Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi,
I am an autistic adult who is a parent. Since having my daughter I went through a terrible time with social services who set me up to fail and removed my daughter from me because I have a diagnosis of autism. It took me two years to fight for my daughter back and through this time social services and Cafcass used the so called deficits of my autism to justify the removal and to stop the return of my daughter. Thankfully the judge saw through this and returned my daughter concluding in her judgment that I parent my daughter to a high standard.
I want to know how many my adults will autism who are parents have been through a similar situation. How many parents with ASD and other disabilities and or impairments are being targeted by social services and having their children removed? If you have experienced this please tell your story because the current system is outrageously discriminative against parents who have a disability and or impairment and I would like to raise awareness of the current failures within the current child protection system which is targeting parents with disabilities and or impairments so that change can happen.
I have friends who work in Child Protection at Social Services, and it's an impossible job. If they remove children they're wrong, if they don't remove and then somethings happen they are wrong. There have been a number of high profile cases over the years where social services tried to leave kids in the home and work with the parents, only for the kids to suffer terrible abuse. The media only made this situation worse by over reporting with only half the facts.
Now, I'm not suggesting for one second that this would have happened in your case, I'm sure you are a good parent. I can't imagine what it would be like to have my children taken away, even for a short period. What you have to believe and accept though, is that social services don't do these things lightly. There would have been a number of discussions, that they have as a team, as well as with senior management, before they made the decision to remove. For what ever reason at the time they felt it was in the child's best interest, and that's all that matters.
Sueing an already stretched public sector organisation only adds to the pressure they are under, gives them a bad reputation, makes it harder for them to recruit, which increases their work load.....and so it goes on. I would urge you to just move on with your life, enjoy spending time with your family and forget winding yourself up about something that can't be changed now.
I hope you take this with the good intention it's meant with. I understand your emotionally involved, but when you see it from the other side, when you see a social worker curled up on their sofa unable to function because of their work, you understand the pressure they are under.
I wish you the best.
Respectfully I disagree with this approach. Working as a civil servant in national government it’s been my observation that fixing broken systems and issues only really became a priority for ministers and senior civil servants when there was a real risk of reputational damage.
Law suits like these can do a lot of good because they can make big wigs fear for their jobs, which in turn can move the resources nessicery to improve the system.
the ‘system is imperfect and has limited resources so don’t take their money away’ argument fails when you realise the huge potential these law suits have to bring both external scrutiny and resources.