Okay, this is a long one, but bare with me, it’s worth the read and you will be enlightened by the end.
First off life isn’t a box of chocolates, its a series of kicks in the teeth and you have to figure out when to duck, but what if you seem to be the one instigating the kicks? If your openness and honesty is the thing that seems to give life the momentum to swing its leg?
Life seems to kick me in the teeth on a daily basis, sometimes I can duck, sometimes i can even limit the damage by lifting a rhetorical hand, but it seems that if it isn’t one thing it’s another, I spend my entire time, I have spent my entire LIFE fighting for EVERYTHING, now believe it or not I am not moaning, I really am not, it’s become just one of those things, I rarely sit down in the morning and not have my mind filled with how am I going to duck that foot today! Or if I have nothing to duck, it isn’t long before a serious swing catches me offguard.
I’m begining to become emotionally and physically exhausted by the continual fight and find myself close to tears on a daily basis, I had a stroke aged 15 and have fought on a daily basis ever since, I really want to stop having ‘Something’ Always in the background going on, even when things seem peachy, I am worried about the kick just around the corner, at the moment, it seems, life is using social services as the boot that covers this foot.
Now from the start let me explain, I have ALWAYS co opperated with social services and when my children were very young, they were extremely helpful and empowering for me. However, it seems in light of baby P and the lambasting Haringay received at the handling of his case, Social services has changed and it is most definitely NOT for the better.
There policy states:
The objective of social services policy is to strengthen the capability and opportunities for social and cultural participation of people who are in economically and socially vulnerable situations and to strengthen protection of children at risk.
However, this isn’t shown in their treatment and handling of personal cases, reports do not focus on strengthening or enabling economically and socially vulnerable people/families, reports seem to concentrate on highlighting peoples vulnerabilities and then using them to persecute parents/whole households, instead of offering services to empower and encourage families to stay together. They seem to be focused on the negative aspects of families and they will actually exagerate and accetuate families failings painting an unrealistic picture of the families lifestyle/home life. The alarming thing is the obviousness of this as you read a report and realise the inconstancies imbedded within the very fabric of the whole report, they will highlight a concern and in the next paragraph negate this concern with a completely opposite posative attribute.
I have been wracking my brains trying to figure out the reasoning for this, the only conclusion to draw is that in light of the baby P case, social services main concern is to ‘BE SEEN’ to be doing something, in actual fact negating their entire policy, i. e.
“we told said family this was a concern and we addressed this, if x, y, z happened, we are not responsible”!
Doesn’t this completely destroy the foundation of social services?
Does it not counter act the actual ‘design’ of social services? That they seem to be more concerned with their own culpability than the welfare of a child.
EXM:
A disabled mother struggles to cope on her own with her young son, housework is incredibly difficult due to her bed ridden state, even getting the child to school seems an impossability, now if we accept that for a child, staying with their blood family is the best thing for the child,( except in the case of physical/sexual abuse) social services could provide two simple services to ensure this woman and her child could remain together, a cleaner and carers to ensure this woman has a better quality of life, regardless of her child? Sounds a siimple case doesn’t it? Not only would this be cost effective, i. e. cheeper, but it would in reality kill two birds with one stone, i.e. the mothers social needs as a disabled person.
The above is a true case, a real case, but instead of implementing this, social services determine it would be better for all involved to place the child in foster care and the court case is pending to remove said child from said parents care.
The most alarming thing is, there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING that can be done, there is ABSOLUTELY no arguing or fighting the case, because you are actually told that if you aren’t a ‘professional’…
i. e. paid by the local authority for the long list of qualifications you may or no doubt may not have,
… you can not even talk!
In their minds a person who has maybe done an access course into socal work and been placed as a child protection officer, is relavent and anyone who hasn’t isn’t…
i. e. you
…are treated like an animal who doesn’t know its own mind and emotions do not count, regardless of your knowledge of the family or their circumstances, you as a parent/friend/family member are not qualified to state how well the person in question is dealing with their difficulties, even if you have known them for years and have seen very real changes in their abilities over the years.
Over the years, yes, they will bring up concerns regarding YOUR protective factor for the child because of something YOU may have done TWENTY YEARS before and use it to negate your views imediately.
EXM:
In your life, you may have been a bit of a rebel and got involved with stuff you shouldn’t have, but you perservered and got through it, coming out the other side older and wiser and with a hell of a lot of life experience, maybe concerning the person in questions circumstances, ‘you’ve been there done that and overcame, but the fact you were involved in anything questionable at any time in your life will be used against you supporting the family in question, they will use something benign, say, you may have had a questionable relationship once ten years ago, they will use this to exclude you as a protective factor actually put you in as a ‘guilty’ party. If you had a violent relationship 15 years ago, but havent seen the other party involved in the relationship since, they will actually state that the possability of this person returning into yr life and in doin so the child in questions life as to abuse THEM, even though you haven’t seen them for 15 years and they are not even aware of the childs exsitence and even though they would not even see them if indeed they did turn up on the scene again. It seems ALL is designed to remove the families natural support and isolate them even more. They will demand becoz of YOUR past the family must stay away from you! It seems a huge abuse of power and they are not being called on it. They are playing God with people’s lives and should be reporting to someone, but it seems for them, this is merely a chess game and strategy is what its all about, because people don’t have feelings and tearing a family apart is better than them loosing their pensions and being publicly called to task on their failings.
Yes, it is mental, but the controversy involving the baby P case has social services going completely mental in over reaction, but what it is actually doing is making them ineffectual, it is causing them to actually divide families and remove the natural external protective factors for the child.
What its actually doing is turning social services into the fairy tale monster waiting to snatch YOUR child away if you make even ONE mistake, but no one is calling them to task, no one is asking the important questions, the most alarming aspect is the families treatment, people, even young girls who get pregnant under age are being emotionally and psychologically damaged by social services interaction with them and if the government doesn’t address this in a few years they WILL have a number of court cases claiming this abuse.
We as law abiding citizens have a duty to police our services and ensure they are not being governed by power hungry uncaring and sometimes downright sadistic people who’s only interest is covering their own backs whilst keeping an eye on their ever increasing bank balance. However there seems to be a limit to what can be indeed done, what can be done to address this issue? At the moment, I am have been banned from seeing my granddaughter except in a contact centre which is incidental miles from not only my home but from her home too, why? Because over 13 years ago I was in a relationship with a violent man, whom i have not seen and who may actually now be in prison, but he ‘may’ turn up one day out of the blue and knock on my door and I may forget all the abuse he dished out on myself and my children and allow him to be left alone with my granddaughter, of course the fact he hasn’t even bothered with his own daughters in 13 years doesn’t seem to count, because this is a fairy tale isn’t it and you know how those horror films go, the monster always comes back doesn’t he? But this is real life and I am not a dumb blond in a horror movie, of course if it was I believe the ‘monster’ would be social services itself wouldn’t it?
Let me give you a insight.
Imagine if you will, your underage daughter or son become parents (please don’t imagine it can’t happen to you it is happening in this country every day) Now imagine after the child is born social services go into your history and anully uncover every minute detail in your life, things you have long forgotten, now say one of the things they uncover was either a false accusation made against you or a stupid misunderstanding that was resolved finding you not guilty of said misdemeanor, they will use that u were accused to stop you seeing that child, just in case, at the case conference they use absolutely out of date inaccurate material to divide your family into two camps, those who are a risk to a child and those who aren’t, you try to argue your case. “…that was years ago and it wasn’t like that…” or …” I was exonerated…” or even simply “…that wasn’t true…”
At this point you are told by a very snotty upperclass woman ( who is so out of touch with regular people its untrue)that they only want to hear from the ‘professionals’ and every lie they spill out you shout out but are eventually spat at ‘ if you do not contain yourself you will be removed…” the ‘impartial ( that’s a joke) chairwoman has already made it clear by her attitude you are scum and she doesn’t want your opinion at all.
To tell you the truth if they filmed a case conference in secret, you wouldn’t believe how they are conducted, they operate completely on misinformation and then use it to nail you to a cross and the worse thing about it is you leave the conference in utter shock and disbelieve with the mind of walking to the next bridge and throwing yourself off because you believe their lies, you are useless, what is the point?
This I don’t need to tell you is a timebomb waiting to happen, for the first mentally unstable depressed individual to be a victim of these ‘case conferences’ may well walk to that bridge and take their child/children with them, in fact someone quite sane but depressed may do the same, then they’ll instigate a cover up of dynamic proportions it will be shown as this wicked person took their children/child’s life whilst “WE”were investigating, the child was ‘about’ to be taken away, it will not mention their psychological abuse that made this persons condition even worse and finally pushed them over the edge, mark my words, its a matter of time, and I foresee the authority in question will be Lambeth!
and as a side note, if you don’t walk to that bridge you spend every waking hour every waking minute focused on the fact you may loose your children/ family member because of an inaccurate picture painted of your life and then you start to question whether it is inaccurate and then you start to believe it and then… well then you give up and the best you can do is either hide from them or scream abuse at them ( incidental either is minutely reported and used to enforce their argument) and you are left desolate, lets look at social services policy again shall we?
The objective of social services policy is to strengthen the capability and opportunities for social and cultural participation of people who are in economically and socially vulnerable situations and to strengthen protection of children at risk.
Being honest with social services is pointless because they will use your honesty to tie the bootlaces on that boot before they use it to smash your face in!
So in retrospect, social services, fairy tale monster? Or power hungry zealots? I leave that for you to decide!
ANDREA'S BLOG 