Why do social services take away the children instead of the violent man?

[chaoticgood]

Call me naive but I had never really considered before how a common reason for removing children from their homes & separating them from their mothers is that the mother "refuses to leave" their violent partner and the children are considered to be in danger from the man. I saw a documentary about this recently and then looked into it more and I am absolutely shocked that men who are considered a danger to children are so often allowed to remain in normal society while the child and the mother are forcibly separated, causing immense trauma to both, and the child is put into care with all the known disadvantages that brings.

I don't know why everyone is not shouting from the rooftops about the absolute inhumanity and insanity of this. If a man is a danger to children why is he not locked up? People who are a danger to themselves and others are supposed to be sectioned under the mental health act, I thought. If they are a man and the "others" to whom they are a danger are their partner's children then what, that's ok because boys will be boys, and we should remove the child from the danger instead because the danger itself is just how the world is and can't be helped, we can only try to get out of its way?

It seems to me that the assumptions behind this practise and behind the acceptance of it are:

1. Male violence is a fact of life, like the weather. It's a mother's job to protect her child from these things, and if she does not manage it she does not deserve to keep the child.
2. Men are entitled to abuse their partner and their partner's children. A man who goes next door and assaults his neighbours will be in prison or sectioned but in His Own House Under His Roof the rules are different.
3. Women "choose" to remain with violent men for the sheer fun of it and those who do so are selfish women who are choosing for themselves at the expense of their children. (All this choosing going on, huh, it's not as if violent men ever target vulnerable, previously abused women and mess with their heads until they lose sight of their free will or anything.)

I just don't get how social services can have enough evidence of a child being in danger to actually remove them, but somehow that evidence is not enough to remove the man who is actually doing the bad things???

@NoWordsNow
So sorry you went through this it sounds very stressful. My post was not aimed at you as your post wasn't showing as I wrote mine.
You didn't get your children removed though??
My comment was (or should have been) parents will get a great deal of support before removal...... this has been my experience of the process, freedom courses, support workers, counselling, refuges, work in school with the children, debt/financial advice, I've even seen a parent rehomed and new furniture bought for them . That doesn't seem to marry up with your experience though so maybe it's not a consistent standard.
You sound extremely strong, and your children are lucky to have you. Good luck in the future

I do agree with the OPs point. If things are bad enough to remove the children why is nothing done to the man?
Yes the mother should be all about protecting her dc but thats not the point here. Things are serious enough for dc to be removed yet there is zero comeback on the man. That seems very wrong.

Rainy dog

The man loses his children and is excluded from the home

melliegrant I am in Scotland, which is part of the UK, but a different legal jurisdiction.

I'm a social worker and I have been involved in such cases.
Haven't quite read the full thread yet.

These are some of the saddest cases to be involved in.

We have no power to move an adult like the man (nor the children actually unless we go to court or a parent gives permission).

That's why we can't move the man. If police are involved and arrest him and he's bailed with conditions not to visit property or remanded that's great because there's temporary some safety for the children then.

If not, we can say we would request the man to leave but only for a temporary period of time and by agreement. They can say no.

If its at a point where children might have to be removed there's serious risk of on going traumatic abuse in the home. In such cases the man is quite likely to have had previoua arrests and convictions but he won't be locked up for life so if the couple are reuniting straight away that won't protect the child. We know the vast majority of incidents are unreported so the children won't be protected the first time it happens, and even if they were that wouldn't be good enough.

What can we do? We can remove the man, if the woman doesn't want to leave we can't help her leave.

What we can do is make is 100% clear that the man is a danger to the children to both the man and the woman and tell them both that if he's in the house or around the children against any agreed conditions then we would be worried about the safety of the children. That's as close to removing a man as we can go. I don't know why someone posted that bullshit about violent men not being considered a danger to children - violent men are responsible for the vast majority of children on child protection plans. When that fails we have to consider whether the children need to live elsewhere for their safety.

Another thing is that where I've worked women in cases liked that have always had they physical means of leaving partner. The finances, the accommodation, the transport...the new phone number, whatever it takes we have provided this on every such case. This is harder now due to the complete dismantling of services but we still do it. I can't speak for other areas. Again, what we can't do is give women the emotional strength and resilience to see it through after years of grooming and undermining of their self-belief, although we can try our best to encourage it.

These cases are the worst because you can see the emotional impact of controlling and coercive behaviour on the people who are going through it and still entrapped by it. It's so sad and defeating and these are often people who would make great parents if they left.

Sorry for any predictive typing errors

I think what the OP says is really interesting. I have no idea how you could democratically do it though.

Without setting the impact of austerity aside, not everyone who experiences DV fits a stereotype of poor and uneducated and without means. I can see how the threat of losing your kids might be the wake up call some will finally act on, but remarkably there are people who still can't see it or see it too late. I know a woman who has lost her kids this way through 3 successive abusive relationships. She has a degree that's relevant to DV and at one point was looking like a star student with a bright future ahead of her. She has had extraordinary help from family to keep out abusive partners. In the end she still lost her kids.

Friends have a daughter adopted after social services removed her from an abused mum. She got out and stayed safe but too late to get her child back. She was fighting the adoption, but it still went through (in the interests of the child). The friends were put through the mill as they didn't know whether the adoption would go through, but I felt awful for the mum.

Hypothetically, if you had all the resources in the world and could start from scratch... If there were an effective system for keeping an abusive partner away for a significant amount of time (say, a tag - for a fixed time - backed up by a specially created police force if the terms of the court order were violated and a short prison sentence for repeated violations. Obvs there would have to be significant proof that the abuser was committing crime) and insisting that mothers do the Freedom course as a condition of keeping their kids, might that reduce the numbers of children taken away?

And the abusers are people too, shouldn't they be offered the therapy need to change? I'm sure I've heard of something that's had good results. Again, why aren't we focusing more on them? A lot of abusing stems from their own unhappiness.

Can't remember what the law is about pressing charges when the victim doesn't want to. Is there anything we could do better there?

And in terms of the men losing their kids, they aren't always their kids.

@allthatmalarkey thankyou

If there were an effective system for keeping an abusive partner away for a significant amount of time

This is the problem isn't it. As a pp said a few posts in, we can't start requiring more proof in order to remove the children if that's what they need to be safe (of course not) but also we can't start requiring less proof to remove an adult.

Why can't we? It seems to me that this attitude reflects a belief that the lives of women and children are cheaper than the lives of men. I was talking about locking men up in my OP but of course a tag or something like that could work. If it is a tag stopping the man from going near the house then I see no reason to require a higher level of proof to do that than to remove the children. It seems like it would cause a lot less damage to the family tbh.

The man's freedom and the man's rights as a citizen are seen as sacred and must be upheld no matter what. But the horror the mother an children go through being separated is seen as an unfortunate side effect of safeguarding the children. Of course the safety of the child cannot be compromised, I don't think anyone here is saying that it should. But precisely because kids' safety is so important, we have learnt to see any impact on the woman's life is seen as a sad but unavoidable side effect of doing the right thing for the kids. Why does this not also apply to men? Why can't we relax the burden of proof and let some men be wrongly tagged or even wrongly imprisoned? By definition, if there has been a mistake, then it was also a mistake to remove the children. But we tolerate mistakes when the collateral damage is women and children, not when they are the Sovereign Individuals, the Real Citizens who Matter and whose Rights Cannot Be Violated Even If It Means Children Die.

violent men are responsible for the vast majority of children on child protection plans

I didn't know that, the media likes to make out that it is addiction and general fecklessness on the part of ... guess which parent

There are clear parallels with rape culture here. Women are blamed for not protecting themselves, while the conviction rate for rape is preposterously low and the excuse often given is that they need 110% proof otherwise they are violating the rights of a Sovereign Citizen to a life free from the stigma of being labelled a rapist or abuser. What about the stigma a woman suffers from losing her children? Just one of those things, we are told, sad but necessary.

The difficulty as well is that it's one thing to correctly identify that a child is being harmed or at risk of harm, and children in households where their parent experiences DV are that alright. No argument there. It's another to do any better for them. The outcomes for children in care are appalling. They have been for a long time now.

I think it comes from the assumption that the mother is in collusion. I expect that this isn’t always the case but it implies a level of neglect that the woman has not involved the police.
I don’t agree with this viewpoint but at a guess this is the rationale for removing the children. Particularly in cases of multiple children and where the mother hasn’t left before. She may well be vulnerable and unable to take care of herself, left alone the children.

Unfortunately some women do choose to stay with violent or otherwise abusive men. This doesn't change the fact that they are victims, but they do have some degree of choice, whereas the children don't have any choice.

It's not so much collusion as bare bones failure to protect. It's true of course that someone who isn't doing anything to prevent their children from being exposed to them experiencing DV is failing to protect. It's just that this doesn't take into account whether it would be realistically possible for the person (woman 99% of the time, let's be honest) to leave the abuser and make the children safer by doing so. This is particularly so when the abuser is the parent of the other child/ren and the mother wouldn't necessarily be able to prevent ongoing contact.

It also doesn't consider whether the child is likely to be objectively better off away from the parent/s, given the appalling job we do for looked after children, but then that's true of child protection generally.

I have also worked in this area and in my experience, this is not the default position and nor is it taken lightly. However, there are women who despite being given support and help to get away from the perpetrator, will still return. SS can refer women to refuge accommodation and a fresh start and will assist with obtaining non-molestation orders. However, in some cases, the woman will then secretly get in contact with the violent ex, sometimes even disclosing the secret refuge address (which has very very serious repercussions for other women and children living there).

I am sure it is often due to brainwashing and grinding down, but at the end of the day, sometimes a stark choice needs to be made between and adult and a vulnerable child who did not choose to be placed in this horrific situation. In my view, the child must always come first. I have seen a mother at the courtroom door with her barrister telling her that unless she agrees to leave her partner, her children will be taken off her. She still refused, claiming that they were in love and that SS were wrong about his violence. He had strangled her and broken her jaw in front of her 8-year old who had had to dial 999 (not for the first time). I have some sympathy (because these mothers have been let down from the start of their lives) but I can't see what else could be done here. SS had been involved for 2 years. She had received a lot of support but just flat out refused to leave her partner. Even where they were physically separated, she would get back in contact. What else could be done? How was she being an adequate parent?

The sad thing is that so many of these women also grew up with DV being inflicted on their own mothers. And unless the cycle is broken, the same thing will happen with their children- they will either become perpetrators or victims.

At the end of the day, SS cannot 'take away the violent' man if the woman in intent on finding him and bringing him back again.

Because women who choose abusive men invariably choose another abusive man and abusive step fathers are even more worrying for children than their own fathers.

Princess (I love the name). Yes, you are of course right. The whole system needs changing and leaving needs to be a realistic thing. However, I have also seen cases where leaving was realistic and there was support but the woman in question still chose to stay because she could not bear to be parted from her partner (even if that meant losing her kids).

SS need to be careful as well given the outcry following Baby P. That was a classic case of failing to protect. No evidence that mum herself was abusing the baby, but she allowed her partner to do so and would not leave him. In that case the child died and I wonder whether even if more support had been offered to her, she would have left. It's not always a case of mothers being helpless victims who don't have the support to leave- sometimes they make a choice to put their own needs above those of their children.

No, indeed not. I have a bit of experience in this field too, from a legal side, though it's nearly a decade ago. The 'easy' cases are the ones like you describe with the mother at the courtroom door. Clearly that woman should be offered whatever support she needs to identify her situation as abuse and to leave it when she's ready to do so, but she obviously can't be forced and it would be a mistake to try. And her mindset, whoever's fault it is, would of course put her child at risk.

The difficult ones are the ones where the mother might actually be making the decision that most benefits the child in deciding to stay, or at the very least have no other feasible option open to her. Where a woman might well make a different decision if she could actually be assured sufficient money to live on, secure alternative housing and a legal system that wasn't going to force her children to have contact with her abuser. There isn't necessarily much recognition of this.

Cross post there... yes I certainly think the post Baby P mindset has made a difference. I was working in the field at the time that all came out. More experienced care lawyers than me told me it was a bit of a pendulum, depending on whether society was more invested at the time in the narrative of SS leaving children to be abused by their parents or of SS taking children away wrongly.

Generally, I agree with Offred.

The Children Act is a wonderful piece of legislation. It's easy for lay people - including quite young children - to understand. And it centres the child in everything. The law makes it clear that the child's needs come first, despite any possible collateral damage for other actors, including parents. And this is a good thing.

However, in patriarchal society where women are blamed because it's easy, mothers are disadvantaged by this.

We'll always have some families, including some mums, whose structures are so chaotic or damaging to children that those children will need removing. It's sad but it's life.

But - if we created a society that supported women better, we would have fewer of them. We need joined-up agency working rather than multi-agency mixed messages, which is what we have at the moment. Women are pushed from the pillar of one agency to the post of another. It's no wonder that it ends in disaster too often.

In fiscal terms, it would also be much cheaper. Looked after children have terrible outcomes and also cost a lot more money than prevention services, so it should always be a last resort.

Yes, you are right of course. And it's really wrong to simply seek to blame the individual mother as a bad parent. We have a bad system. We have people living in abject poverty due to universal credit and other cuts. We have SS support and budgets being cut. So yes, there will be cases where the mother genuinely thinks she is doing what is best for the child.

I wonder if it would make a difference if we changed our narrative about kids always needing a father. The courts will often order contact where the father has been violent to the mum. So the message being sent is that he is still a good dad and that hitting your partner doesn't impact on your parenting, etc. In reality, kids only need dads when they are good dads. In my view, they are much better off having nothing to do with some waster who beats the crap out of his partner. But the stigma against single mums and the dominant idea that kids are always best off with 2 parents means that many mums will desperately try to cling onto bad relationships or try to find a 'replacement' if their relationship breaks down.

The difficult ones are the ones where the mother might actually be making the decision that most benefits the child in deciding to stay, or at the very least have no other feasible option open to her. Where a woman might well make a different decision if she could actually be assured sufficient money to live on, secure alternative housing and a legal system that wasn't going to force her children to have contact with her abuser. There isn't necessarily much recognition of this.

Exactly. If we could only get more public awareness that this is actually the truth for some/many women, it would help so much.

But the stigma against single mums and the dominant idea that kids are always best off with 2 parents means that many mums will desperately try to cling onto bad relationships or try to find a 'replacement' if their relationship breaks down.

If you read all the stuff put out by Iain Duncan Smith's think tank, The Centre for Social Justice, it's very, very clear that Universal Credit was explicitly designed to "nudge" women into staying in relationships. No acknowledgement that many of those relationships would be abusive whatsoever. It is not an accident that UC is paid to the head of the household, not the woman, with all the vulnerability to abuse that entails.

So yes, there will be cases where the mother genuinely thinks she is doing what is best for the child.

I'm open to the possibility that there are cases where the mother doesn't just think that, but is correct in thinking it. Ie it's not only her honest belief but empirical fact.

None of which is to say that being a in a household where DV is perpetrated isn't harmful. It is. Just that there are other harms too, some of which come into play on separation.

Lang yes, UC makes me feel sick. It throws vulnerable women to the wolves. It allows the state to completely absolve itself of accountability and regresses us to the days before we even had the welfare state.

Princess yes, I agree with you there as well. We often see removal of the kids as making them safe. The high proportion of prisoners who have been through the care system as children shows that this is far from true. It exposes them to new harms and possibly greater harms than staying in a home with DV.

Christ, society is totally fucked isn't it?

No one should be locked up without being convicted of a crime.
Social services should be able to support the woman in getting a court order to remove the violent man from the home, provide evidence (the evidence they are using to have the children removed) and support the woman in the process. If the violent man breaks the court order then this should be taken seriously.

Women who are trying to protect their children by not allowing contact with a violent or abusive man should be backed up by the family court system.

The high proportion of prisoners who have been through the care system as children shows that this is far from true.

Not just prisons, either. Looked after children are orders of magnitude over-represented in prostitution, homelessness, functional illiteracy/innumeracy - pretty much every measure of marginalisation you can imagine.