Social services

[wtfwolf]

Are they just crap or got too much workload?

Just because that isn't your experience doesn't mean it isn't in others... Clearly you have some other issues with social services mentally you haven't healed. I'm not going to debate with you ethier just know I am a person who was brought up in the system (social services) up until 21 which is when they don't usually bother us unless you get yourself into shit that needs them invovled. Goodbye

Healed? From a childhood of abuse and neglect? No. One doesn't, ever. Someone can learn to process the trauma, to move on, but it never "heals" because the impact is lifelong.

If you are not abusing or neglecting children then you had no reason to take umbrage at my post. And if you are, then I very much hope social services are "bothering" you. But given their track record, sadly they probably won't be doing so.

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?

I worked as a social worker in a hospital with children and adolescents who had tried to kill themselves. Not all were there because of their parents behaviour, but it was a significant portion. The delusional ability of parents to tell themselves that what they are doing should be ok with their children never ceased to amaze me. From people who were using heroin and passing out on a regular basis ('oh the kids are fine, they don't know what is going on') to the women letting abusive partners back repeatedly, to the ones who felt if they fed and clothed their kids that should be enough and were astonished to hear that kids needed emotional support. Some really egregious cases - trading kids for drugs, writing off finding their kid hanging in the garage but not seeking help because 'he was just being silly and playing, and of course the all out war parents who sniped constantly and could not hold it in for a second to not upset their kids. You always get the 'I am innocent, social services lied about me' lot, but ime there are a lot of kids who would be better off without their parents that social services cant do anything about. Hats off to anyone who does that job, I was totally burned out after 9 years.

Tbf even children in care don't get funded therapy and foster carers go through CAMHs until it's at a crisis point, and even then it can't always happen. There isn't any money. There are layers of managers up to the director of CS and it's within the management structures that funding decisions get approved or disapproved. Then the SW gets the shitty end of the stick telling the service users they can't have what they need. The whole system needs reforming but individual SWs get the blame.

Strange. The therapist I paid for privately that was appropriate for my children's needs does indeed see children with similar needs funded via a social care package. This is the appropriate route because CAMHS cannot meet their needs. They meet the criteria for this to be put in place. A needs assessment would identify this need, then social services would have to fund it. But they refuse to do the assessment - despite it being a statutory requirement to carry out upon request - because they don't want to fund it. This is illegal and - in my opinion - deliberate gross misconduct.

Their internal management structures and budgets are not my problem. While I have sympathy for the predicament of individual workers, my job is to fight for my children to get the support that they are legally entitled to have. Which I have paid for through tax many times over. If I did not do so, I'd be a crappy parent. Apparently their job is to try to keep families together yet they deliberately undermine and refuse to engage with someone who their own assessment stated is an excellent parent and is trying to engage with them. So parents who do engage are bad to expect them to respond in kind, and parents who don't engage are bad too? What exactly do they want to happen? And frankly, even the individual workers have behaved incompetently, shown great ignorance and prejudice and bad judgement as well as being rude and irrational and unpleasant, and shown minimal knowledge of their own legal obligations. So it can't all be blamed on "the system".

If I started telling my clients about my workload of internal budget woes this would be considered unprofessional in the extreme. Or ignoring their communications, or refusing to comply with the law and ignoring professional ethics. Rightly, I'd be hauled up in court, sacked, struck off etc.

It's not ok. And frankly, not my problem. I've got enough problems of my own to deal with. My role is to do my own professional role, pay my tax and look after my children. It is not my role to be a social worker or therapist. I've paid tax so that these services will be here if/ when we need them and now I expect them to be and social services' behaviour is completely unacceptable and I will take the complaint to the furthest extent I have to. I am in the process now of referring it to the Ombudsman. They need to be held accountable.

Mental health needs to be funded through health services and not social care. Social services fund support through partnerships and outside agencies. Rarely you can make a case and get either funded for additional support if there are extreme needs. Every single foster placement needs funding agreed (emergency or otherwise) and for every outside of partnership MH or support needed again it needs to be agreed above the case holding SWs head. If your SW took it to a multi agency panel and they didn't agree funding (and health services would have been at that panel) then yes make a complaint and push to see if you can get what you feel you need. What I'm saying is that even those who the LA have a corporate parenting duty towards rarely get agreement for additional funding. If you can pay for it yourself then no it's doubtful that the LA will fund as it would fall to health or to you first. If you aren't able to look after your dc because health or yourself can't fund it then you'd have a case for social services to fund.

She didn't take it to a multi-agency panel. She dismissed the needs out of hand and thought she knew better than the multiple professionals far more qualified than her who had submitted reports to her and spoken to her in many cases as well. She did absolutely nothing except be obstructive and dismissive and ignorant.

And their needs are not just mental health, either. She ignored all the physical ones, too.

It's not ok. And frankly, not my problem.

This is absolutely appropriate for any individual fighting for their children's needs to be met.

However looking at structural issues and why things are happening as they are is important for the wider community.

Berating individuals on the front lines doesn't actually change much or make anything work better.

They are health needs then Yellow. Also the therapist should not have been speaking to you about other cases they have. That's really unprofessional of them.

The SW will be having supervision about each one of her case load every 3 months. Decisions won't have been made like this by herself. If you've already made complaints you will have definitely been discussed in supervision. Ask for a new SW as the relationship has obviously broken down and ask the new SW for another assessment.

Id be honest the one for my county is crap.. my mother has been a foster carer for over 10 years!! You get no support especially as a single carer!, get shit off them for wanting to put notice in on placements because of challenging behaviours that need specialist carers. Some placements that come in end up going home and you think why? After all evidence shown but yet you get some children that need to come in but they don't!.

@Dhama I agree with your post about it being incredibly hard for a parent to accept they played a role in harming their child. I think some parents genuinely don't realise it though. For instance, if there are court proceedings, parent thinks they are doing the right thing by sorting out contact but then on the other hand, a child subject to multiple proceedings will be emotionally harmed. I always wondered how though if you don't discuss it with them? Then I learned that even if you don't talk about it with them, they know that mum and dad don't like each other. Comments are probably made to the child etc so eventually child becomes so confused.

I do think some social workers need to go about it in a more constructive manner though. If they are confrontational with the parent and insulting, it automatically makes the parent defensive. Kindness achieves far more in my opinion.

@Dery no matter what social workers have to deal with, it doesn't mean they can be rude and combative with people. In my situation, the social worker brought it on herself and had numerous complaints against her name from us.

@NewspaperTaxis When you made your subject access request, did they redact any information? Husband made a SARS application and practically all the notes were redacted, even conversations that took place in our house.

@YellowBunnies I had a social worker completely disregard my step son self harming. She also thought the mum was right by cutting phone contact with dad. She saw the child in mums care but not in dads but then went on to take what the child said as gospel (that he was scared of his dad) when an observation would have proved otherwise. In 2 years they never visited the child with dad. They also thought that a stepdad putting a camera in the child's room and watching him getting undressed was ok. 🤷🏻‍♀️ we reported this but then got accused of being malicious because the child changed his story after spending time with mum.

Our stage 2 complaint was exactly the same. Took a whole year to get to the end of that stage.

I am so sorry what you went through and are still going through. That sounds horrific but you sound like an amazing mother.

Not all social workers are out to get you and make your life miserable, if you show evidence and get legal aid then mostly you will end up getting your kids back (stating from experience). I have to agree with the pp stating that not all parents who get their kids taken away are shit parents, i think that's all they were trying to point out. Back to the orginal poster @wtfwolf i would say that social work takes a toll on you mentally and physically as clients think that it's up to them to make all the decisions when I'm fact it goes through management and the courts, clients tend to forget this and put all the blame on social services.

If you can pay for it yourself then no it's doubtful that the LA will fund as it would fall to health or to you first. If you aren't able to look after your dc because health or yourself can't fund it then you'd have a case for social services to fund.

No, I can't pay for it myself! That's the point! They think that because I work and provide my children with a home etc I should pay for what their service is meant to do. I can't just magic up money. I pay my mortgage, their living costs, and for lots of extra help they need already. I can't afford to fund trauma therapy long term and specialist help for their disabilities. I have plugged the gaps where their service is meant to be to the extent that it has now put us into debt. Private operations and therapists and specialist nannies, it is not sustainable, me continually trying to fill the gap where all the tax money I have paid is meant to mean those services I've funded for decades without complaint or asking for a thing in return step in, now that we beed them. How would a lone parent be expected to pay for all of that on their own? And why the fuck should I? I've paid for these services and we now qualify for them and need them so they need to provide them. Or, the state can stop taking my tax for non-existent services and then I will fund them myself. And while they are at it refund me the proportion of my tax bills allocated to healthcare and social services over the last 25 years.

They want to take the money and do fuck all and then insult my intelligence on top by gaslighting me with their little game of "let's pretend there are no needs and make you have to go through a complaints process when we know your health is collapsing".

It's disgusting and there's no excuse for it.

Agreed, so I'll let the Ombudsman deal with them now. However, rectification requirements set out include making sure that all of the social workers involved are appropriately disciplined and retrained, or struck off.

No. It's inappropriate for a health worker to disclose specifics about other patients' cases. It is not inappropriate at all for them to inform me that the type of therapy they were providing for my children privately, they also do funded by social care packages, for other children with similar issues. They were not making any comment about any specific patient and there was nothing inappropriate about it whatsoever.

Ask for a new SW as the relationship has obviously broken down and ask the new SW for another assessment.

Done that. Made a new referral to the children with disabilities team. Per my earlier posts, I explained how my children meet each of their criteria, with reports from professionals to back it up. They ignored me for weeks (meant to respond here within 48 hours to the initial referral). Eventually replied claiming my children don't meet the criteria because they don't have learning disabilities. That's not part of the criteria here. I sent them their own published criteria from their own website proving this. And again asked them which of the criteria they don't believe my children meet, and on what basis they believe they are qualified to overrule the reports of the multiple professionals stating the opposite, no reply.

My children are automatically entitled to respite. I pointed this out again - sent them their own criteria stating this - and asked them again to do it and why they are refusing to do so. No reply.

They are rotten to the core and don't even have the basic courtesy and respect to reply to people. And if they do - when pushed to do so by a complaints procedure - it is only to gaslight them and lie and try to cover their arses.

Our stage 2 complaint was exactly the same. Took a whole year to get to the end of that stage.

I am so sorry what you went through and are still going through. That sounds horrific but you sound like an amazing mother.

I am so sorry to hear you went through similar. It feels like swimming through treacle and it's so much worse going through it knowing that they are doing this on purpose. They know how much you and your mids are struggling, they know you need help and are being deliberately obstructive even though they know they are entitled to the help, happy to watch you all suffer and your family collapse. Because the complaint isn't about a genuine disagreement about the entitlements/ legal obligations. It is a deliberate attempt to make your life even more hellish so that you give up and stop asking for help when they know they are meant to be providing it, and know the impact it will have if they continue to refuse to.

I don't know how these people sleep at night.

And thank you. I really try to be the best mother I possibly can.

@ChiPawPrint when you finally got the (illegally) belated response to the stage 2 complaint, did that resolve it properly and they then met their legal responsibilities?

Or did you have to escalate it again?

It is deliberate, IMO. Trying to bully the most vulnerable people begging for help into giving up asking for the support they should be getting as a matter of course if the law was being followed.

It feels like swimming through treacle and it's so much worse going through it knowing that they are doing this on purpose

And I think for me this is especially damaging because it emulates yet again exactly the callousness and dismissiveness with which i was treated as a child. Your needs do not matter. Your children's needs do not matter. We know we should be doing it but we'll pretend we don't know that, and try to make it look like you're the unreasonable one.

Which goes back to my very first post on this thread: these people really need to think about the impact of their behaviour on the families they are involved with. In many cases, their involvement does more harm than good because they do nothing useful whatsoever to support or protect children in any way.

Hi ChiPawPrint - yes, loads of stuff got redacted. We asked for Mum's Medical Records and weren't allowed to have them because - and the officials tip each other off with this reply, we didn't have LPA in Health and Welfare so they could toy with us. However, a Subject Access Request meant we could get all information pertaining to ourselves, as you know. Large swathes of everything not got redacted, but some of it got omitted anyway. One attachment all about me was omitted on an email, you have to go thru it with a fine tooth comb, a telephone directory arrived the week or so before Xmas - seemingly deliberately times because they left it as late as they could the best part of half a year when it's a 40-day deadline.

It worked because by that time the journalist who broke the original story at the local paper had moved on. She now works for Byline Times.

It's like that Body on the Beach documentary on BBC3 recently, whole loads of stuff redacted, you wonder what they are up to, though it does seem to be psychological torture too. Many phone calls to the Information Commissioners Office to get the Council to comply but it's a slog, and the idea that Social Services are part of the Council aka local Mafia frankly, well, it's not going to go well, is it?

I have been reflecting in this thread and obviously my posts reflect my anger at the situation social services have created for us but I have reread them and I do stand by the substance of everything I said.

What I'd be interested in is for social workers who have posted here to tell me how they would deal with this in my position. Would they simply accept that social services will not bother to meet their statutory duties and disengage entirely (while still paying the tax to find this supposed service!)? Would they refer it to the Ombudsman as I am doing?

I am tempted to do the former because it is such a huge drain on my time. But the quid pro quo for that - since they refuse to do their jobs of provide any help whatsoever - will be that I will never engage with them again on any issue. No discussions, no assessments even if they decide they wish to do it, no you won't be coming over to have a "chat" and cu of coffee in the garden, etc. Effectively I will go "no contact" with them, whatever arises in the future or whatever they say their legal obligations are, because you don't get to choose which laws you comply with so if they've refused to meet them now then in the future it would be a hard no from me to engage with them whatsoever on any topic about my children at all ever again. And obviously I'll make this clear in the letter closing the complaint.

But yet another part of me feels that this is EXACTLY what they've been trying to bully me to do: to make me so ill with fighting them that I give up then they don't have to provide the support for my children that they are legally entitled to. And I do not like to see bullies get away with it. So I am tempted - to the detriment of my health - to fight it to the full extent of the law. And demand significant restitution. And also to make a formal complaint about the revelations from my own file as a child and have those social workers now retired on nice pensions hauled up to answer for their actions. Perhaps even report some of the crimes to the police so that they are forced to deal with the consequences of their behaviour for once.

Just so much irony that a service meant to help people at the lowest points in their life has done nothing but cause me distress both times I've been involved with them. In my particular cases both now and as a child myself it would have been better if their "service" did not exist at all. Many hours of work, false hope, and absolutely nothing useful to show for it either time. In fact all their presence when I was a child achieved was getting me extra beatings and nights out locked in the rain, because it was apparently my fault that they'd turned up after school noticed bruises and called them and the police.

For example, it's highly likely that my children will begin missing school soon as a direct result of their refusal to meet their legal obligations. My health is collapsing so often can't take them in, I can't keep paying for nannies to get them there and back and have made this clear. So before long, their school attendance will drop off a cliff. Social services may then decide they want to become involved again whereas now they tell me to go away. 🤣

The answer to this if it happens will be a hard "no", if after asking them for help for years they have directly contributed to this serious deterioration in my health by refusing to provide the required support and I am not prepared to go through more intrusive and health damaging wastes of my time and energy to speak to them again about it, when I've warned them (as have health professionals) that this is what will happen if they don't meet their responsibilities right now. There will be no more meetings, emails, phone calls or visits because I will not spend more of my time or energy again on speaking to people who are a waste of space and never, ever do anything practically useful to improve the situation.

I am at a crossroads now and need to make this choice between referring to the ombudsman/ police etc and fighting them all to be brought to justice for their illegal behaviour, or disengaging entirely from anything to do with them now or ever again. I won't do anything in between because that would continue the additional damage they do to my health and my capacity to care for my children.

So if any social workers who have posted here have an opinion either way and could explain why that is what they'd do in my position, I'd like to hear it.

And obviously if they tried to claim I have to comply with their procedures or statutory requirements in future, my answer would be "you go back and do that then: rectify all of the occasions to date that you haven't done that yourselves and then when you have put the support in place that you were legally required to put in place several years ago, then we can discuss any procedures/ requirements related to anything more recent".

Yellow I'm not a disability SW so I don't know the intricacies inside and out for your child or what help they legally can get.

Yes I would make a complaint but I'd keep it to the assessment says they need this, then the assessment says no support. I would go to the Head of Service or director rather than the ombudsman if I thought I wasn't getting anywhere. They wouldn't deal with it but it would be passed down to someone who should be dealing with or explaining to you why they aren't helping you and what you need to do to help your child/what services you are entitled to. The person dealing with it would be very aware about the HoS directing it and would be extra vigilant.

As for your childhood. I was also in care so I 100% get how angry and let down you feel. I was also let down, the way the child sexual exploration that happened to me that was wrote down in such an awful victim blaming way really hurt me. The shit foster care I was in hurts me more. I had quite a few placements but only one nice one. They were money making scams and you'd have to behave so badly to be listened to and get moved. But I had therapeutic life story work and I don't feel that way anymore. It's moved past me and I'm not bitter. It was my parents job to love me, keep me safe, teach me, parent me etc and they were the ones that failed. So yes I had shit SWs, I had utterly deplorable foster carers and a shit time as a teenager but the only people really responsible for that is my parents. It's really easy to blame SWs but I know SWs don't get into the profession to hurt people on purpose but they are easy targets to blame when you're feeling so let down and fustrated.

I work with social workers and I find them petty, self serving, contrary, unable to listen, unable to consider they might have made mistakes - they call them learnings but they never learn - patronising, judgemental know it alls.

the good people leave.

Exploitation*

The language used at the time was awful. I'm so grateful for the way things have moved on, although we do have lots of issues with the police still thinking and writing such outdated nonsense!