Grrr so annoyed with social services...

gizmo111

teabag29 wrote: »

They said that they weren't allowed to close the case until they spoke to the children and it would only be open questions to check they are happy at home and school, they didnt say anything about mentioning my ex in any questions just that it would be yes no answer questions. I dont know why I worry about things so much when theres no need, I have nothing to hide its just I feel ss told me how to approach the whole contact thing, I did as they said and now they are looking into me when it was them who told me to do it the way I have. They didnt say when it comes round and you follow our advice we will ofcourse send our social workers round to investigate. And now they see theres no risk and ive done things right I can see my case being put at the bottom of a pile of non urgents and this dragging out for months.

Duty teams close cases as quick as they can - they will not leave it for months before they talk to the children.

teabag29

It was the duty who saw me but he said he wouldnt be the 1 talking to the kids that will be passed onto another social worker

gizmo111

teabag29 wrote: »

It was the duty who saw me but he said he wouldnt be the 1 talking to the kids that will be passed onto another social worker

Ok to explain a little the purpose of teams and some have different titles in different areas.

A duty (and assessment/referal) team - take all new referals, they have someone on Duty each day (sometimes for a week) on a rotating basis, they do the initial investigations and respond to the new referals, this person decides if the referal is closed on the spot or if there is a follow up needed, if a follow up is needed then someone in the duty team will be allocated that piece of work and will follow up and then either close the case or if long term work is needed eg Child Protection/Immediate Removal of children/etc then it will get passed to the community or locality team for this to be done.

Your case has been seen by the duty worker in the duty team and will be closed very quickly as it does not meet the criteria to be passed to a long term social worker - Hope this makes sense.

teabag29

Oh i see, thanks for that. He did say it would be in the next week or 2 and likely to be at school so hopefully it will be before they break up for easter in 2 weeks time

puddy

yes, it sounds blunt but they really dont want children open to them where there's no need, so it wont be their top priority in terms of emergencies but they will get to see the kids so that they can close it. i doubt anyone is 'looking into you', i know you're worried and disappointed in whats happened but try to see it more objectively. they are looking at the children's needs and whether they are being met, because they are now aware that children who have had and may later have contact with a sch 1 parent are in their area. even if they had access to the other borough's case notes, they would still have to do an initial assessment into the children's current needs now that contact did or may in the near future get re established with him.

puddy

also just to clarify about timelines. i remember being allocated a case as an initial assessment for a sch 1 parent. the child was 5. for some reason, the fact that he had a child and was a sch 1 had not been passed on to SSD and we got to hear about it finally from probation who had no explanation as to why we didnt know when this child was born. (broken communication)

so imagine how annoyed and upset these parents were, to find me on the doorstep wanting to assess. as far as they were concerned, they had been good parents for 5 years (the blokes conviction was about 10 years before when he was only 18 himself) and now all this arrives.

as soon as SSD are alerted to any child having any contact or association with sch 1, its just a standard assessment (whether the child is living with them or not). same as someone who had a conviction for sch 1 many years ago, then has a baby, if we know, we have to assess. parents are quite rightly concerned about being assessed, they may have changed their lives around and be no risk, but we dont know that without an assessment.

teabag29

I see, i thought once you are a schedule 1 you are not allowed unsupervised access to a child under 18 and therefore not allowed to live with children. thats why i was so shocked to find out that my ex and his girlfriend have a baby and ss are involved but the baby lives with them. So basically its not always the case that schedule 1 offenders have to be supervised? It seems very odd that on one hand he is allowed to live with his 2 month old baby and must be unsupervised with him at times yet on the other hand he has seen his 8 year ols daughter once under supervision by myself and husband in a public place but this is deemed unacceptable??

esmy

I don't think it is being suggested that the way you handled contact was unacceptable - you followed the advice you were given and decided for yourself it wasn't appropriate to continue because it didn't seem to be about your daughters best interests. Well done, and well done again for reporting your concerns re the baby.
Sched 1 offenders can and do have contact with children. The things that prevent this happening are certain court orders, criminal sentences, bail conditions and sometimes agreements made with Social Services.
Social Workers have to see the child, not just take the word of a parent that all is well. Most of the well publicised tragedies feature plausible adults and children not seen or heard at all.

puddy

it hasnt been deemed unacceptable (from what you say), it hasnt been assessed fully, thats all.

all sch 1 have to be assessed when they are going to have children or going to live with a child. the offence may be something that happened in a previous lifestyle, they may no longer be a risk, but must be assessed so that we can make that judgement, or they may still be a risk and if so, then they will have SSD involvement, either CP or child in need or in extreme cases a decision will be made that they cannot be unsupervised with the child

for all you know the new baby may be on a register or there may be a written agreement with the girlfriend and SSD with particular conditions on, SSD certainly arent going to give you those details

there is also the fact that your children have different experiences to the baby in that for the older child, she was assaulted by him and is still suffering from that therefore would be considered a child in need and for the younger one, she will have witnessed it or known of it and therefore been very scared, so the assessment is also about their wishes and feelings, emotional wellbeing, your ability to protect etc, rather than just about his behaviour on its own. it really reads as if your behaviour as a parent is not being 'questioned' it is being assessed in line with their needs. they already know that once the formality of the kids being spoken to the case will close (unless the children come up with something out of the blue which requires support or other services for them) and so please try not to worry

teabag29

it has been deemed unacceptable though because he said to me he thought it was the wrong decision and that it would have been better supervised by someone else and through court and he also said that if i had have/or do continued to allow access with me and my husband supervising they wouldnt be happy and would have to look at further involvement.

I think because they feel he wants to get back with me and if i continue to see him i may fall under his spell again and theres a possibility i'll get back with him....this is absolute rubbish i would never get back with him after what he did and ive made that clear to him