protecting our children

[thekidsrule]

carry on please

They were supporting the family, but if the family do not do anything what else is there to do, the important thing is the child and his welfare.

sorry charlotte you didnt say forced contraception i misquoted but there is contraception freely available to young women including longterm contriception and they should take it but many dont and what can you do when these women dont have an injection , again sorry to misquote ,

Very powerful programme.
Felt sorry for all of them they ALL needed support.
Poor Tiffany what a brave decision to make perhaps even the Father in his own way realised being a Father was alot harder than he could cope with.
Lets hope Toby gets a loving family. I have been thinking about that poor child all day..
The social workers are saints an impossible job.

talkingpeace- Toby wasnt adopted and is very very unlikely to ever be.

Since when was 'the child comes first' synonymous with seperation? Psychologically it is in the child's best interests to stay with a carer he has a bond with. Although the degree of bonding between mother and child wasnt particularly explored in the film.

rant I would have given them whatever support was necessary for them to succeed.

That might mean a full-time live in super-nanny with gradual withdrawal as they built up their routine!?

I would assess the method of intervention every couple of days, possibly take data on it's level of success with the ratio of support. Target and monitor other 'tasks' like 'Give your ds a cuddle every time the egg timer goes off set at quarter of an hour intervals' until it becomes fluid and a part of their lives. The faster they meet their targets the quicker they begin the gradual withdrawal.

Set times for menu planning. Possibly a visual timetable that sets out their day. Laptop/sky/dog times earned for completing percentage of daily tasks on time etc etc.

starlight how would you suggest she got anymore support than she got a live in nanny or childminder , perhaps , they didnt even take him to nursery they didnt have a bed for him , all she had to do was buy or put a duvet cover on , she had step by step instructions on how to do her housework and care for toby , as somebody else said there is tiffs and mikes with children up and down this country , and i dont know how much support they need you cant hold their hand for them ,

Charlotte
Toby has not yet been adopted as at the time of the press releases to go with the programme.
And by golly they will not tell us when he is - for his own long term welfare
but chances are he will be adopted or at least long term fostered. And will have parents who are able to understand and help him

Starlight
where will the extra £50,000 a year for that come from?

She didn't need MORE support, just better targetted support.

You simply cannot say that she had support and it didn't work so therefore she is not capable. The incapability is of the support they have chosen to have any effect. It is the fault of the support.

I bet a live in short-term Nanny would be a hellova lot cheaper an army of agencies with their 'expertise' and conferences and subsequent court attendance.

they didnt have disabilities to difficult to understand starlight mike perhaps but mild learning difficutlies tiffinay may have had , I think the support went far enough for them .
I have worked with children and their families for 20 odd years , i have seen a lot of families like them sometimes worse
I didnt want to put personal information but families like this really dont want to follow instructions or care , they dont want support some of them anyway they want it all done for them they actually want somebody to go in look after the house and kids while they sit and do nothing
, they dont attend appointments they dont care they wont go out if its raining or say they cant get a bus or walk they expect lifted and laid , and with all that support chldren still end up in the care system with parents spouting its unfair
, im sorry to rant on but im passionate about it ,

How would a short term Nanny deal with the fact that she had no experience of parenting - she said she'd not grown up with her mum.
She needs several years without children, sorting out who she is and then may possibly meet somebody who will help her raise a happy family and break the chain she is in.

In some families and in some generations the grandparents, siblings of the parents would have been able to do something. But they Tiff and Mike either don't have family or they are just the same as them.

Watched it on I player just now.

Very sad.

I dont understand why they didnt speak to Tiffany on her own? Why was DV not seen as a possibility and brought up? especially given Mikes agressive outbursts towards the SW in front of his family.

I think Mike was more obstructive to positive progress TBH, if Tiffany was the only parent being dealt with I think she may have with support been able to improve and cope longterm.

As a parent of a child with SN I found it frightening TBH as Tobys clear SN seemed to be being addressed as being caused by their parenting.

Thank god I understand the importance of toothbrushes, sheets on beds and no dog shit on the carpet.

Talkin That wouldn't take anything LIKE £50k per year, although something close to that IS being spent already in agency 'involvement' anyway.

The reality is however that that child will be expensive to place in foster care, and then most likely need a £35k annual residential placement from age 18 until 70, if not before if needing a residential school.

why would he need residential care starlight all his lide?

Think she's working on the long term LDs.

He has SN consistent with those who are usually unable to live independently as adults.

His ability or otherwise i.e. prognosis, is tied in heavily with parents ability and resources to accept and work hard to give him the skills he will need. In LA care he will NOT get this provision that he will need as support is based on crisis management and not preventative or in early intervention - and I can't see any Foster Parents selling their home to enable it to happen, as we have done for our ds.

Some of you may be interested in This

It is an interactive programme on the OU website...

"Could you manage 24 hours as a social worker? A Day in the Life... provides you with the opportunity to step into a social worker's shoes and to experience a 'typical' day in the office."

Starlight, I think it's possible they'd find that level of supervision intrusive to the point of being unbearable. An egg timer going off every fifteen minutes would make it impossible to focus or relax for many people. A direct reward system strikes me as no less patronising than the various involved parties talking over Mike and Tiffany's heads in the meeting.

How would this kind of service be provided? Would it initially be 24 hours? How would sufficient numbers of people be recruited to fill the roles, given that sw often have up to 20-30 cases and each case like this would require one or more people?

he may not be in residential care and if he has to be the state will pay for it he might turn out ok starlight and if he stayed with his parents i doubt they would have been able to manage long term either , his SN may not be as bad when he develops a bit more , his father had obvious special needs and problems yet he was wandering around having babies and letting them live in a filthy house with dog mess , I think toby is in the right hands for now , we wont ever know what happens to him though as they wont do any kind of update ,

Sorry if I missed it, but why didn't the parents have their own social workers or advocates?

Nothing is patronising, only the way things are done, and the involvement or not of the people it affects.

Behaviour modifications and reward systems exist and are used with high earning, highly educated employees of corporate nationals.

multi nationals.

But the point isn't WHAT you do. It is how it is monitored for it's effectivenss and modified and targeted and changed and the focus of failure on the people educating, NOT those who are receiving the services.

Of course, it is possible that eventually the cost benefit is not worth it in that it would take them their entire lifetimes to learn the skills by which time it will be irrelevant for the child, but that cannot be judged until it is tried and the evidence and data reflects the rate of ability to improve/change.

talkin- the chance of Toby being adopted is less than 1%

it shouldnt have been presented to Tiffany as a viable outcome

seeker
they almost certainly did
but the programme was several months (preceded by many years) edited down into one hour
focussing on the child protection side
and at the VERY start it was pointed out that these people had moved around - rent a house 50 feet across a district boundary and the clock restarts (I believe)

talkingpeace2 yes they moved into the area but the case mustve followed them from somewhere maybe his nursery ? but yes i can only imagine its a new file opened etc on the familiy and new social workers he mustve been on a system somewhere