Family and Friends Forum

Hi all,



I’ve never posted on here before but have been a member for a while now just reading other people’s posts.



I wanted to share my experience of dealing with social services in the hope that it may help others. For me, dealing with social services was definitely the most difficult and daunting part of the whole ordeal.



So brief background; we had the knock in July 2018 and my husband was eventually charged with making 3 Cat A, 3 Cat B and 70 Cat C images. He was sentenced in April 2019.



During the time from knock to sentencing I fell pregnant with our first child. Social services became involved in March 2019.



Right from the start I was honest in telling them that I did not believe my husband would ever harm our child. This was of course not what they wanted to hear and I’m sure it made things much more difficult for us than they could have been but I wasn’t going to lie to them. This also made them see me as not a protective parent.



We had lots of meetings and assessments prior to our baby being born, including a child protection conference where our unborn child was made subject to a child protection plan (CPP) and we also entered the Public Law Outline (PLO) process. My understanding is that the CPP and PLO are about as serious as it can get without actually going to court and having a child taken.



The outcome of all of this was that my husband could be present at the birth of his son (in July 2019) however he would not be allowed back on to the ward with us and then, when we were discharged from hospital, it would be to my parents house and my husband would be allowed no contact with our son outside of a contact centre until social services decided otherwise. We also had a pre discharge meeting when leaving hospital where we had to sign a consequences and agreements document which, if we didn’t follow, social services would start court proceedings.



Contact between my husband and son was agreed to be twice a week for 2 hours in a contact centre, supervised by a member of their staff and social services also carried out unannounced visits to my parents house (pretty much every week to start with) to check my husband wasn’t there. This went on for 3.5 months.



An action on the CPP was that both me and my husband would speak to a specialist who would then complete a risk assessment based on his conversations with us both. The purpose of the risk assessment was to basically decide where we went next. That risk assessment was completed and the outcome was that the expert deemed my husband not a risk to our son, now or in the future, and I was deemed a protective parent.



Therefore in November me and our son were allowed to move back home and my husband does not have to be supervised with our son. So essentially back to a ‘normal’ family life.



Social services are currently still involved and our son is still on the CPP however, we have a review child protection conference early in the new year so maybe he will come off the CPP then.



I know we have been incredibly lucky and we were obviously very happy with this outcome however were very shocked at how quickly everything changed. I also appreciate that social services seem to work totally differently depending on what area you live in so it very much seems to be luck of the draw in terms of area and also what your social worker is like.



I just wanted to share to show that sometimes things can be pretty bad and seem like they’ll never get better and then suddenly everything can totally change.

Partner,

I’m glad that my experience has helped in some way.

Yes the process is awful and I also feel it’s terrible how much things vary with social services, makes it difficult to really know what to expect when dealing with them.

Thank you and I hope everything works out positively and how you would like it to in time.



Rainbow,

I totally understand being intimidated and scared about it all, I felt the same and still do to some extent.

I cannot really offer any advice but all I would say is stand your ground with them. Make it clear what you want to happen while still making it clear you are aware of any risks etc and let them know what you will/are doing to manage those risks. Do not let them intimidate you in to backing down. There were times throughout my experience with them where I felt they were trying to put pressure on me to change my way of thinking and basically say I wanted nothing to do with my husband. I just kept remembering that it is my life and my sons life (despite it not feeling like that half the time with SS!) and I definitely have a right to make it clear how I want our future to look!

I really hope things go well when you broach the subject with them and you get the outcome you want, even if this does take a bit of time.



I just wanted to add to my original post; we have not yet had our review conference however our SW visited and has said at the conference she will recommend we go from a child protection plan to a child in need plan. She then said that we can expect to be on that for around 3 months and then, all being well, our son can come off that plan and they will close the case.

This gentleman carried out mine and my partners assessments

He basically just asked questions about us, from childhood until now pretty much, to get an idea about our lives and what shaped us in to who we are today I guess. He spoke to/asked questions of both of us in relation to my husbands offence and, based on our answers, he wrote his report. I must say, out of all the different people we have come in to contact with during the process, he was by far the most helpful and least judgmental out of everyone. It was really good to talk to him. I really hope you’ll have a similar experience.