Re: How social services can seize our children

On Wed, 31 Aug 2005 00:08:51 +0100, Russell wrote:

> The current media frenzy over social services is absolute crap and something
> to fill the tabloids over the summer.
>
> I am not a social worker, but I work in a profession that involves working
> with children.
>
> I have worked with children who are *seriously* neglected and abused. Eight
> year olds whose drug addict parents don't notice that their child has spent
> their evening doing laps of the Circle line alone. A family aged 7,5 and 2
> who would stay home alone all night if Mum "pulled" at the pub. A child
> whose mother lay unconscious on the floor for 12 hours after being beaten
> with a baseball bat by her partner - alone with a 7 year old who daren't
> ring the ambulance because the police would come too. Children who are
> seeing psychiatrists because of the mother's weekly suicide attempts.
> Children taken into temporary care with broken limbs from parental beatings,
> who are returned to their "loving" families by the courts. Parents who let
> their 7 and 8 year olds have a smoke of their joint. The girl who was
> cutting herself - presumably cos Mum's boyfriend was known to us (and social
> services) as an abuser who has served time for it... but we couldn't tell
> Mum (because it is confidential information) and we couldn't *do* anything
> until the child decided to tell. (These are all white, healthy children).
>
> Social services response (to every one of the above)? We can only put them
> on the "at risk" register and check they're OK every now and again (hence
> Victoria Climbie)
> Why? Because to actually *do* anything requires a sum total of evidence in
> court which it is extremely difficult to produce.

Complete Bollocks.

They don't require evidence. The reason they don't do it is *resources*.

The current splurge comes back to Adoption targets. SSDs get money and
status from hitting Blair's adoption targets.

These were designed to get the children of the sort you describe into long
term adoption places.

The problem is, as any fule kno, that virtually no-one actually wants
these children adopted (and thus off the SSD purse) so SSD are cheating by
taking into care children who are easily adopted (such as those whose
parents have a low IQ, supposedly) on spurious grounds.

That's partly why they are so keen or parallel adoption and care
proceedings.

> The problem with social services is not that they are taking children
> into care left right and centre. It is that children are living in the
> most appalling conditions, sexually abused, neglected, without a hope in
> hell of things getting better, and that social services can't act until
> they can build a case which is beyond reasonable doubt.

This is a complete fantasy. Social Services can simply make things up and
exaggerate them. I don't think you read the article very closely.

> Fair enough -
> but that is exceptionally hard when you are dealing with children,
> particularly emotionally vulnerable ones. Ask any
> doctor/teacher/playworker - particularly those serving "rough" areas -
> how many many stories they can tell of referrals they have made to
> social services, which have gone absolutely nowhere.
>
Because of money.

I live in the land of Lauren Wright, Norfolk. Lauren's case was ignored
because of resources (i.e. to save money) and then covered up as far as
possible.


> We don't even begin to know why the mother with the low IQ had her
> children taken.

Adoption targets.

> Perhaps her IQ was so low that she didn't understand
> that they needed feeding, clean clothes every now and again, and that
> they needed rules (like be in before 1 o'clock in the morning). Perhaps
> the woman wasn't in a fit mental state to care for herself, let alone
> children. Who knows? Certainly not me, or you, or the journalist who
> wrote the piece. All I know is that for social services to convince a
> judge, there must have been something pretty overwhelming going on
> there, because - if this is permanent - it was THE JUDGE who made the
> decision, not the social workers.

Bull***. The SW provide the "evidence" which does not need to be
substantiated. Family courts are a joke.

> And of course that Child Protection
> matters are so confidential that the journalist would *never* have full
> access to the facts, nor can social services publicly defend themselves.

They don't want to. Because their behaviour is frequently so apalling as
to be indefensible.

> Secondly, being in care is often anything but "care". I could tell you
> the story of the 8 year old taken into care after disclosing that her
> father was sexually abusing her, who was put in a home full of
> delinquent teenagers, who was still standing and sleeping in her school
> uniform 10 DAYS after she was taken cos Mum wouldn't let them come back
> to collect her clothes. Or the more typical scenario - anything up to 20
> foster parents a year because most offer just "short term". A social
> worker will have a long case load of children who are in desperate need,
> and will spend much of their time frustrated that they can't secure
> anything meaningful for these kids. You *really* think that these case
> workers sit there thinking "Oh - let's leave them there and go out and
> find some more kids whose parents can't argue back".

Yes, they go for soft targets to boost adoption rates.

> Sorry to rant about this - but I have strongly felt for some time that
> there is the most appalling LACK of action by social services in this
> country - that needy children I know are constantly let down by an
> organisation which is there to help them, but can't because its hands
> are so tied.

Social Services can and do do whatever they like which is then justified
by "in the best interests of the child".

> And the current tabloid frenzy could easily get out of hand
> and make things WORSE for vulnerable children, not better.

It's not the vulnerable children who are being targetted.

.

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