Family and Friends Forum

If they are not under a child protection plan, you can ask them not to go school, and to see the children elsewhere.

They will be asking the children questions about their home life and relationship with you and their dad. It will be part of an assessment to see what level of risk the children may be at.

You can tell the SW not to say anything about the case to them - you have parental responsibility and can make these decisions for the children, and SS have to listen to you unless they think the children are at immediate risk of significant harm

Hi there, I made it very clear to both social services and the school that under no circumstances were social services to speak to my children without my prior awareness and explicit approval, and if I did give approval, any interactions were to be in my presence. I did not give that approval, and so social services did not go to the school. They came to our house one time for a very high-level conversation in our home - and I wasn't even comfortable with that.

I also said verbally and put in writing that under no circumstances were social services or the school to discuss the details of their father's offending with the children. Those conversations were for their father and I to have them - and we did in a very careful and age appropriate way. I continue to answer their questions - always honestly, but typically with a limited version of the truth. I see no benefit in traumatising them even more that they already have been.

And even when their dad was released from prison, I objected to a further social services 'interview' and assessment. Instead, we signed a 'written agreement' that meets all parties' requirements.

Throughout, I have found childrens' services to be a source of enormous stress, anxiety, judgement, confusion and unease. They have never either offered nor provided the slightest bit of help, support or indication that they have any empathy at all for the horrific, life-changing situation we find ourselves in - through No. Fault. Of. Our. Own.

My children are a similar age to yours and we hadn't shared anything about what had happened with the kids when SS said they were going to go into school to talk to them, which I was really stressed about.

I spoke with both the head and the SW together and the head agreed he would tell my kids that there was someone coming into school to check how people were getting on at the start of term and they had been chosen to speak to the lady. I also spoke with the SW and agreed that she wouldnt share anything about what had happened with the children.

It ended up being a high level conversation about what they enjoyed, what home life was like etc and was fine. I had been so worried about it beforehand but am glad i intervened with school and the SW beforehand.

Hope it goes ok.

If you do decide to tell your child...(we had to, Social services insisted and tried to escalate us to a child protection plan when we questioned). I can strongly recommend a book (also available being read as a story on YouTube) called "somebody should have told me" by Holly Ann Martin. It's really age appropriate and good for anyone to let their kids know of the dangers online. We used this to explain that even grown ups can get into trouble on the internet without always meaning to, and then let them know that dad had been talking to strangers online and police were worried the strangers might have asked dad to break the rules and so things you're not supposed to. That the police are very busy and it can take a long time to find all the information on the internet so we have to wait and Dad has to do classes to learn how to be safe, and when we see him other grown ups have to be there too to make sure he is ok and that we are also ok. Once the police have found out all the information they can tell us what happens next but don't worry, the trusted grown ups will help with this and you can ask us any questions and we'll tell you what we know as soon as we have more information but we might not know the answers for a while yet.

Holdingthegrenade - your approach to explaining to the youngsters is so gentle, thoughtful, moderate and considerate. Authorities could learn a lot from your empathetic approach.

Thank you tatters. That means a lot as I had a bit of a fight trying to word it right with a lot of draft versions. Others wanted me to put more detail and extra words I didn't think age appropriate or factually correct. Although my child is very bright; they are still young, very emotional and sensitive which I felt was not being taken into account. My focus was on the kindest way to word it; they were all about making sure child knew as much as possible so they could be "protected". I focused on not putting anything that was not true or would worry them with additional things that we had no certainty of at the time. Dad may have, rather than he has. No future promises I can't keep or things that will raise questions I can't answer.