Mythbusting – why is it important

The contributors to this site all have a lot of experience of the system, from many different perspectives. We agree that sometimes professionals can act in a way that isn’t professional and this has the potential to do a lot of damage and cause a lot of stress and fear. However it is very important to remember that there is no ‘conspiracy’ and we hope this site will help you understand why certain things might be happening to you and your family.

We have a whole page dedicated to   ‘common concerns we hear from parents’  which we hope will reassure you.

We also direct you to this very useful advice from the suesspiciousminds blog that a lot of parents have told us that they have found very helpful.

We accept the professionals involved may not always get things right….

Lawyers, Social Workers and doctors are after all just other human beings. And we all have good days and bad days, we can all make mistakes. The mistakes that the professionals make however do have the potential to cause enormous harm. So we need to look out for bad practice and deal with it.

Sometimes doctors don’t agree about the medical evidence. Sometimes it is very difficult to predict what people will do, as we can see from the Serious Case Review into the death of Mick Philpott’s children.

….but

what we don’t accept are the views of some that the whole system is just corrupt; that SW routinely lie to take babies away because they get cash bonuses paid for doing so. We don’t accept it is ever good advice to leave the country rather than work with Children’s Services.

What we hope to do here is set out some of the more commonly repeated ‘myths’ that we think do the most harm. We are always open to discussion about what should be included here or what you think is unfairly included here. We just ask that the discussion is polite and based on evidence, wherever possible.

What we think is really bad advice….

Again we re-direct you to the suesspiciousminds blog  who already has some really good advice on this subject.

However we do want to say that the most important thing you can do is work with social services and not against them.  There are a lot of scaremongers out there who will tell you differently but usually their advice (flee the country, refuse to work with social services etc) only makes things worse for you and your children. If in doubt for the best advice consult your legal team. They are not part of a conspiracy. Honest!

This is an example of a serious case review when things went very badly for a family because they did not want to work with Children’s Services:

And here are the views of one mother who went through the system and kept her child

These “theories”, the statements being bandied around as fact yet without evidence, the advice that is being given to flee, to run, not to work openly and honestly, not to seek help when it’s needed, to be coached to say the “right” thing, never to trust a system or it’s workers – it’s not helpful to us, it frightens us even more. We hear these statements and believe them – because we are threatened with losing the most precious thing to us. And in a lot of cases we believe them because it’s easier than confronting our own failings as parents.

Yes, there are mistakes and miscarriages of justice. Nobody denies that. And it’s abhorrent and I for one feel sick for those children and parents.

But they are in the minority. It just feels like they aren’t because the public is much more likely to hear about them via the media.

As I said upthread, ss took my baby at birth. I believed that to be the wrong thing for MY CHILD. So I contested their plan of “forced adoption” and – lo and behold – justice was done and – very very recently – I won. I was steadfast, I did not give up.

But – more importantly – I confronted the reasons why this was happening to my family. And I worked and worked and worked to repair the damage I had done. I educated myself on the law, I searched desperately for advice […] I eventually put together bits and pieces of advice, put my case together and fought. In my search I came across the Theorists. They absolutely terrified me. I took their advice on board – noting that the path of staying, confronting, fighting was the much more difficult option.

I can categorically say if I had taken the Theorists advice, I would have lost my baby forever.

Having the balls to stay, to fight, to work in partnership with the very people opposing me meant my baby and I are to be together.