protecting our children

[thekidsrule]

carry on please

I missed the beginning, so I don't know the level of physical abuse.

No one knows it-but it was too risky just to hope for the best.

The social workers would be the first in line of fire if the DCs were hurt.

It was very noticeable that, in the small snatches of film, that Toby came on in leaps and bounds while he was in foster care. He smiled, he played with concentration,he spoke and he lost the frustration. When he was with Mike he had his coat on and was ready to go at the first mention of time to go-he zoomed off quite happily.

In an ideal world there would be unlimited amounts of money to be able to support families intensively, to have people there constantly to teach people how to care for themselves and their children but we don't live in a world like that. Most councils haven't raised the Council Tax for the past three years. They have have less and less money to fund things like Social Services and less people to do the actual work. We saw the SW dealing with one case. In reality each SW has a caseload of 20/30 families. They can't hold their clients hands 24/7 no matter how much they might need it, and in the end they do what they have to do to protect the most vulnerable parties - the children, not the adults.

I wish Tiffany had got herself together enough to keep her children, but I can't help be relieved that it wasn't left with the two children living in that flat in the same situation we saw at the beginning.

OK OneLieIn. I'm quite happy to look at the other side. As a trail of thought here - was she abused before she was adopted or was she removed from birth? I am sure that if you asked anyone who suffered abuse as a child whether or not they wished they'd have been removed and offered a more stable home environment, the answer would mostly be yes.

Of course, it doesn't take away from how she feels now. Yet, would it have been better for her to have suffered abuse or do you think the consequences of abuse would have been worse psychologically?

exotic it is all in the editing, of course the closing shot of Toby playing in a field did not show him screaming or throwing a toy, which he might well still do .... or maybe he throws cowshit if he is in the country?

I thought he had his coat on as he wanted to go home.

It was very poorly edited.

anyway im of,saying to myself not to watch next week as very upsetting BUT know i will

night ladies

Yes exotic I think that observed play session with Mike spoke volumes. Toby was investigating the toys and actually playing with them, as opposed to just throwing them around as he had done before he was taken into care. He tried to interact with Mike but Mike did nothing, didn't even look at him. Toby then happily left for nursery. The SW tried very gently to explain to Mike how to improve matters, but it made no difference.

I think the programme title was 'Damned if you do, damned if you don't', and that's it exactly. We only got a snapshot; it's very hard to know for sure what the right action is - even the social workers must feel like that.

I absolutely agree with OneLieIn that there needs to be more support for struggling parents. I absolutely disagree with her that that is always a better solution than adoption. In the main, most parents who have their children removed have had terrible lives themselves and often been failed by the very first services that are now taking their children away. I really sympathised with the anger, despair and frustration of Toby's parents. But that doesn't mean that Toby should stay with them. He has already lost precious developmental time - he needs to get a better life fast, or he will never catch up.

My daughter is adopted and I am convinced that her birth parents - though they loved her and wanted the best for her - are absolutely incapable of looking after her. They have a number of other, older children between them, all of whom are in desperate straits and will doubtless soon be producing their own children who will be taken into care, repeating the whole miserable cycle. 15 years of dysfunctional childhood + 10-20 years of abusive relationships, drug and alcohol abuse, chronic depression and economic/cultural deprivation = very often, a situation that is well beyond the reach of parenting classes and home help.

Some posters have asked why it's not possible to have a child adopted and keep them in regular contact with their birth parents. I'm not saying it could never work, but in most cases I can't think of a better way of undermining the child's ability to bond with the adoptive parents. Remember that, unlike in the US, most adoptions in the UK are forced adoptions - the birth parents are furious and not motivated to support the new family unit.

Exotic it was just too risky, no-one knows the level of abuse...

You see this bothers me. You should not make a decision of this magnitude without major evidence. Why not observe / video camera / over a long period of time??

Tiger not sure who you are referring to. My friend wasn't abused (I believe) but still cannot get over the fact she was given up.

Totally agree it's all in the editing - a 1-hr programme covered more than 6 months altogether, and TV always presents the juiciest bits rather than give a balanced picture.

I'll watch next week and come on here for the reaction too, some great discussion here.

I had a similar family on my caseload last year so thought you might like to know the sort of support that was given.
Professionals involved,social worker,family support worker,health visitor,nursery nurse,outreach worker from Surestart,nursery,portage play therapist,speech therapist,paediatrician,volunteer from Homestart,physiotherapist,child psycholgist,guardian appointed by court,police doing weekend welfare checks.
Mother had indepth counselling from psycholgist,infant mental health specialist,debt counsellor.
Child was eventually place in foster care by a judge due to neglect after 18 months intensive work by all agencies. He started to talk in care, put on weight, and smiled.

I agree with you dontlaugh.

It would be wonderful if there were pots of money-but there can't be.

Lots of help is out there.Unfortunately she was hampered by Mike being antagonistic. Goodness knows what he was like behind closed doors-but you can be sure that anything that he shouted about was in front of Toby.

They could have helped themselves if they had said 'right-we know we are inadequate parents, but we want to learn' and they had tidied the house, made a space for Toby, re homed the dog and gone to parenting classes.It is so much easier to help people who admit they have a problem and want to be helped but almost impossible if they reject it all and don't even do the things that were listed.

Night

but you are all wrong

Hope it all works out well for all four of them

TV always presents the juiciest bits rather than give a balanced picture.

Generally I would say that which is why I don't like programmes like 'Super Nanny' but I think this was balanced. It showed Tiffany in a very sympathetic light and was even kind to Mike-I would imagine that they gave plenty of scope to show them in an unfavourable light. What really came out was that they were just as much victims. Unfortunately for them (and fortunately for the children) child victim's needs must come first.

strawbezza adoption isnt about finding children for families. Its about finding families for children.

oneliein I agree with an awful lot of what you say. The system isnt set up for the solutions you suggest (and I and others have already mentioned) and now they never will be.

The funding is being cut even more and even if a new government comes along to fix it it will take years to build it back up.

Families who perhaps could have been kept back from the brink by early intervention will be pushed right over the edge by the withdrawal of support services.

Take for example families with disabled children. Living in poverty with huge strains on their resilience. Remove their respite, their child's therapy sessions, their fucking DLA fgs, their 'extras' like short breaks, portage, music sessions and even the statutory services like physio cut to the bone.

Result? Familes pushed above the threashold and onto the CP list. Children removed with NO HOPE of adoption. famlies who love their kids but are totally worn out.

Give it a couple of years. I would lay money on the amount of disabled children in the care system rocketing.

NOT because parents of disabled children give up easily but because they are being put in impossible situations.

It can't work out well for all four of them-it isn't a fairy tale. Tiffany was well rid of Mike for a start-hopefully she can sort herself out before she meets another man.

Everyone is wrong Oneliein?
Are you reading the posts?

A good outcome for the child jaffacake2

I'm an old cynic. Even with tons of support, there are some people who just can't or won't be able to effectively care for a child.

Yup, birth father was unco-operative and that was a huge factor. Note that when he disappeared off the scene, Tiffany was co-operative and at that point the social worker seemed very hopeful that she would keep the children.

'Parenting can be taught': I think parenting support can make a real difference where you have struggling parents who feel overwhelmed but are motivated and not so damaged themselves that they are incapable of empathy, healthy attachment and impulse control. There are some people who are beyond help - truly there are. It's impossible to know from an edited TV programme, but yes I was persuaded that Mike was beyond help and Tiffany wasn't.

I'm sure social services make mistakes. Generally, though, I think they set the bar pretty damn low when deciding whether to keep children with their birth parents. And I am convinced that dragging out the process of assessment and removal is really damaging for children, so I'm pretty appalled at the idea of long-term residential units or continued direct contact.

Organisations like HomeStart, who would provide the sort of emotional and practical , non-judgemental, help that Tiffany desperately needs, is pushed for cash-they are really struggling-although it is mainly volunteers,giving their time for free, they have to have organisers and funds.

small children can't wait for their parents to learn parenting. they need it immediately - the younger the child the higher the risk and the need for immediacy. child is paramount, parents are not.

Renee thanks for your perspective. I can see the point about bonding. Hope Toby gets that chance.

OneLine I do sympathise, but also "You should not make a decision of this magnitude without major evidence. Why not observe / video camera / over a long period of time??" this itself is very risky, as all the time you take to observe is potentially the child(ren) undergoing avoidable poor treatment. It's a 'how long is a piece of string?' question but the child being kept from harm has to be the overriding concern.

Parents are also adults and can cope with heartbreak-children shouldn't have to.

The system is never going to be perfect for everyone. Any child who is unfortunate enough to have been born into such a situation is never going to be ecstatic about whatever happens.

All you can do is hope that they know the actions taken were seen by professionals to be in their best interests at that time. That doesn't take away from the hurt they are bound to feel at some point for having been put in that situation in the first place. The programme is "Damned if you do, damned if you don't". That summed it up entirely. Had they left a child to suffer in those circumstances (even with help!) they'd have been criticised, just as they have been criticised for removing them.

Mistakes will always be made. I know of a child who was removed at birth (mother had a mother and baby foster placement and walked out and also offered a residential placement but refused). She was then placed in long term foster care (which was then made into a residence order), had supervised contact once monthly with her mother - and then returned to her mother at 5 years old after the mother had grown up a bit and sorted herself out. The damage that did was unbelievable and now, as a young adult still looks back on it with extreme sadness saying she wished they'd left her where she was happy and with the people she loved.

You will never win. I suppose the ideal situation in this case would have been to have left the child in the mothers care. But as the saying goes "you can take a horse to water, but cannot make them drink it". The mother refused help! This child should have been adopted or at the very least left in her foster placement.

Can't sleep for thinking about this

We didn't get to understand enough of Tiffany's thinking. Some posters seem to think she willingly and voluntarily reached her own decision that the children would be better off adopted. Others are talking about it as though it was a forced adoption, as though it was the social worker's decision (though we were told the sw aimed to keep Tiffany with her children). I guess it was probably somewhere between the two - that Tiffany felt beaten down with exhaustion and depression and feeling caught up in a cycle of official intervention that she found frightening and confusing and would never be free of.