protecting our children

[thekidsrule]

carry on please

Lots of help is out there exotic?

I can assure you it isn't!

And that's not the only case I know of similar to that. My own mum has raised my sisters 2 girls. When they were placed with her, one was 18 months old and the other 6 weeks old. They are now 5 and 6 and my sister has applied to court to have them back.

Whether they'll actually go back, who knows. There is a strong chance they could. There is a court hearing in Feb which is when they hope to have made a decision. But the children are distraught.

Why do we allow and put children through this? Why, in a case like this, should it matter what their mother wants? She hasn't raised them! She's not the person with whom they have developed a strong bond and thrived.

I fail to see why you would want to remove any child who is happy and thriving in their current circumstances. In my opinion it makes no difference whatsoever whether or not the people they're happy with are their biological parents. What should matter is the simple fact that they are happy.

Sadly that is only one case-multiply it goodness knows how many times for Bristol and then again for the country. It is heartbreaking. I couldn't be a social worker.

Someone earlier listed all the agencies that would have been involved Starlight-I am not looking back, but it was a long list. I agree there is no money. But the SW had the first list and they didn't do anything on it.

In the cases where babies have been mixed up at birth, don't they stay with their raising parents rather than swap back to biological)

Exotic, being 'involved' is truly not the something as being 'helpful'. That is a dangerous assumption to make.

I have looked for the list and it was from jaffacake2

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.

Out of those 18 agencies at least some must have been helpful!

I spent 30 years of my working life in social work, child protection, then managing a team dealing with fostering & adoption and some freelance work including parenting assessments. Am now retired.

I thought the film was very representative of the sorts of families that social workers are involved with - the only thing that wasn't representative was the mother agreeing to giving up her children for adoption. I think however it was a very brave thing to do. Call me a cynic but I think she might have found another r/ship and wanted a "fresh start" - I think lots of posters have hit the nail on the head that neither parent was able to parent Toby in a good-enough way. I have met many Mikes, who shout and think that is going to scare you off and of course, he just didn't understand that courts can make orders that mean children are removed from parents.

Agree with ReneeV and Ravenvonchaos - I was interested in the MN perspective as I have seen so many "social worker bashing" threads. I was a bit disappointed that very few posts actually acknowledged the difficult job that social workers have, especially when newly qualified.

Oneliein you say you did not have good parenting and I think it shows. Your argument about teaching parenting skills is fundamentally flawed. There are some parents whose parenting skills can be improved over time, but there are others that can't and this was the case with the parents on the programme tonight. You cannot teach parenting skills like history or geography (and that is how your argument comes across)

We become the adults that we are dependent upon the type of parenting we received as children. Behaviour is a product of experience. Those of us who were fortunate enough to have good (or good enough) parents will be able to provide a nurturing enviroment for our children, and meet their needs in all respects. It isn't just a question of money either; no amount of money would have been able to teach Mike to be a good parent; he clearly had special needs himself and was functioning at an emotional age which was far less than his chronological age which is often the way. I would say at a rough guess that he was functioning as a stroppy 11/12 year old. These are children trying to parent children and no matter how many "parenting classes" they attend it will make no difference, because they will never acquire the emotional maturity and strength to parent a child. Indeed it is somewhat of an insult to them, to think that this is possible. Also a child only has one childhood and can't wait for the parents to mature, which could take a decade or more, or never.

There has been mention of residential placements for the family. There are such places and they are used to give the family an opportunity to show that they are (or not) capable of parenting, and of course they are being monitored and assessed for the safety of the child. They usually last 6/8 weeks. I can't say how many are "successful" - I was involved with 2 such cases where the mothers upped and offed and left the kids there, though I appreciate that is a very small number. I think some people have got the idea that these are long term placements, as someone mentioned children shouldn't be growing up in residential care and I couldn't agree more. It doesn't happen any more as children are always fostered, rather than placed in residential care.

I was glad to see one (or very few) coming out with the old chestnut that there is a shortage of babies for adoption, and that was why the baby was adopted. There is a shortage of babies for adoption and that is a good thing because it is very easy now for single women to keep their babies, instead of having to give them up for adoption as was the practice in the 50s, 60s and 70s.

Toby needs to be the youngest child in the family and has significant developmental delay and that is a good enough reason for the siblings to be separated, and they don't know each other of course. I thought the change in Toby after 3 months of fostering was significant and was what I expected.

Those poor parents as many of you have said, didn't have a clue and Toby was a very frustrated and angry child. I think one of the saddest things in the programme was watching Mike at contact with Toby and he (Mike) was actually playing with the toys himself, and was quite engrossed in a toy steering wheel, and oblivious to what Toby was doing.

Just one more thing, it is quite common for parents in this situation to split up and then attention is focussed on the parent most able to care for the child, in this case the mother, but very often the couple get back together again and try to keep this from social workers, so splitting up has to be treated with some caution.

Hi Tigerlilly agree with you too!

Sure it looks impressive exotic. I once had a similar list 'involved' in our family.

After a year of being pulled in a million different directions and being treated like a child and told what to do I attended a multi-agency meeting with two questions:

What outcomes have there been for our family, and how do you know?

Not one person could answer. In fact they jointly agreed that they didn't need to answer such a question. The Lead professional subsequently resigned in a huff and asked me who I would like to nominate to take over. I nominated myself and then told them all to piss off which they generally did, including SS.

But I was lucky enough to be secure and confident to do that. I had learned more than I ever needed to know about support services, with the main lesson being the less people involved the better, and to get rid of advice ti only accept practical help which was rarely, if ever, offered. In my case it was 6 weeks of homestart.

I did think they where maybe group homes with more than one family.

NanaNIna, thank you for that post.

I would agree with a lot of what you say NanaNina, except that I think that you can teach parenting skills-BUT only if the person really wants to learn and is prepared to put the child's needs first. It is possible for abused DCs to become good parents themselves.
It would have needed Mike and Tiffany to say 'we are inadequate parents, we don't have the skills and our parents didn't but we want to change things and we will work at whatever it takes'-but when they can't even keep the toothbrush clean I don't think there is much hope.

Thank you NanaNina - very interesting points raised! :)

exoticfruits The way I read that part from NanaNina's post was that sometimes you could teach parenting skills, but it's not as simple as teaching history or geography. She did say there are some parents whose parenting can improve over time. This also suggests, to me that with the majority this is not the case. I certainly don't think it was the case with the parents in tonights episode. They could not even follow simple instruction, and were also very reluctant to do so.

'we are inadequate parents, we don't have the skills and our parents didn't but we want to change things and we will work at whatever it takes'
I agree that would put a whole new perspective on things. But these parents failed to understand that which suggests that emotionally they are not equipped to raise a child. You could try and teach them to make up a bottle, to brush a childs teeth, to tidy up, how to clean a floor. However you cannot teach someone how to emotionally parent a child. That comes from within.

I agree with you.

I am not suggesting that you could teach Mike and Tiffany, but I know there are people who think about the difficulties before they have DCs and are absolutely determined to be good parents and there are very good parenting courses around. The way that I read it it seemed a bit defeatist-but maybe it was just the way that I read it.
I think that the only way with Tiffany was to have her like a 3rd child, with capable motherly support, and even then I'm not too sure that she wouldn't have taken up with an unsuitable man-if she met one. She was very needy.

'we are inadequate parents, we don't have the skills and our parents didn't but we want to change things and we will work at whatever it takes'

at one point I think tiffany did express this, however, this was hampered by mikes anger, she at many times told him to shut up during his outbursts. I m just not sure she had the fight in her to challenge this all of the time. I think this was conveyed when she had cooked and sat and ate with toby, but with mike and the dogs in the background you could see the enthusiasm and enjoyment for a small glimps then she seemed to just zone out.

like I said before you cannot force change upon someone, tiffany may have had the desire to live a different life for her and her children, but she was unable to achive this "despite" the support and not as a result of no or poor support. she did ultimatly prioritise her need to be with mike above her childs needs. It was too late to wait for her to change that the damage was already near on irreversable.

it would be clutching at straws to go on endlessly to keep giving her that oppertunity without a plan in place. The plan was put in place and due to the change in circumstances where she was hospitalised and mike was in sole charge it failed, adding another child to the mix with an already exhausted morther who was slowly disengaging, there wss very little exhaustable options at that point.

Now that Mike has left I don't think you can include any of his behaviour in a current assessment. There was no reason to believe that Tiffany wouldn't have been able to cope, with sufficient support in place.

That little boy has been left to turn into a mike in 20 years.

The cycle needs to be broken, taking kids away isn't the answer. Tiffany will have more children and it will all need to be gone through again.

no evidance on the program and like I said. At that point.

I dont think you can say either that toby has been left to turn into mike in 20 years in any assesment either. Taking Toby away as you would term it, I believe was the answer here, however I do agree there was more to it that was not shown on the program.

I think the problem with this programe is that it was advertised and promoted to give an insight into the job of social worker and not necessarily the family. I think It failed to do that, it was unclear as to where its focus was there for leaving some pertenat detail about this family.

leaving some pertinant details about this family out.

i was really shocked by the level of language that the sws were using around the table, thoroughly patronising the parents at the same time as excluding them.

I thought that every effort was made to include the parents and after all it was just a formal meeting going over old ground that had been talked about on a more personal basis.
I agree that it must be very daunting to have a formal meeting, sitting around a table with so many people there, some of which you don't know. However, if parents are not meeting their children's basic needs they need to know that it is taken very seriously and they will have to change.
Had Mike not been so hostile it would have been much easier to talk to them. It is very difficult to have an open, equal discussion with someone who is on the defensive and ready to take offence.
I think that social workers bend over backwards to help the parents. The very young one, new to the job, was finding it difficult to know why you would leave a child with them and the reasoning was explained to her.There is a limit to how long you can put the parents first. Toby came on so much when he was in foster care-earlier intervention would have seen an even bigger change.

Aitch I was concerned about that too. I wonder how much of that case meeting just went over their heads - it must be very frightening to be in that position. I was also irritated that they talked about them and over them even though they were sitting right there. The only rationale I could think of is that my that point the whole SW team was so hacked off with them and their lack of progress that they had dismissed them as 'equals' iyswim. Understandable maybe, but it didn't look very good (and I spent the whole programme ranting at Mike, so wasn't particularly sympathetic towards the family until that moment)

Surely adults with acknowledged emotional/developmental needs should have some form of advocate at meetings such as that?

aitch-yup thought the same about the language used at the meetings.You could tell they were pretty clueless as to what exactly was being said. I'm hoping someone explained things to them off camera.

Aitch, (autocorrect changes your name to witch!) do you not think the language level took into account mike's LD? I think he had a very low level of comprehension. I've been in similar meetings when a lot of what's been said goes over the parents' heads. It's obviously crucially important that they understand what's going on. In fact, I'd have suggested an advocacy worker for mike at the meeting.