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.
social services took my children because of my aspergers diagnosis
I am curious as to how they even knew about your diagnosis, unless somebody had already notified them of a concern. Social Services don't just "take children" ... it requires a Court Order. To get a Care Order a social worker needs to meet the "threshold" test that the child is "at risk of significant harm" before even making an application to the Family Court.
Usually there is a safeguarding investigation. Most authorities use the "Signs of Safety" model which includes a safeguarding meeting which the parent can attend. Usually a Safety Plan is agreed and monitored for several months. If the plan fails, sometimes the parent agrees to have the child "accommodated".
If the authority wants to remove a child against the wishes of the parent - which is how I read "took my children" it requires a court hearing and a Care Order. However ...
Most children's services are overspent ... it costs a lot of money to keep a child in care. Apart from humans rights and legality, the social worker will need to convince a senior manager that the authority needs to spend the money involved - even making an application incurs court fees and legal costs in excess of £2k ... it is a lot cheaper to put in a s.17 Child in Need Plan.
Cases like Baby P show that sometimes we leave it to late in the hope that the parents will "sort their lives out". Every social worker is between the Scylla of the right to family life and legal process, and the Charybdis of knowing that if we don't intervene some kids will die and we will be hung out to dry by the press.
Because Famiy Court proceedings are confidential, social workers can rarely talk about out work. We are accused of "taking" children, but usually all one hears is the aggrieved parent. We are rarely able to refute some of the "my social worker did ... " stories, because to breach confidentiality would cost us our jobs.
Social workers do make mistakes, and there are plenty of documented cases of bad practice which need to be challenged. But I doubt any child has ever been taken into care BECAUSE of an autism diagnosis. The parent's autism may have been a contributing factor. There may have been a poor assessment that was not challenged by the parent's solicitor - many lawyers are not autism aware either - or by the childre's guardian ad litem. It is never good when the system fails. Please do not demonise the social workers ... most of us are doing the best we can with limited resources.
Ian said:Cases like Baby P show that sometimes we leave it to late in the hope that the parents will "sort their lives out". Every social worker is between the Scylla of the right to family life and legal process, and the Charybdis of knowing that if we don't intervene some kids will die and we will be hung out to dry by the press.
Part of the problem is social services seem to have option A, do nothing, and option B, take the child in to care, and very little in between. Parent says they can't be at home for a visit, reschedule. Look at the star case, How many visits were rescheduled. There ought to be a range of 'in between' options to ensure access to a child and the environments a child moves in but those that exist are rarely used because it requires manpower and leg work and isn't much easier than getting an order to get children removed anyway.
Maybe those sorts of desicions shouldn't be made by councilors anyway. Or any one in the executive. Maybe locking kids up should always require court involvment. Maybe we should reduce the period before court reveiw (sub section 2) to someting very short like 5 days so in effect the courts are reveiwing all cases. You'd have to empower magistrates to handel the cases in the first instance with an automatic appeal to a higher court. That would be a better system.
Ian said:You just need to look at the present fiasco with the Post Office ... having a government minister did not help the postmasters, did it? The Home Office and Department of Environment did not prevent Grenfell.
Isn't the private sector playing the role of the local authority there? A layer of authority between centeral goverment and the operational level the goverment can blaim for problems created by their under funding. If there was a 'national child protection service' then ministers would be sacked when things went baddly wrong. Which means they would fight for more money at cabinate meetings.