Social services removing children from parents with ASD

Thank you NAS50499 for your reply, the social worker we have is using private legal proceedings to escalate her "process" despite the other professionals involved being left completely in the dark and not being in agreement, if you wouldn't mind can i ask which solicitor you used/are using and if you would recommend them please  

I would just like to clarify. I accept that there are procedures and processes in place for the decision making of removal.

I do not accept that those procedures and processes were followed in my case. Had they been followed, my case would not have been gone into the family courts because it had no merit nor would it had been escalated to removal because the threshold was never met.

Your assumption that the professionals involved followed all the procedures and processes is frustrating because not all case's are justified. 

Child protection is hard but there are procedures and processes in place which have to be followed by social workers and the LA, you cannot just bypass these procedures and processes its an abuse of power, nor should you be allowed to cover your breaches/negligence up at the expense of an innocent mother and baby. 

I appreciate your comments but you don't know the facts of my case. The LA involved actively lied and deceived the court to remove my child, then they tried to cover it up at the expense of an innocent child and innocent parent. This is wrong, it's unlawful and these so called practitioners broke the law and made a mockery of the system!

They have to be held accountable. The damage caused by their actions has been horrendous for myself and my child. They targeted me simply because I am autistic and they for whatever reason decided that autistic parents should not be allowed to be parents, they deceived the judge and fabricated evidence to falsify the threshold for removal. 

Yes social work is a hard job but social workers are not above the law. The social workers involved in my case need to be held accountable so that they can't damage any other families. In every profession there are good practitioners and bad practitioners who shouldn't be practicing. If practitioners who abuse their powers are not challenged and held accountable then they will continue to abuse their powers and damage the public. 

It does feel that your message has put a lot of the responsibility on me an innocent parent, the assumption that the LA were innocent and followed the law when they made the decision to remove, again you don't know the facts of my case. I struggle with your comments that I shouldn't sue an already stretch service, as if I deserved having my child unlawfully removed and I should just walk away and allow theses unfit practitioners to continue to abuse their powers and make a mockery of the family courts system and a mockery of the human rights act.

What about the long term impact on my innocent child? She was unlawfully removed and denied her mother for no justified reason. What about the impact on me, I lost two years of my baby's life, time which I will never get back, the trauma that these so called professionals have inflicted on me and my family is indescribable.

I appreciate that social work is a extremely difficult job but you cannot target a parent because of their 'disability' and then break the law to remove their child, it's an absolute abuse of power. It's not my responsibility that the service is stretched and at the end of the day the LA choose the waste thousands and thousands of pounds of the tax payers money on legal proceedings which were unlawful and continued to waste the tax payers money in order to cover up human right breaches, it's corruption, myself and my daughter will stand up for what is right we deserve justice and peace of mind that these practitioners are held accountable and prevented from doing the same to other innocent parents and children. 

I don't mean any disrespect, you are entitled to your own opinions, that said, you are making assumptions and opinions about a case when you do not know the facts of the case and that can be rather difficult in particular for the people involved. 

Kind regards 

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.

I got my daughter back and we are both suing the LA. 

May I just say that there is a massive problem with LAs and family courts targeting autistic parents. Something must be done about it because at the moment it is not in the public view. I believe that there's 100s if not 1000s of stolen children in adoption or SGOs simply because their parents are autistic!!!! 

I proved that the LA broke the law when they removed my baby. I did this by applying for all my records including social services and cafcass, hospital and medical records and pieced together what happened. I exposed the local authority corruption with their own records. I also had a parenting assessment by independent social worker Cathie Long who specialises in autistic parents. 

I can see that this post was some time ago but can I please ask what was the out come in the end, I am having a terrible time in a similar situation I asked for help and have been and still am being heavily discriminated against, my human rights have been continuously breeched and I feel my childrens welfare is actually at risk from social care 

H

I'm appalled by this story. I am a parent and the very thought that anyone could have done that...

You must have gone through Hell. I am also so sad for your daughter because this just the time when a little 'un really needs mummy's love. Even the best Foster carer can't replace that. I hope she's bounced back from the experience ok.

Well done you on the legal action. I really hope you get a good outcome. 

What really worries me is that if social services just take kids from people with illnesses or disabilities instead of supporting such families to cope, they will become the ones who damage the very children they are supposed to be their to protect. And if people start to worry their kids will be taken away they won't reach out for support when they need it, again to the detriment of the kid.

I work in a department dealing with education for kids in care. Yes, for some it's the only option; generally where their is deliberate neglect or abuse, occasionally as a short term measure whilst a parent is too poorly to perform caring tasks, but to assume that a person with ASD cannot be a good parent purely because of the ASD is damaging discrimination and NOT in the child's best interest. Just being in the care system can be detrimental to the child's development.

It's like saying you can't be a parent if you've only got one foot. It's outrageous.

Hi I was hoping someone could help. I had my baby  months ago. My partner at the time was undiagnosed with autism. He had a autistic melt down and resulted in me being hit by a gate the social took our daughter away. Made me stay away from him. Now I’m hoping to get her back however im worried they say he can’t have anything to do with her or me because of autism, anyone been in similar situation 

This sound horrible, shocking. But not surprising. Social Services... even the very mention of the name fills me with dread. If ever there were a part of local government that needed tearing down and re-building, that would be it. I'm convinced that these people are the major cause of danger and harm to the elderly and the vulnerable in society. I wouldn't want them anywhere near myself or my family.

Hi I'm going though this right now and it's like trying to fight an already lost battle my ex has done some major damage to my 2 beautiful children and social are saying I can't parent nt 2 because I have aspergus syndrome and am Incapable of change to better my children's life's yet I haven't done anything to hurt them and parent them to the best but lots of peoples standards I have people come up to me saying they wish they was half the parent I am if they ever became a parent so they are just using Mt disability against me because they want to remove the kids for no good reason 

My daughter is going through this right now they are taking her to court. They are cherry picking and discriminating. 

1. I had my baby daughter in 2018. I had an awful time too and I didn't get her back. I was undiagnosed autism and pregnant when I came back from Australia. It was a relationship breakdown, I was homeless, still grieving and confused about a relative's death and not on speaking terms with any of my family. I had to sign paperwork I didn't understand or where would lead to and was placed in a mother and baby foster placement for initially 12 weeks. I didn't understand what being in that placement would lead to. I was told to use the foster carers for help. After giving birth I went there to recover. It was particularly difficult for me to adjust but after the first few weeks I was having my daughter in the room with me. At the same time I was confused with a history of childhood sexual abuse which wasn't helped by the foster carer sharing details about a mother sexually abusing her 2 year old daughter. I was terrified I would be the same. Then I was referred to a team that I understood were meant to help me bond with my daughter. However later I discovered everyone was assessing me with extreme criticism. I didn't understand anything and was exhausted from caring for my daughter. I didn't get compassion or sympathy. I got a wrong suggestion of a diagnosis that lead to a series of mistakes by child services. I wasn't even given a parenting assessment at the time I was forced to leave the placement. The suggestion was disassociative identity disorder and I was seen at a high risk of violence. However the diagnosis was disregarded by the professionals in the field who then said I had ASD. I was shocked. I had never felt so let down in my life by a system I trusted. Before that was discovered I was forced to have contact in public places which as an autistic person would know would cause extreme anxiety and stress especially after being told you were being assessed to the point you had a 50/50 chance of having her adopted. Sadly I didn't have family or friends that could help me, my ex partner's Mum in Australia stopped her from being adopted but now my daughter is on the other side of the world. All I ever wanted was to be my daughter's Mum and do the best by her. All I wanted was a bit of respite each day so I'd have the energy to care for her. In the foster placement it was chaos. Children and adults in and out all the time, the dogs barking at the door. I never could sleep. My mistake was to ever trust child services. People hell-bent on destroying families through their lack of emotion and empathy towards struggling families. I will never forgive them for what they did to me and my daughter.

The blood of parents who took their own lives as a result of losing contact with their children is in the hands of social services UK.

This evil system need to be reformed.

It might be a good idea to contact some local disability rights groups and get involved with them for a while to find out how you can support social workers to better understand autism and to maybe help them to be able to help autistic parents to better overcome their difficulties.

You weren't clear who you would like to bring awareness to but I'm guessing that you're talking about social workers. Maybe you could go into social work departments and give talks and information on autism?

Whatever approach you take or however you decide to contribute, I'm sure the disability rights groups would be able to help you to device a plan of what steps you will need to take.

Good luck. I think it's very honourable for you to do this. I know when I was a parent, it was all I could do just to keep it together as a parent, without working, paid or unpaid. I think it's great you can do that. We need more people like you. Thank you and good luck because I know I could have used some help with raising my son when he was still a child.

Hello,

That's a terrible story and I'm glad it all worked out. I'm not a parent so haven't specifically had the experience of witnessing something specifically related to autism, but I have witnessed social services in action using their power to steamroll ahead with their own agenda without full evidence of the situation so I'm well aware of the inadequacies of the system.

My sister's first child, my oldest nephew, was almost adopted out of the family. As a baby at the time, he was rushed to hospital one day from the home of the child minder. I don't want to go into too much detail as it's not my story to tell, but I'll state the basics. In Hospital he was found to have suffered some brain injuries that could only have happened from intentional physical abuse so the Hospital was right to contact social services. The problem was that before social services had done any investigating their immediate response was "We're taking him away from the family and putting him up for adoption because statistics say it's most likely the parents. Therefore, in this individual circumstance it must be the parents."

In the first instance, my sister believed that the system would be fair, so her initial response was to state her innocence believing social services would investigate and find her innocent. Therefore, she took no action to get legal professionals to act for her. In that short space of time social services had the power to do anything they wanted. My initial response was to get legal professionals on board as quickly as possible because I didn't trust them. We had some lucky factors in our circumstances, but when social services and the police are failing to do their jobs properly while operating from a very biased perspective that my sister and her husband were the abusers you can understand how easily things could have gone so wrong for our family. So, the system wasn't fair on my sister and her husband, the lives of all our family got so disrupted, but in the end the judge, who acted very fairly and listened with an open mind found my sister and her husband innocent while finding the child minder guilty.

At the end of it all, social services and the police never apologised for their failings or their bias from the beginning. If some of our circumstances may have been different we may not have been so lucky. I have no doubts that there are people who have been let down and failed by the system so I feel a great deal of sadness for any family that gets broken up simply because the system decrees it without proper evidence or investigation.

I'm glad you got your daughter back.

"Cherry picking evidence"  that's the phrase I was looking for earlier.   I'm glad you said it.  Because that's what was used to fire me from my last job.

Hi ya, 

Before I gave birth to my daughter I had a lot of anxiety about becoming a Mom. I had nothing to compare it to because this was my first baby and I was scared and worried about what it was going to be like so I sort help and support from social services thinking that they would support me. It was the worst decision I made in my life and social services certainly did not help or support me. In fact they set me up to fail and by the time my daughter was 7 weeks old they had taken her.

I also had really poor legal representation and they decided that because I had a diagnosis of autism, I didn't have capacity despite medical records making it clear that I had full capacity. Social services cherry picked evidence to make it appear that I could not parent my daughter. They withheld from the court all the positive evidence so the judge was deceived and because I had majorly poor representation my solicitor at the time did not make enquiries to collate the positive evidence which was readily available at the time.

I did change solicitors and went to a solicitor who helped me show the court how underhanded social services had been. The judge also ruled that the evidence should not have been withheld and the judge at the time should have seen all the evidence and had that happened my daughter would not have been removed. 

How do social services even get involved or find out a parent is autistic to start with??

So glad you have your daughter back. So wrong it ever had to be something you had to go through.