� KEEPING FAMILIES TOGETHER SHOULD BE AT THE CORE OF LOCAL AUTHORITIES CHILDREN`S SERVICES �

Current legislation, guidelines and policies state that, families who have social work involvement and are on the edge of care, should be given support to try and keep the family together. Early intervention and prevention is suppose to take priority.  Sadly, this is not happening due to the extreme safeguarding measures in place.

As it stands the majority of social services lack commitment to provide support and prevent children going into care.  In my case, I received support that wasn't suited to my situation, the initial social worker worked with me & my family, helped build relationships that were broken & regularly spent time with me & my children. The second social worker hardly spent anytime with the family and made opinions and assumptions based on malicious heresay and refused to speak to the people we put forward.  The social worker has not disclosed or discussed any of the statements made by people who are my enemies & my whole case lacks transparency.  This has wasted a huge amount of public money on court cases, additional agency workers, foster parent fee`s and the upkeep of my children.

Families have a right to be together and the government should provide sufficent funding to social services to help and support every family and make keeping families together a priority over safeguarding. Every family go through crisis’s and this should not be used as a means to remove children.

I recommend the government set targets and provide bonuses to social services who have the highest rate of successful intervention and successful prevention of children going into care, for keeping families together and reuniting children with their parents.

Due to the nature of the children and families cases and the amount of people getting emotionally and psychologically scarred by social services getting it wrong, I recommend that every child on the edge of care, children with child protection issues and children in care be appointed an external, independent safeguarder who cannot be influenced by the social services and multi agencies working with the child.  At the moment you have to ask for a safeguarded and it is up to the panel if one is to be appointed.

Children can be easily influenced, become frightened on what to say, suggestions can be made to them and children often guess what adults want to hear. The information that is given to social services & multi agencies needs to be explored with the child more fully and the consequences of any allegation made clear to the child.  I know when one of my children tells a lie, that I explain how harmful lies can be & that telling the truth is better than getting other people into trouble.

Parent alienation is too common amongst children who have social services involvement. I recommend that all children and parents that have children on the edge of care, child protection issues and children in care be appointed an external and independent advocate for each individual.

Social services should understand that the best interest for a child is to be with their birth family and do everything they can to return the children to their parents.  This is not happening in the UK, currently social services think the best interest is out with their family due to being settled.  The fact that foster parents are employed to look after the children and monitored, should be taken into consideration, along with recognition that separating a child from their family has devastating consequences on both the child and the parent.  More education about child/parent separation should be taught to social service workers.  This subject is well researched and studied, the findings are that a high majority of children brought up in care are not successful in adulthood and have mental health problems.

Children services do not care about the mental health of the parents and other family members.  More education is needed in this area and a policy made to protect and safeguard parents from having lifelong mental health issues due to parent/child separation and the psychological impact of reading professional opinion that is misleading.  For the last year I have felt that staff are purposely psychologically and emotionally abusing me, they have no regards for how upsetting the situation is and give no time for you to process your emotions, they use the fact that you are upset/depressed against you and fail to see that if they hadn’t taken the children then upset and depression would not occur. Each individual processes situations differently, having different coping mechanism & processing method.

A parent who has concerns for their child and informs the authorities should never be accused of having mental health issues and accused of abuse and neglect.  This is a ludicrous practice that multi agencies are doing to parents and it must stop.  A neglectful parent would not approach the authorities if they didn't care.

I call for a full public enquiry into the practices of social services, with all current cases looked at by an independent source before more irreparable damage is done.  100`s of families have been ripped apart in the UK and cases of parents committing suicide due to social services and multi agencies getting it wrong, lying, falsifying reports so they can put children into care permanently.  The permanence order is sought far too quickly with very little evidence put together to make an important decision of a child’s future.

Heresay should never be used as evidence, gossiping is a part of our society and people naturally say nasty things about the people they do not get along with.  Giving power to gossips is a dangerous act.  The person who knows the best of what is happening is the person who is living the life, not a nasty neighbour or a controlling family member.

Computer system logging and reports should have something in place where staff cannot go back and amend information, this will help stop the falsifying of reports.  If a report is to be amended, this should stand out on the newest report by either highlighting it in colour of changing it into italics, the original statement should stay on the report and be put in a separate box and stay on the document, this will help identify mistakes that staff make. Reports should have a computer time & date stamp and be printed & put into reports under each individual agency as this would prove that the information put into the computer logging system was correct as that specific date and time. Currently the social worker gathers the information from other agencies and inputs it into their reports, this leads to another person interpreting the information and the information may be writing in a different context.

The government needs to address the issues I have raised in order to make the system fairer, unbiased and more honest. Our future generation depends on this system, damaged children is a real issue that needs to be address immediately.

Childhood experiences influence your whole life, at the core of every damaged person is emotional issues that were not addressed in childhood. Trauma based care need to be at the forefront, this would address many issues people face today, it would lower drug addiction & crime and produce a safer place for us all to live.