for future reference if need be and also to talk about my options in terms of counselling etc.

Now doctor has just rung me and informed me they have discussed my case and the protocol is to report to social services because i have young children in the house, although i have explained they are in no way in any danger, i am absolutely gutted and bitterly regret involving the doctor.

anyone have any experience of this, or any advice much appreciated, but please not a chorus of LTBs, i can't cope with that right now and i am trying to convince DH to go on a course to sort out his issues

Any issue of abuse that takes place in the presence of children which comes to the attention of professionals such as teachers, healthcare professionals, police, etc automatically triggers social service referral.

Safeguarding children is a legal responsibility of these professionals. Don't take it as a negative. They are there to help and support you. They will want to find a solution that keeps both you and the children safe happy and healthy.

The Children Act contains a category of "impairment suffered from seeing or hearing the ill-treatment of another". Children's exposure to domestic abuse is recognised as harmful.

By 'holding the family together' with an abusive man, you are exposing your children to harm, even if you choose not to acknowledge that.

You cannot 'sort out' these problems, they are his. Even if he agreed to go on a domestic abuse perp programme, the success rate of those courses is very low. If he does not recognise the need to change, and work very hard at it, he will not change.

If you log abuse, then you're saying your DH is an abusive man. Which, to be fair, is accurate. So it has to be investigated. If you cooperate fully and if your DH is assessed as not being an immediate risk and/or volunteers to attend courses to improve his behaviour, then that might help you. But if he is determined to be dangerous and/or you backtrack on what you've told the doctor there might be a different outcome.

Please have courage. You've done the right thing here.

I don't have personal experience of SS but I have various family members who have. I will go completely against the grain here and say, having spent part of my childhood in the 'system' (not through bad parents, through my mum dying suddenly and my dad being injured at the same time so unable to care for us) that I do not trust SS, there is a lot of corruption and abuse of the poor etc in SS - I would do literally anything AVOID any kind of involvement with them in me or my children's lives.

However, you do seem to have your head in the sand here. I know how hard it is, but you are their mother, and if you do not leave him you are subjecting them to your OH's abuse of you which will be extremely detrimental to their minds and emotions. You have the ABSOLUTE responsibility to them to split away from their father since he is abusive.

Leaving out the bit about SS, I actually think that is somewhat a moot point and your (perfectly reasonable IMO) horror at SS becoming involved is of much lesser relevance to what you absolutely need to do for your children now - which is to leave their abusive father. I am sorry but that is the truth - whether you are ready to leave or not - you NEED to leave as soon as humanely possible, even if you are scared. Can you look at it as something you just HAVE to do for the sake of your children? Try to look at it that way.

I completely and utterly understand why you are angry about the SS involvement without your consent in this situation - personally I would be LIVID - but you need to be very very careful now and get away from this man, because like someone upthread said, it is known that children are sometimes removed in this situation. So don't take any chances and leave for your children.

x x x

Are you afraid to leave, OP? What did WA tell you when you spoke to them? Do you have real life support?

Superdry I am so sorry you are going through this and I am not here to judge you. I understand what your children will be going through. My brother, sister and I grew up in an abusive home with an abusive father. You may think your children are not been affected and are perfectly safe but take it from someone that was inthe position your children are in. It affects the children, I know wha I am talking about. And I remember what my evil dick of a father was like and what he did to this day and it still hurts/affects me. I am 37 year now. Please don't fool yourself into believing your children are safe and not been affected. Trust me they are been affected and they will carry it for the rest of their lives.

With regards your DH, he won't change. These men never change. No amount of councilling will stop his nature. He is abusive and he will always be abusive. My father got "HELP" on several occassions and he always reverted to type. Thankfully my mother had the courage to leave him in the end. But we had to run away and spent a long time hiding from him. We don't need to do that now because his dead and I popped a bottle of bubbly to celebrate the day I found out he was dead.

Having SS involved is good - it will fast track you to the support you need. Has your DH agreed to go to counselling (not with you - it is not good to have counselling together in an abusive relationship)? Done anything to change his behaviour? Do you wnt to stay together?

Try not to be negative about the SS.

Come on guys - this person needs support - not "the harsh truth" Yes, the best thing may be for her to leave, but she is not ready to do that right now

Please don't look at your GP and SS as the enemy. This could be the help and the breakthrough that you need.

Even if your husband is nice 95 percent of the time, is it really worth it when he pushes you around and speaks to you horribly? And he might step up the violence, he hasn't hit you yet but he might.

Is he violent to other people, say does he push his boss around, his mates, his mum and dad, or is it just you he is aggressive to? Because a course won't help him if that is the case.

I know you say your children are safe but they don't have to be in the direct line of violence to be harmed, they probably sense yen pernicious atmosphere and can tell when things are going to kick off, and that is very distressing,

I know you must be worried sick and upset, but ss arent the antichrist, please look to them for help. I hope things work out ok, and I wish you all the luck. I hope you look back on this in 6 months and see it as a start to get away from the abuse.

No amount of calm and normal family life can make up for the lifelong emotional and mental damage caused by any sort of abuse in the home. It trains children to fulfil the abuse model themselves when they are older; boys to abuse when men, girls to grow up to be future victims. Can you genuinely not see how traumatising and chaotic it is for children to know that mum will be abused at some point, but to not know when? That children even think such a thing is abuse of them in itself. Children nearly always appear hapoy and normal, even in homes where there is abuse. Part of the coping mechanisms of such children is to try to sppear as good as possible so as not to trigger Daddy, as children believe they can somehow influence things (or are the cause).

You should not want to keep the family together when there is abuse present. All that does is create more damage. The most healthy thing you can do for your DC (and yourself) is to show them that abuse is not to be accepted, ignored, or minimised, and to make your OH leave. You fail your children by making them live with an abuser.

And why do you care so little for yourself that you would stay with such a prick? That's a terrible example to set to them too.

The fact that you say you are trying to sort out the problems shows 2 things: 1) That you are taking all the action and responsibility - if he could give a living shit about respecting you and not traumstising his DC, HE would actually leave, demand every type of long-term, possibly lifelong, help available, and not return until he was truly changed (which, um virtually never happens, because you can't change abusers) and 2) you are utterly deluding yourself of you think he is going to start treating you right. Things will only get worse.

SS knows all this. It's not finger-waggling, or any of the insults you want to throw at people who are genuinely trying to help you, these are simple, proven, well-known facts about abuse, abusers, family dynamics within abuse, and the effects on children. And it is very serious, which is why you risk having your children taken from you. 'Most' of family life being okay counts for fuck-all. There should be zero element of abuse. You can choose the reality of getting rid of your abuser or cling to the delusion that things aren't really too bad, and risk losing your children.

People with family lives that are mostly calm and normal do not feel the need to reach out to outside agencies about being abused. That's because that's not normal and never can be.

The problem is with abusive relationships, I think, is that it becomes normal.

So you think well it can't be that bad because he hasn't hit me yet. So he isn't as bad as some of the things I read.
You think that this is just a tiny part of your relationship that can be fixed.
You think that because he is not like this all the time, because it doesn't happen every day then it can be fixed because deep down he is a really nice man.

And then when he does hit you, and feels terrible and swears it will never happen again, or tells you it's your fault because you did xyz, you believe it. Because it was the first time. And you shouldn't have annoyed him. And because he is a really good dad and your kids love him, and if he just got some help it would be ok.

You walk on eggshells because you don't want that nasty part of him to come out. You stop disagreeing with him because he gets angry. You try and make sure you always do what you think he wants you to do.

It becomes your normal.

But that's why SS have to get involved. Because when you are in that situation you don't see what effect it has I everyone. How the kids learn to tidy up and be quiet and not annoy daddy. How they get scared when he shouts at you.

You are too close and too invested in making your H be the man you want him to be and you make excuses. That's an abusive marriage.

And it takes a certain type of person to be an abuser. An anger managment course won't stop you being scared of him. Or your DCs thinking this is ok.

Work with SS. For your sake and the DCs sake.

It may be that they give you the choice between your DCs safety or your H.

thank you LEMisafucker, your kind words have made me cry and thanks for not calling me 'sweetheart'!

You've done the right thing OP.

But the problem is that the kinds of problems he has (domestic violence or emotional violence) cannot be isolated from the good times and sorted out separately like some little compartmentalised issue, because they are not compartmentalised. He doesn't just "go wrong" every few weeks or months, there is something in his psyche, in his mindset, which lets him justify the way he is behaving, perhaps even feel it is "necessary" (like a good parent feels it necessary to punish their children sometimes). Do you have a previous thread that you want to link? If so there are a lot of knowledgeable posters on here who can help you to unpick the behaviours.

I can see you are very upset and scared right now, and who wouldn't be, quite frankly. But it will not help you in the long run to "play the system" or tell SS what you think they want to hear. The best thing, the absolute best thing you can do is to listen to what they have to say about what they consider to be an issue. That is the only advice - REALLY listen. They are not babysnatchers, and they are well aware that to pluck a child from its home and place it with foster carers is traumatic even in the worst cases of abuse. They will not make any snap judgements but you must work with the guidelines/advice that they give you and not decide that you know better. They have seen your situation a thousand times before.

superdry Something similar happened to me, someone I was speaking to about life at home called SS, SS called me in to their offices and asked what I was doing about xh and said they did not want DC in the same house as him and the DC were to stay with PIL until he was out of the house.

I went to see a solicitor, he wasn't at all helpful so found another and told them some of the behaviour at home and got an order asking him to leave the family home. SS then left us alone, they have advised if I ever do have in the home again they would take out a child protection order on the DC, so we have no contact.

You had done the right thing. You may not think it but you have been strong to speak to wa and your doctor. Those are good things to have done, please don't regret it.

It's all small steps and it will take time but you are heading in the right direction.

"If you ask for their support in finding a way to leave, acknowledge that he is damaging them then you will find a wealth of support and resources at your finger tips. " exactly .

the fact you want dh to go on a course is indicative of problems.
it would be better if he does that course away fom you and DC.

when i was planning to leave exp SS were fully aware and supportive. so long as they knew this was the plan they were happy with what I was doing to protect DC.

happy family "most of the time" is not good enough if the other one or two percent consists of angry arguing/rows/violence/abuse which is extreme enough to warrant attending a course. he only needs to get v angry once for massive damage/injury/worse

he pushes you - that IS violence
he threatens you - that is no way to live.

the fact he hasnt hit you (yet) is ploy - he pushes you just enough to warn you
he threatens you so you know if you do trigger him there is worse to come.

this needs sorting out elsewhere, but not while he lives with you and DC. you cannot hide this from DC.

Women's Aid probably told you to report it to your doctor in case you need legal aid later on as it will confirm the abuse.

I think it is totally OTT and no doubt is the last thing you need. I am not surprised they did this and my guess it is known to be standard procedure, Women's Aid should have warned you this would happen so that you could decide if you wanted social services help.

Sending hugs xx

Sorry xposted with loads.

I really hope that it works out for you.

most of family life is calm and normal

But what happens during the rest of your family life will be having a huge effect on your children OP. As others have said, if you do not feel safe, neither do your children .

It sounds to me like you are now panicking about the inevitable upheaval you are facing and wanting to minimise. That's understandable, but doesn't mean you have to 'go with it'. The social services can help you get away from this horrible situation. Let them help you

Ach, I'm sorry OP, this must be tough. I have read your threads about your 'D'H before, and they have made me feel terribly ill.

Having said that, your doctor was right. Use this to see what kind of help SS can offer you, because your children are suffering every day that you stay with that man.

I apologise for the use of "sweetheart" OP. It came naturally but I should have thought that it may sound patronising. That was never my intention.

OP, Sweetheart or no sweetheart, you should listen very carefully to WallaceWindstock's posts. In my opinion she knows what she is talking about.

Can I ask a genuine question, which you don't have to answer on the thread, but just to make you think.

If the children would magically be fine either way, if you could guarantee that they were not harmed or distressed in any way, would you stay or go? Just remove that (huge) factor, and how do you feel about it?