Social services removing children from parents with ASD

I did a whole load in a batch, a few that didn't need doing might have crept through. Basicly used the google before keyword to filter threads older than 2 years. But that's just the last time google indexed a change.

Just for info, it wasn't at risk - having last been updated only five months ago. The time limit for inactive threads is two years:

https://community.autism.org.uk/f/introduce-yourself/38650/online-community-upgrade 

I'm sure there are many here that don't believe you, social services are known for saying stuff to parents and then denying having said it. My father had them do it to him when I was a child so he started recording them and all of a sudden they stopped saying things they shouldn't and were never there more than 5 minutes whereas before they would be there for a good 30-45 minutes. Also not long after he started to record social services decided they no longer needed to be involved, this and similar things is a common experience for parents.

NAS94143Sorry I missed this. The rule on anonymity means that you can't just "look me up" - although I am there. I am also in the BASW Independent Members directory ... but again you may need to adjust your search. Somebody on this forum did locate me using Google (tm) and asked permission to contact me directly.

I think this was quite an interesting thread with a detailed debate on soial services practices. It would be a shame if it was deleated so I'm posting here to update it before the upgrade

I have just joined here and found your post. I hope your case is progressing and you achieve the right outcome. I admire you have persevered - not at all easy. May I ask if you were / are you represented? I ask as it is rare to hear of lawyers being willing to take on such cases. I believe there should be more human rights challenges. I’m looking to start a group. 

Are details of your court expert witness services in the NAS directory? Many thanks. 

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.

You might want to look at https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainer/local-government-funding-england.  A large proportion of local authority funding consists of central government grants which have not fully funded increased expenditure. The reason for potholes, library closures etc. is that most authorities are overspent on education - particularly special education - and social care. A lot of overspending is on care - "looked after" children and residential care for the elderly. There is not enough early help because funding has to go to high-risk cases ... and they become high-risk when there is no early intervention. It is a vicious circle.

Councillors are responsible for strategic policy, and individual members sit on panels to agree on funding. You would not get a minister, or even several ministers, sitting on funding panels for all 150+ social services!  Also, would you really want a minister for child protection who was the junior minister for fisheries last week, and who really wanted a job in the Foreign Office?  To give just one example, if a young person is placed in secure accommodation under s25 Children Act 1989, the case is reviewed by a panel chaired by a councillor - there is no way a minister would be able to attend all the individual review meetings and run a department ... do you really intend to give social workers the power to lock kids up without any oversight?

Have you read the reports about child deaths from Victoria Climbie to Baby P?  Nothing happens. Services are still underfunded. The problems of inter-agency working remain unresolved.  Individual social workers still have too many cases. 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.

The politicians responcable for child protection are local councilors and most of them want to put council tax up. It's loony to leave the wellbeing of kids in the hands of people who waste obceen sums on white eliphant redevolopment projects but can't fill in the pot holes. The first thing we should do is take the responcability off the council and relocate to centeral goverment. If a goverment minister had to go on breakfast news when a child is murdered by their parents and explain why opotunities were missed funding might actually materialise.

I agree. Perhaps a note to a mods...

Positions of religious authority are another area in which narcissistic personalities are over represented. I was sent to a Catholic school in the 1970s. The teachers were all nuns or priests (brothers) and due to this experience, I totally agree with your comments. I’m now an atheist.

One thing is for certain - we certainly don’t want to go back to the days of Eamon De Valera’s 1930’s Catholic Ireland, where the infiltrated and corrupted Catholic Church in Ireland wielded absolute power over the Irish State at that time - both sides of my family growing up in the Catholic Ireland of that time experienced at first hand the abuse of state and religious power  

Given our current understanding of child protection and family issues in our current times, looking at similar issues and how for example the teachings of the Catholic Church were twisted in cahoots with the Irish State in much earlier times, where infiltration and corruption was going on in Catholic circles since the 19th century, many who presented with religious vocations may not have had a genuine vocation, let alone be placed in positions of active ministry to children and other vulnerable people by the Irish Catholic Bishops at the time, examples including the Magdalene Laundries and the Christian Brothers Industrial Schools - we now know that “respectable” Irish Catholic families placed “problem” children in such places with the connivance of the Irish State, especially if a daughter became pregnant outside Marraige for example, but we also know that families of a similar mindset and background effectively forced their “problem” children to become priests, brothers and nuns, many of these priests and religious sisters leaving after Vatican II to come out as being LGBT, as when I came out as gay, I knew many gay men who were ex-priests and brothers and many lesbian women who were ex-nuns - sadly, many vulnerable people were placed in Convents and similar religious institutions in the past, where they lived lives of abject misery and even if they were lucky enough to escape such places, they were traumatised for life - being Irish myself, I know that such a horrible experience happened to my Mum as a child and she never recovered, even after I was born in 1970 - many decades later, despite her best efforts as the eldest of 3 children, she died in 2009 and it had involved disapproval of my grandparents Marraige by the local Catholic authorities in the 1930’s 

This is also an issue I’m concerned about. I’m in Germany and I heard horror stories about families with any mental health issues. I’m not gonna try for the official diagnosis for few reasons, this is one of the main reasons. I wanna protect the unity of my family. I know that if we fall under the radar of Jugendamt, it’s gonna be tough for us. Looks like “child protection” is a big business in many countries. But for some reason the social services often fail to remove children from really abusive and pathological families with criminality, drugs, abuse and severe neglect. Maybe it’s because it would be hard for them to find a foster family for such traumatised children, as they often create problems and are seen as problems. I don’t want to generalise, because everywhere are good and bad people, however I’ve heard enough really bad stories from this field. I hope I can avoid having such experience. 

Do you mean the church full of paederast priests, schools run by sadistic nuns, etc.? Or the loony hard-right evangelicals?

Social care is underfunded. There is not enough preventative work with troubled families. There are not enough drug and alcohol services.  Politicians talk about improving services, then buy off the proletariat with tax cuts, bread and circuses.  We could have excellent NHS and social care services if the voters were prepared to pay for them through taxes.

When you want the courts to be "militant" do you want more kids taken into care? The outcomes for children in public care are not good - poor education outcomes, more mental health issues, higher rate of offending. These may be due to the adverse childhood experiences that led to care proceedings, but the care system does not add a lot of value once kids are "in the system".

Legal action is the only way to make public bodies accountable for thier actions and relentlessly pursue them through the courts to take their responsibilities seriously 

It just shows and highlights several areas for legislative change that need to go through Parliament - we should be lobbying our MP’s for these changes 

It seems to me, having had experience of being targeted by SS during pregnancy, that not enough consideration is given to cluster B personality traits in social workers and the fact that people with Narcissistic personalities tend to gravitate towards certain professions that allow them to weald power, of which social work is one. There is a higher percentage of these types who pursue a career in child protection than in other areas. If a parent is allocated a social worker with these traits, they have little chance of their children’s best interests being the main goal. Narcissistic people will go to extraordinary lengths in order to “win” as they see it and will do and say things that ordinary people wouldn’t even imagine which leaves the unaware parent defenceless. Lack of awareness of cluster B personalities means these behaviours pass under the radar and many people e.g. Judges and Magistrates find it difficult to believe social workers could be capable of such malignancy meaning parents are not believes and children are removed. I recommend any parent dealing with child protection to research as much as they can about the symptoms of Narcissistic Personality Disorder so they can be spotted and dealt with where possible.

IrishInManchesterUK said:

must never be any separation between church and state 

I hope you are kidding