Your worst nightmare.....

[pink_sparkles]

...or at least mine, sorry its so long but i just thought id see if anyone has had any simular experiences.

So i'm 25 with a 4 year old son who is the most precious little thing in my life, for the majority of this time ive been single, dad walked out on us when my son was a couple of months old, to start with i had a horrendous pregnancy mentally due to the lack of interest dad showed and also his attitude towards me suced, treated me like dirt and reminded me how useless i was for not eepin up with housework, so basically a total complete toss-pot he was, and still is. I'm 21 at the time and left with this baby who i love from the second i found out i was pregnant with him, i unfortunatly got a lil depressed but eventually got myself back together again, in the meantime of that depression i had a referal from social services checkin up on me, so they came out told me to make a few alterations in the house and left me to it, never saw them again.

Then comes April 2009 i started seein this fella who i had known a couple of months, he seemd nice and we had common interest, i was reluctent to get into anythin at foirst but thought to myself"come on u cant be on ur own forever just give it a shot" so i did. BIGGEST MISTAKE OF MY LIFE.
At the time he seemed to get on fine with my son, after a few months he started gettin irritated by the fact i was short on babysitters to go out, i tried to explain i dont feel comfortable with leavin him with anyone but family members, he would then tell me i'm not tryin hard enough and how left out he felt when he went out with his friends and their girlfriends. Not my problem. My son stayed with his dad on saturday nights usually and the rest of the time he was with me, i felt tired once a saturday would come around and rarely went out.

Anyway, i get myself into college in septemeber and was looin forward to startin again after a long 5 year gap, all was well and then i get into the first week in october, one night the fella comes round sayin he;'s had an argument with his folks and asks if he can stay with me for a few days, i said ok. The guy was in my house for 9 days and my life changed drastically, my son started actin funny, he'd scream if he was left alone with the fella and i couldnt figure out why, i try and contact my health visitor to see if she could come out earlier than usual just to find she was off for the rest of the week and ring back the following week, nobody else was available. i asked advice from friends and they said my son is probably feelin a bit put out because theres a new man in the house and i thought this too. I wae my son up one morning where he has bruises on his face, and to cut a long story short after a trip to the hospital for advise my son is taken off me by social services and placed with his"come and go" dad even though i refused to have him placed there.

The fella was arrested a couple of days later and let off on bail and then i was arrested and released on bail, i couldnt see my son for almost 3 weeks and then charges were dropped against us both, oh and naturally that relationship was over as far as i was concerned as soon as the allogation was made, it made so muc h sense my son bein clingy, even though there wasnt enough proof, i know in my gut he had hurt my son.

So here i am 8 months on and ive only just managed to drop the supervision part time, ive had social crawlin over me like vultures, they also messed up big time in the beginning accusin me of bein a bad mum and now ive made an official compaint against them, we are also going for a full custody battle, social were on my son's dads side for so long it wasnt lookng good for me, its still going to take months to resolve. My son isnt as he used to be, he's not as well behaved as he was certain things about him have changed, his dads girlfriend looks after him most of the time, so ive been in bits over it even though my son has shown he wants to come home.

Now i'm pregnant with my second ive just told social services and they said it shoudl be ok and this one wont be taken from me as my reports are really good(well doh thats because im a good mum) they said i may need to have a pre-birth assessment. has anyone else had any experiences with social?? i'm just worried they are goin to pull a fast one on me.

Its been horriible without my son, i raised him well so far and intend to get him back but the whole experience has been heartbreaking.

 

[serenitylove]

oh dear sounds like you have proper been thru it all iv only had dealings with social services once when i lived with my girls dad who was a drunk/druggie and very violent once i had him removed after a bad assult a social worker turned up explained that if i had him back i would loose my girl she did a follow up check a fe months later and that was it she was very helpfull

hope all works out for you

 

[titch]

OMG hun, thats so horrible I hope everything resolves with your son and you get your family back in one piece.

I havent had any personal experience but I heard of a case years ago of a woman who had about 12 children, she had a lot of psychological problems and her children would be taken into care by the age of 3 or 4 usually because she wasnt able to care for them. Obviously thats nothing like your situation but I know that with every pregnancy she was given a fresh start, IMO she should have been given more support from the word go but it seemed to me that the social wanted to wait for everything to go wrong before doing anything in this case.

Anyway my point is, if that woman could be given a fresh start and not have her babies put into care, I would be completely gob smacked if you were given grief about the new baby. I suppose the prebirth assessment they could only check that you have a decent home to bring baby to and youre not living with anyone who has a criminal/drugs record or anything. So Im sure you'll be fine.

 

[pink_sparkles]

yeah i hope so, its just a shite system but i agree as above, instead of taking the kids away why not offer more support? everythin ive done to get my son back ive had to go look for it myself and found out about various courses i never knew existed and that arent advertised

 

[Simoneh00]

I've had really crap experinces with social work. My kids' dad was violent and that's how they became involved in the first place. But it quickly spiralled to them picking on everything from dog hair on the carpet to eva being scared of the hoover. I know you can refuse intervention from them and let them take you to court. I was about to go down this route when they decided to stop coming round (probably because they realised they wouldn't have a leg to stand on)

I hope it all works out for you

 

[ema-lou24]

i cant imagine how your managing to get through this! you must be such a strong lady. i think i would die if this happened to me TBH.
Me and my LO's dad split when he was 2 nearly 3, we made arrangements etc and when things didint go his way he would always say he was gonna fight 4 full custody but thankfully hes never had the balls to do this. He knoes he would never win cos my son is happy here, sees his dad at weekends, settled in at school etc

I hope you get your son back full time, i really cant imagine how your coping.x

 

[pink_sparkles]

i have no idea either how im copin, its probably hope im hangin on to, its been difficult to not show any sign of weakness cos i knew as soon as social would see that id be classed as an unstable mother, ive gone through loads of meetings and how i managed to not cry in those meetings is beyond me, i saved it all for when i was at home, i'd be ashamed to be a social worker now that ive seen how they really work