You're not splitting up my family, on channel 4

[Pinkchampagne]

Anyone else watching this?

I watched it and found it so sad. The Grandma was a nightmare and while the Dad had some wrong ideas about childcare, I really felt for him having lost his wife.

Piffle, I know what you mean. If I was filming the kids I would have wanted to scoop them up and take them home.

They still would only have wanted their dad to love them and be a dad to them, though There is no way of making that better.

In all my time as a SW I only met ONE child who actually wanted to be in foster care and who was negative toward their parents for failing them. ALL the others just wanted to be home, even if home was a place where unimaginable abuse had occured

Yes is was amazing that the crew managed to hang back in the way that they did. In that sense it was a fantastic piece of filming though, I hope it wins an award.

But Grandma - did you clock at the end she said she hoped they didn't come up and see her because they might take advantage now she's blind. She's actually afraid of them. I think the fact that they haven't taken it out on her up to now means they are fundamentally good boys / men.

It really brought home to me how much of an influence our own childhood/uprbringing can have on how we raise our kids. I mean the Dad, growing up with that gran as his mum, he is just repeating a pattern, he didn't know any different. I doubt very much if he was shown much love or tenderness so how can he possibly know how to be a good dad, and realise what his boys needed. Probably exactly the same story with the gran, it goes back generations. Unfortunately the boys will most likely be the same.

Sossy - why do you say this?
"I didn't think there situation was so bad they should be seperated. "

HG -yes, the look on the little lads face when he was with the SW and was told that his dad didn't want him home that night and he was to be accommodated - really heartbreaking. Even though he was doing the bravado thing and saying he didn't want to go home. And the boys said - especially mark - that staying at home 'and getting a kicking every three days' would have been preferable to the carre system 'proper' - and that he had no idea what that would be like.

I was realy concerned that the boys were playing up to the camera.

I don't think the Dad was a bad man - just couldn't function after his wife was killed. He couldn't take on any role except oil-rig breadwinner. He wnated to, he tried, but through grief and lack of ability, he just couldn't do it.

I felt sad that the family hadn't had help as soon as the Mum was killed.

Many questions for me - was it the drunk drivers fault that the father was unable to cope with sibgle parenthood? Was it the father's fault that he was unable to cope? Why did the compensation money take SO long to come through - why couldn't that have been used earlier on - to pay fr a loving Nanny in the home or something? Everything happened at the worng time - the SS intervention, the money etc etc.

What abhuge waste...and although the driver couldn't have been responsible for the fact that that individual father was unable to rise to single fatherhood - it IS a fact that a family is destroyed if a key member is killed, more than one life is ALWAYS destroyed - and drunk drivers are not innocent of that. Fouy years in prison is not equable to what happened to the boys' family.

just caught up on this thread - utterly heartbreaking and difficult to watch. What those poor little boys went through.
I do think the documentary-makers made a wonderful, engaging film...

Message withdrawn

Heartbreaking.

That's a good review, thanks for posting cod. Quite balanced, amazingly.

I sobbed when it showed the old videos of the boys with their mother, they looked like completly different kids. One of them said that she would always take them to the park or the seaside- but the dad had only taken them out twice since the mother died.

It was very difficult to watch.

If anyone missed this you can watch it on 4oD online.

OMG - I missed the fact that the step mother had broken Jason's thumb!

Can't believe I missed it.

What's 4D online?

Mecry it's channel4 on demand You join for free and can watch repeats of channel 4 programs for free it's very good.

*Mercy even

Excellent summary icod!

Except I disagree with the premise that:

"no political decision could have mopped up this mess."

The big one here is that the children were not listened to. They said two significant things that stood out. The didn't want grandma to live with them and they didn't want to be separated (being twins). The social services did both things.

The government has started to implement "Every Child Matters" at the heart of all policy making. I quote:

"2.8 To fulfil their commitment to safeguard and promote the welfare of children, all organisations that provide services for, or work with, children must have:

l a culture of listening to, and engaging in dialogue with, children ? seeking children?s views in ways that are appropriate to their age and understanding, and taking account of those views in individual decisions and in the establishment or development of
services"

So there is some hope, albeit vvvvvvv small.

Social Services didn't separate them though, did they?
SS also had no control over where G'ma lived so I think they did listen to the twins and did the best they could. I think this must have been a horrid case to be involved in and from the prog I watched I thought SS behaved very appropriately and in the best way they could given the circumstances.

Mrs Marvel - as I understood it, social services didn't split them up - both boys went to live with Auntie Pauline and it was only when Mark burgled one too many local houses that it wasn't safe for him to remain in the area. Eventually his own behaviour removed himself from Jason - not social services.

Also - would the boys really have been any better without the grandma? Yes she was a hag who could and should have shown them love - but at least she was an "adult" in the house, and did their clothes/food etc. Would Tom be doing that if she wasn't there? I don't think so. Her absence would have meant the boys were completely reliant on Tom and he was no better than a child himself. I think Grandma was mainly at fault for bringing up such a coward of a son (Tom). There are many families who suffer the loss of a parent but the remaining parent tries to do their best by the children. Tom didn't even try.

I agree. MrsMarvel, social services didn't split the boys, infact as that review says, they thought creatively and instead of simply chucking them with foster carers, they paid for a loft conversion in their aunt and uncles' house so that they could A) remain together and B) remain with family.

And as I asked earlier, how do you remove the grandmother from the house? How would you suggest SS do that?

It's too easy to focus on the (all too real) failings of SS, but in this case - I don't think it's appropriate.

They had to wait til they were 18 for the compensation, thats the rule isn't it? So sad that they got the compensation following their mothers death and they blew it all on drugs and prostitutes.

Icods summing up was very good.

The gran was shocking, yes she washed their clothes etc but the emotional abuse she handed out was shocking. She didn't help her drunken son who was clearly depressed and still grief stricken and she didn't have any compassion or affection for her two grandsons who were also in the car when the accident happened. Why didn't they all get bereavement counselling?

Very very sad. Have been thinking about it today it got to me that much!

nonono, it's too late for me but they did take the one twin to stay in foster care 30 miles away. He missed his brother (said so to camera) and wanted to come back. Not for his family but for his brother. If they hadn't split them up then and had put them both in foster care I think they would never have gone home or wanted to.

It wasn't later until they put them with auntie pauline, a woman who had cancer and whose husband openly admitted that he would not be able to look after them himself. To put two boys with a woman with cancer after their own mother had died is stupid beyond belief. Social services messed up.

And as for the evil grandma, if SS had wanted grandma to go they could have made it a condition of the children going back home. They clearly didn't see her as being the abusive character that she so obviously was.

But Mrsmarvel, the children weren't WANTED back home. If they had made the grandmother going a condition of the boys going home, that would have been a very good way for all possibility of that to be stopped. The dad would just have said, Well she's not going anywhere.

This SO reminds me why I'm not a SW anymore. You are working with people who don't want your help and you are damned if you do and damned if you don't. And the damage that parents can do to their own kids is usually (IME) so awful that you can't do any good, anyway

So heartbreaking that these people looked upon the help being offered to them and their little boys as interference, they just didn't get it did they?
It just astounds me how people can be so f*ing ignorant and selfish. The utter selfishness of the Father - I missed the end, was the father repentant at all about what had happened?

no, he didn't see much of the boys, he just said he thought they weren't really bad lads, he hoped they would settle down and get jobs but didn't see much chance of that happening