Social services in the UK have got away with abuse to children for far too long. They abuse there powers and believe they can say or do as they wish. The whole point of social services is to save children that are abused, but personally I have seen time and time again, they pray on the weak, and the people that don't have the knowledge to fight back when they have not actually done any wrong. Yet the majority of children that are abused by there parents or family, are still with there abusers because they know the law and the system so social services won't bother because its too much hard work.

My partner has 3 children in care, because she ASKED FOR HELP, she had a anxiety breakdown because of historic abuse she suffered herself for many years by a number of members of her family and knew she needed help, social services agreed to help whilst she booked HERSELF in for treatment. She never abused her children in any way shape or form, loved them very much and was why she took the action she did.

Upon receiving treatment from the hospital which took a little longer than anticipated, social services took her to court after just 6 weeks to gain a full care order, using her historic abuse as the reason, they told many lies and exaggerated the situation. She was made to go to the court from the hospital whilst receiving treatment and in a bad way to fight her case.

3 years on, she has had glowing reports from everyone else involved, doctors, psychologists, support workers etc, apart from social services.

This would of been a lot sooner if social services had done their job and supported my partner in bringing the family back together, instead they prolonged her condition by making her have supervised contacts and only seeing the children for an hour every couple of weeks.

There was NO reason for this.

We have now a beautiful 7 month baby boy, of which social services did get involved because she has Children in care, standard procedure,  after 3 months of our baby boy being born she was completely signed off by social services, but by a different social worker who had nothing to do with the previous 3 children, again with glowing reports.

The first 3 months of our baby being born was hell on earth, due to social services putting in a MASH report to the hospital which we seen because the hospital left our baby's hospital records lying around so we read what was in it. The heading of the report was NEGLECT. This has NEVER been the case, she asked for help, they didn't just come in and take the children. Most hospital staff we dealt with looked down at us and had many attitude problems until we found this report and put the record straight. 

The reason why it was put down as neglect is because they only have a few options to choose from on the form, when doing the report, they said there was not an option for our situation so they put down as neglect even though this was not ever the case. 

We have been fighting to get the children that are in care, back home for the last 2 years, we have done everything they have asked and jumped through their hoops.

The youngest 2 children are with one Foster carer, whilst the eldest went to a different Foster carer which there was reason for this.

The eldest has a fantastic Foster carer who knows their role as Foster carer and has been brilliant throughout, unfortunately the 2 youngest were with a Foster carer who believes because she has the paperwork to say they are to reside with her, that she is now their mum. This woman has completely abused her position as a Foster carer and has acted like they are adopted, which is not the case. She has used psychological manipulation against these children to get her own way at every turn and unbelievably with the support of social services, who have also used the same tactics on the children.

For example, the Foster carer has constantly reminded the 2 children why they are in care because their mum can't look after them, she has not made any effort for them to keep in contact with their brother who lives not very far away, no regular calls or contact, only contact they have all together is when they seen their mum at a contact center for an hour once a fortnight.

Another example, the 2 youngest children did not want to have a vaccine for the latest cronovirus pandemic as scared of needles, so the Foster carer told the children that if they don't have it and they caught the virus, they would pass on to their baby brother and he will die!, when they were dropped of for contact, my partners daughter was very distressed and in floods of tears, she's only 12. When she explained why, I took the decision to speak with the Foster carer myself in private. I explained to the Foster carer that they were very upset, especially the daughter because of what she said to them. She shouted at the top of her voice she was a liar, jumped out of her car and very aggressively walked towards my partner who was with the children, screaming at them to get in the car. Because of how she reacted we told the children to wait with us and she got more aggressive so we took the decision to ring the police because it was so serious and did not feel comfortable sending the kids back with her whilst she was so angry when it was a delicate situation for the children as it was. The police did not attend as they were extremely busy so we rang social services but had to ring out of hours team. After a couple of hours we spoke to the police again as we had no reply from social services who said they would call back. The police chased them up and we got a call explaining the children have got to go back with the Foster carer as she is the legal guardian, when the situation calmed down, we done just that as we didn't want to cause ourselves issues with future contacts. We were advised to tell the Foster carer that they were to go home but not discuss the situation until the next day when things had settled and their own social worker could sort the situation. Upon returning home they were grilled about the situation for a couple of hours. Social services did not take any action but said they would be supervising the Foster carer of which we have seen no evidence this ever happened.

Another incident the youngest informed us of was that he had travelled in the boot of the car on 2 separate occasions because there was no room, because of other adults in the car, once abroad and once in the UK, we put in a formal complaint, and was told that the Foster carers social worker would speak to the Foster carer and we would receive their response. This took a number of months even though we asked regularly what was happening but was told the Foster carers social worker had not asked yet. A few months later we had a meeting via Microsoft teams and both social workers were present including the Foster carer so I took the opportunity to ask the Foster carers social worker directly, she looked confused and said she had given her reply months ago, so I then said to the children's social worker where is this report, she said she has it somewhere but will discuss after the meeting. She did not do this and took another 3 weeks to give us the response which we have not received an official copy, was just told over the phone that she admits to this happening once whilst abroad just to keep the holiday spirit going but never happened in the uk as she obviously knew she would be liable for prosecution if she did. So once again no action was taken.

Since being with my partner for last 2 and half years, I have managed to completely turn things around, no supervised contacts, the children could come to the house and was about to go through the process for the children to come home which was begrudgingly suggested by the social worker after I made a complaint about the Foster carer because she tried to accuse me of being inappropriate because I gave my partners daughter a hug, a hug she asked for! I got on with all the children fantasticly. Because of the many complaints I had made about this Foster carer who we have constant problems with and said how can you not do anything about someone who constantly breaks the rules and abuses her position, the reply I got shocked me, the social worker said because we don't have anyone else! so the social worker suggested about them coming home for good. It was explained it would not be a quick process but first thing is to have a permancy meeting to discuss the viability of the children returning home, she did not need to speak to the children because she knew they would love to go back home, but we were not to discuss it with the children until after this meeting and she would monitor how the children feel as we go through the process.

The social worker came to our house a week before the meeting to discuss how we would keep the children in their activities and how we would go about it. We said they can still do the things they enjoy, but some of the activities may have to change places due to the distance, but would still do the same activities.

The day before the meeting, the social worker went to see the youngest 2 children and asked them how they would feel about going home, when they replied yes they would love to, she immediately followed up with, if you do, you will lose all of your activities and so they backed down and said they would like to stay where they were with the Foster carer. 

An hour before the meeting we had a call from the social worker to say she has cancelled the meeting because the kids don't want to come home, even though she knew this the day before. She did say that the children would be able to change their mind if they wished but we were not to discuss the situation with them as it may make them feel awkward.

We agreed to this but after a couple of weeks my partners daughter spoke to her mum and said she had changed her mind and wanted to come home. We simply said we cannot do this for you and that she needs to speak with the social worker or maybe the school support worker as otherwise it would look like we are trying to coherse the children. 

She spoke to school support worker who we thought was a nice person, and all she got was, I feel really sorry for you. 

She spoke to us again and said they did not listen to her and didnt know what to do, so we advised to try again if not the social worker. 

She tried again to the school and was told, did she think that she could tell her mum to stop hassling her about going home. She replied no, because its not my mum asking. This upset her as she was not being listened to so she then spoke to the social worker who said not until year 11, so another 4 YEARS!!, completely opposite of what she said to them before the meeting.

The social worker for the children has since left in December and before she left she took the children to McDonald's to say goodbye. Whilst at McDonald's she told the children that they can't go back home because mum has a baby now and cannot look after you aswell!!

When we were told this, we then did try chasing the social worker ourselves and it got turned around that we were hassling the kids so much so, they stopped ALL CONTACT INC PHONE CALLS over Christmas when we were expecting the children to have their first Christmas after a few years at home with thier mum and myself, with just the 2 youngest children saying everyone needs a breather because there is divided loyalties with the children and causing upset. The only upset was caused by social services themselves and the one Foster carer.

Since then the social worker and Foster carer have done everything in their power to make sure coming home didn't happen and colluded together to coherse the children to change their minds, so much so that the youngest child apparently has requested to go back on supervised contacts! When his mum spoke to him recently, she asked him why he wants to go on supervised contact, the Foster carer was in the background telling him what to say.

My partner now feels she has lost her 2 youngest children and understandably upset which has now made myself feel anxious about the future.

 

Social services are guilty of maladministration and keep saying to us to go get a solicitor which they know will cost us and impact us financially.

Of all the complaints we have made, we never have had any straight answers or feel anything has been properly addressed.

 

So we call for an independent body, free of government and social services to monitor what they are up to when complaints like this arise and have seen and spoke to many people in the same situation. Such as when a parent has been abused in their past and has been used against them even though they have done no wrong. This I believe is just so they can have their funding, more children that are in care, the funding they get.

Their job is to keep family's together wherever possible, not split them up.