Social services

[wtfwolf]

Are they just crap or got too much workload?

Chi was that a parental isolation accusation case?
I can understand the frustration but unless it was an appointment connected with anxiety, the social worker may have been querying how the topic of Mum/stepdad came up? Was your dh trying to advocate for his son by collating evidence? If a custody battle the SW was probably trying to work out who was badmouthing who.

Husband took son to gp as his son was self-harming at his mums house and husband was really concerned. Wanted a referral to CAMHS

@InstantGratificationDarkPlaygroundOfMN

Sorry I forgot to ask that is a parental isolation accusation case?

Depends if Mum was denying the abuse and castigating your husband as shit-stirring/trying to isolate her/saying to DS she was toxic etc
If he was self-harming due to abuse at home, his dad was right to want to access CAMHS (although from what I understand they are also overwhelmed atm).
Not sure why social worker was questioning his motives. It had occurred to me she was framing it as a non-resident parent vs parent conflict.

DH and I used to be foster carers but gave up due to the complete nightmare that was social services.

All bar one or two social workers we worked with were brilliant and did their best (our supervising social worker and the kids’ social workers), but they had far too many cases, not enough funding, not enough hours in the day, not enough staff, not enough support from their management and a lack of joined up working with other agencies (police/youth justice teams/education)

We fostered mostly older teens who had been out of education for a while, had involvement with police/courts/YOT, had substance abuse issues and none of these areas worked together or talked to each other.

We had absolutely no support so it just became impossible to continue.

Do you really think that parents don't consider this though? Can I also ask, when do you decide it is important to refer the case to the police?

Honestly no I don’t. I think most people would like to think they do though. How many times do we see it here, when people are describing a rubbish situation that involves a partners drinking, or how their partner talks to them, or arguing etc and when someone points out the impact on their children the response is nearly always along the lines of ‘they don’t know’ or ‘they were in bed’ or ‘there’s no impact I hide it from them’?

For so many parents it actually difficult to face up to how their behaviours etc have impacted the children- imagine if you actually had to fully face up to the idea that you are responsible for their poor MH or that they aren’t doing well at school, or that their challenging behaviour is a result of you and the choices you made?

Many people are obsessed with what’s happening for them and are oblivious to how their children might be impacted, many see their children as the same as them, not as separate beings, so if it didn’t do them any harm because their mum drank a bottle of wine a night, why would it hurt their kids? Obvs this is all very simplified.

In terms of referring to the police I’m not sure what you mean? I’d call the police if I needed a welfare check or theoretically if a felt a situation needed immediate police response but that’s the same as if I were a member of the public. If anything we get referrals from the police when they have attended and there are children present.

not sure I’ve got the wrong end of the stick there though with regards to your question

Ahh thanks, I have my moments 😂

I think you are right to a degree, we absolutely do make judgments based on what we have and we don’t always get that right. I know I haven’t always and hopefully good supervision helps you unpick that and reframe things. However that decision or judgement also comes from experience and evidence, I know for me if someone pings my radar it’s usually as I have seen the same behaviour elsewhere

I always try to approach with an open mind and I work on the basis that most people are doing their absolute best with what they’ve got to work with (in terms of their ability to parent!)

I applied to foster, the social worker allocated to me was an independent private social worker, working for several agencies, she was earning a lot of money, she told me.

Our discussions were fairly relaxed but I ended up giving up, three times she didn’t turn up for the at home visits, she had double booked and I guess being quite a chilled person that I am she thought it was acceptable, anyway the third time, I waited an hour before phoning, she was shopping in Sainsbury’s and had forgotten. She had also forgotten to contact my two references as per the appointments, one a Police Officer working shifts and tricky to book in.

She is the only one covering huge counties, I pulled out because I couldn’t be sure she would be reliable for support for either myself or any children in my care.

@wtfwolf - do you have any idea what social workers have to deal with? They are massively overstretched and under-resourced. The pressure on them is enormous. The nature of their work means that mistakes can cost a life (just as a medical professional’s mistake can cost a life). That’s not because they are not competent and committed. It’s because everyone makes mistakes but many of us are in jobs where our mistakes matter less. SWs also save and improve thousands of lives (as do medical professionals) but no-one gives them credit for the good they do.

Yes I have a idea I'm not bashing the social worker. I think the system is broke and too many kids suffer because of that. I've had to take in 2 kids because their only parent were emotionally abusive aggressive and on occasion physical with them with alcohol addiction. I was basically told that they were classing it as a breakdown in a relationship and the child could stay with me because they were safe but the parent could turn up anytime and take the child back.

I’m a SW.
I worked 18 years in child protection before moving into adult services. I would say the majority of my colleagues are incredibly committed and hard working and are pushing water uphill with a spoon because of unmanageable caseloads, lack of resources, court delays and restrictions…… the list goes on. I would often have 40 child protection cases, working 12 hour days and writing court reports overnight. No overtime, we feel as though we have no option to ensure people are safeguarded.

Adult services now, again the same lack of resources and working with people with incredibly complex needs. I get 4 new cases every week that need to be juggled with my existing workload. Huge amounts of admin. Trying to find spaces in care homes. Having no choice but to place people in care homes because the waiting list for home care is miles long.

i am incredibly passionate about what I do and I love working with my families and getting to know people, despite the many challenges. I am always reading, learning, developing my knowledge and experience. I care hugely and battle and advocate for my families daily. I am also exhausted, stressed and constantly guilty about trying to balance my work with the needs of my children. I have worked in Social care since I was 18; 30 years now. I can’t imagine doing anything else but I would never recommend it for my own children. My sister earns three times of much in the private industry for a far easier job and in an office with a posh coffee machine, pool table and the like! Whereas we have to pay a fortune to park the car that we have to provide for work and the petrol allowance that hasn’t increased in 15 years!

There are of course crap and lazy SW’s, mostly because they are burnt out but I do think when you reach that stage you should leave the profession. I was a Team manager for years and they are incredibly challenging to manage and even more challenging /impossible to manage out. But there are far more good Social workers, doing their best, saving lives.

You do take kids for no reason
Does anyone really actually think this?
The amount of work involved in taking children into care is immense, no social worker ( however rubbish they might be) decides that that would be a good way to pass the hours at their work.

Like any profession you get the good, bad and indifferent.

The working conditions lead to a very poor retention rate which doesn't help skill levels, particularly at front line child protection services.
But given the resources that they have people should be grateful that they do as good as job as they do.

40 CP cases!!! I have 27 at the moment and that’s bad enough

@Luzina can you answer my question when it's emotional abuse what happens? And it's very often that the child receives this type of treatment

Surrey Social Services - that is Adult Safeguarding - are just awful, the worst. Forget about being overstretched, they had all the time in the world fitting me and my family up via two care homes, who it seems daren't cross them for fear of repercussions. Took a Subject Access Request to figure out what was going on, and forget any help from your local MP if they're a Conservative like Chris Grayling (serves me right for voting for him that year.)

Toxic and un-sackable because they know the dirty secrets. The local Council appear to be the local Mafia and the press daren't touch them.

The dirty secrets are that the elderly in various care homes get put on proactive end-of-life care without the families being consulted. In other words, they get killed off - via dehydration since you ask, though there are other methods, that's the main one. Families who get wind of it face getting barred, though of course the lockdown policies ensured that happened anyway.

This 100%

My one wish would be for parents to consider how their kids might be feeling or how they might be impacted due to parents actions, that’d probably reduce caseloads 😉

It would be absolutely wonderful if social workers could do this and consider the impact of their actions on the families that they are supposed to be helping.

For the social workers on here, have you ever had someone be aggressive towards you? How is it handled?

During the time I worked as a frontline social worker focused on child protection I had a gun pulled on me, we regularly visited residences where the police accompanied us and waited outside the property, other houses where health care workers would no longer attend due to safety issues, houses where aggressive dogs were brought out to try and control where we went in the house, houses where we would get locked in.

We were trained to always reverse our cars into spaces and make sure we could leave quickly.

What we as social workers tried to focus on was " what is this like for the kids living in this situation"
We would travel in pairs to higher risk houses, if we knew they were higher risk.

@maybebalancing Exactly! Can you imagine being a child living in that environment 😳. Good grief, that sounds horrendous, especially the gun as well. Hope you were ok and it de-escalated quickly.

What do you mean? That parents shouldn't be told about the negative impact of neglectful/dangerous parenting?
That it should be addressed in a way that doesn't point it out?

@redressgirl “You do take kids for no reason and also write stories of lies have you joined the social services groups on Facebook lol they'll eat you alive with your lies social services pick on innocent families easy targets and lie proactively your scum like they are social services leave the kids who need help to get killed your a bunch of vilehuman beings karma and all that 😉”

Are you ok? I can only assume you’ve had a negative experience of Children’s Services, if your children were removed I’m truly sorry as I have found even the ‘worst’ parents love their children (I’m not saying you are the worst for clarity) but children aren’t removed for no reason, they just aren’t, I’ve found the opposite actually and we leave children for far longer than we should sometimes.

We do, frequently. The aim is to take the least intrusive path overall.
That said just because parents are happy with how things are doesn’t mean their children are, or could be much happier if parents stopped drinking/ stopped hitting them/stopped taking drugs/gave them their medication/ took their own medication, stopped screaming arguments/stopped physical aggression and violence/ didn’t leave dog shit on the floor/cleaned the house so they could have access to the kitchen.
I could go on.

So yes I stand by what I said, I wish parents would consider how their kids really feel.