Beside myself with worry over Social Services and my son

[embeth]

How stressful for you. I can't imagine how you must be feeling,hopefully once he has his checks he'll be back home with you xxx

 

[Moolia]

I totally understand you feeling that way. I would be in pieces too if it were my child.
The only advice I can really offer is try your hardest to look at the positives in this situation: your son has a serious injury but is going to be fine (that's the most important thing); the hospital are monitoring him and making sure there's no underlying condition so you can be reassured he's ok; SS the doctors and you all want what is best for your son. I am sure SS will see that and will let him come home soon. Try not to worry about the worst because worrying won't actually change anything and all that not eating and not sleeping will do is make you less rational and less able to be strong for your son. Remember that SS need to see that you are in a fit state to look after your children. I know all of that is easier said than done when you're going through such a worrying time.
I don't have any experience with SS but is it possible to speak to them and explain your feelings? Maybe they would reassure you?
I hope everything works out well and quickly for you and your family x

 

[susan_1981]

My sister in law has experience with social services. Nothing to do with her. It's her partner. He's been in prison but has never ever harmed a child. She has said numerous times that they are an absolute nightmare. And just from googling it (evil I know!), there are just too many horror stories.

But I do know that they have to do their jobs and they have procedures to follow. I just feel like they are tearing my family apart. If my son was being kept in as they wanted to observe him, that would be fine. But he isn't. They said he would have been allowed to come home but because it was an "unwitnessed" accident, he can't. They have said the fracture is very minor and will heal on its own.

My son isn't even allowed to leave the ward. Yesterday, my husband was there while I went home to get some stuff and the nurse came in and almost had a panic attack when she couldn't see where my son was. He was sleeping in his buggy.

It's so difficult and I keep trying to rationalise with myself that there's nothing I can do about it. He's in safe hands. I just can't get it out of my mind that there could be a risk that he's taken away from me.

My 2 year old is missing his brother so badly. He never wakes in the night but woke last night crying in his sleep and saying "no no no". When he got up, I said "shall we go see the bub (that's what he calls his brother) and he got so excited and ran to his room but he wasn't there. So then he ran to the top of the stairs thinking he was down there. When we got downstairs and he realised he wasn't there, he started crying and saying "bub" over and over again and only calmed down when I told him that we needed to get his shoes on so that we can go see the bub.

My sister and mum have both said they've never seen my youngest so sad. He's such a happy boy. He was eating fine until we took him to hospital. Now he barely wants to eat and his diet is mainly formula at the moment. He's stressed, my other son is stressed, my husband is stressed. We are all going through emotional hell yet people on here say I'm overreacting x

 

[redlemonade]

I don't think I'm overreacting. People have had their children taken away for less than this. He would have been able to come home the following day but because they are investigating this, they won't let him home.

I don't understand how anyone could say I'm potentially overreacting when innocent families have their children taken from them, sometimes for things less than this. I've stupidly read some horror stories on situations like this. One lady took her daughter to hospital because her 3 year old fell on her leg and fractured it. The hospital came to the conclusion that they didn't think this could have caused the injury. They took her children away from her.

I don't know any of the peoples history or past in these cases obviously but it puts the absolute fear of god in me.

And no, I don't have any form of depression, post natal or otherwise. I can't eat, I can't sleep. My children are the most important things in my whole life. And if there is even a slight risk that they could be taken away from me, I'm going to feel like this! I don't think I'd be human if I didn't feel this way.

Innocent families don't get their kids taken away from them. Don't read those stories, they'll just needlessly upset you.

I hope my earlier post didn't offend you. I just thought it sounded like they needed to do tests because of the incident being 'unwitnessed', not because they were investigating you for wrong doing. Because it was unwitnessed, they were probably concerned about other injuries as a result of the fall that weren't immediately obvious?

I hope he's home soon

 

[susan_1981]

Thank you but innocent families do get their children taken away, even if it's temporary. My mother in law was telling me about her friend whose child managed to hurt themselves by the ironing board or something falling on them. Then their uncle came to see the child later and he kind of lifted the child in the air, you know, harmless kind of thing that children love, and he accidentally banged her head on the light. She took her daughter to hospital because she'd bumped her head (I don't think it fractured). They took her daughter away until they had further investigations.

I can't help but worry and I think anyone in my situation would be the same.

 

[makemeamammy]

Oh my goodness, this story is terrifying!! Big hugs to you! I just can't understand how this is social services doing their jobs and following procedure and I work with children!! How can it possibly be normal procedure to investigate every family whose child bumps their head? Especially given the stage of development that your child is at? My LO is at the same stage and falls several times every day even with me right there! It only takes a second! What, exactly, do they think you've done wrong? Doesn't every child at this stage of development fall over and bang their head?

Did the children of these social workers and/or whoever reported you never bang their heads at this stage of development? It's just pure luck that mine has only ever banged her head on carpet (once on the glass in the living room door but no bump thankfully). My friend's LO is similar age but is walking and starting to run and he has a good few wee marks on his face and head from falling over loads. I was in for an hour earlier and he must have tripped about five times in that hour! How on earth are you supposed to avoid that? Xx

 

[makemeamammy]

^^^op I hope my above post doesn't come across as accusatory towards you as that's definitely not how it's intended xx

 

[Cariad_x]

I can assure you that innocent families do NOT have their children just taken away and stories stating otherwise are exaggerated, missing information or scaremongering. As I've stated before on a previous thread, obtaining a child removal order is extremely difficult and rare. And I say this having friends who are social workers and working with them in a professional capacity.

I understand that this is upsetting for you but it's simply not the case that your child would be let home the following day following a skull fracture. A head injury is dangerous at the best of times let alone in a child. I had an adult patient become self injurious to the point where they developed a minor skull fracture and they were kept in the head injury unit for a week. This is entirely normal.

The reason your son is not allowed to leave the ward is because of how quickly a complication with a head injury can develop. Likewise his BP being taken frequently - it's an easy to monitor test that will show any issues quickly. He's in the best place he can be.

 

[Shandelion]

I don't know anything about the social services, although the services there (I think you're UK?) sound terrifying! Best of luck there, I hope they're sane with you.

As someone who's has several skull fractures...unless the head is hugely damaged, they can only let it heal on its own. That they won't go in to repair it is not a sign of it being small. Maybe they said it was minor to reassure you? As others have said, there's no such thing as a minor skull fracture. They seriously misled you if they said he could have gone home the next day. The headaches, nausea, vomiting, inability to stand...there are so many repercussions. I was in the hospital for days with relatively minor fractures. It took me four days to keep food down, alone. I couldn't walk straight. The pain was unbearable. Had they released him, you'd have been right to file charges against them for negligence.

 

[mum22ttc#3]

Don't have any experience but just wanted to send can only imagine how scary this is for you.

 

[Quackquack99]

I don't have any experience with ss but I do think they are doing their jobs just to make sure. There are many children who slip through the net and I guess they are trying to avoid it. Fingers crossed everything comes back fine.

 

[sheldonsmommy]

My sister in law has experience with social services. Nothing to do with her. It's her partner. He's been in prison but has never ever harmed a child. She has said numerous times that they are an absolute nightmare. And just from googling it (evil I know!), there are just too many horror stories.

But I do know that they have to do their jobs and they have procedures to follow. I just feel like they are tearing my family apart. If my son was being kept in as they wanted to observe him, that would be fine. But he isn't. They said he would have been allowed to come home but because it was an "unwitnessed" accident, he can't. They have said the fracture is very minor and will heal on its own.

My son isn't even allowed to leave the ward. Yesterday, my husband was there while I went home to get some stuff and the nurse came in and almost had a panic attack when she couldn't see where my son was. He was sleeping in his buggy.

It's so difficult and I keep trying to rationalise with myself that there's nothing I can do about it. He's in safe hands. I just can't get it out of my mind that there could be a risk that he's taken away from me.

My 2 year old is missing his brother so badly. He never wakes in the night but woke last night crying in his sleep and saying "no no no". When he got up, I said "shall we go see the bub (that's what he calls his brother) and he got so excited and ran to his room but he wasn't there. So then he ran to the top of the stairs thinking he was down there. When we got downstairs and he realised he wasn't there, he started crying and saying "bub" over and over again and only calmed down when I told him that we needed to get his shoes on so that we can go see the bub.

My sister and mum have both said they've never seen my youngest so sad. He's such a happy boy. He was eating fine until we took him to hospital. Now he barely wants to eat and his diet is mainly formula at the moment. He's stressed, my other son is stressed, my husband is stressed. We are all going through emotional hell yet people on here say I'm overreacting x

I would be absolutely beside myself if this happened to me. I'm so sorry your family has to go through this.

I don't have much advice to offer, except that maybe googling stories isn't the best way to pass your time. I'm sure it's easy to find horror stories when you look for them.

I hope everything is put right very soon for you, and if I was in your shoes I think I'd just have to trust that the social services system will not fail you when they realize there is no potential danger to your babies.

 

[meli1981]

Im sending you huge my three yo daughter just had an accident the other day....ran into my older daughters bed while having a blanket on her head...ended up with a huge goose egg inbetween her eyes as well as a black eye...im terrified of going out for fear of someone thinking i abuse her....what the hells this world coming to?!
Hoping hes released home soon

 

[pinkpolkadot]

Big hugs OP you must be so stressed, I hope he is home with you soon My DD1 fell and fractured her arm when she was younger, she didn't make a fuss at all so we didn't even realise. Because we didn't take her in right away we were thoroughly grilled which was scary but thankfully she wasn't kept in.

 

[susan_1981]

Oh my goodness, this story is terrifying!! Big hugs to you! I just can't understand how this is social services doing their jobs and following procedure and I work with children!! How can it possibly be normal procedure to investigate every family whose child bumps their head? Especially given the stage of development that your child is at? My LO is at the same stage and falls several times every day even with me right there! It only takes a second! What, exactly, do they think you've done wrong? Doesn't every child at this stage of development fall over and bang their head?

Did the children of these social workers and/or whoever reported you never bang their heads at this stage of development? It's just pure luck that mine has only ever banged her head on carpet (once on the glass in the living room door but no bump thankfully). My friend's LO is similar age but is walking and starting to run and he has a good few wee marks on his face and head from falling over loads. I was in for an hour earlier and he must have tripped about five times in that hour! How on earth are you supposed to avoid that? Xx

I completely agree with you. If there was a history of violence in the family, or there were any concerns about us from the past, I could completely understand this. But all they've done is scare me. I'm now petrified that one of them is going to hurt themselves so I've now become over-protective. Accidents happen all the time at that age. My son is only 10 months old. He's still got so much to learn. I can't stop him exploring, he needs to explore, but now every movement he makes, I'm there with my arms surrounding him in case he falls. The nurse on the ward was telling me that her daughter fell out of a shopping trolley.

I can understand that they want to do checks on him but the injury (although they have't said) must line up with my version of what happened. I just didn't see it happen. My mum is now wondering if perhaps he hit his head on a table on the way down as they were starting snack time at softplay.

But I got 6 hours sleep tonight which is a vast improvement on the 2.5 I had the night before. I just want him home xxx

 

[susan_1981]

My sister in law has experience with social services. Nothing to do with her. It's her partner. He's been in prison but has never ever harmed a child. She has said numerous times that they are an absolute nightmare. And just from googling it (evil I know!), there are just too many horror stories.

But I do know that they have to do their jobs and they have procedures to follow. I just feel like they are tearing my family apart. If my son was being kept in as they wanted to observe him, that would be fine. But he isn't. They said he would have been allowed to come home but because it was an "unwitnessed" accident, he can't. They have said the fracture is very minor and will heal on its own.

My son isn't even allowed to leave the ward. Yesterday, my husband was there while I went home to get some stuff and the nurse came in and almost had a panic attack when she couldn't see where my son was. He was sleeping in his buggy.

It's so difficult and I keep trying to rationalise with myself that there's nothing I can do about it. He's in safe hands. I just can't get it out of my mind that there could be a risk that he's taken away from me.

My 2 year old is missing his brother so badly. He never wakes in the night but woke last night crying in his sleep and saying "no no no". When he got up, I said "shall we go see the bub (that's what he calls his brother) and he got so excited and ran to his room but he wasn't there. So then he ran to the top of the stairs thinking he was down there. When we got downstairs and he realised he wasn't there, he started crying and saying "bub" over and over again and only calmed down when I told him that we needed to get his shoes on so that we can go see the bub.

My sister and mum have both said they've never seen my youngest so sad. He's such a happy boy. He was eating fine until we took him to hospital. Now he barely wants to eat and his diet is mainly formula at the moment. He's stressed, my other son is stressed, my husband is stressed. We are all going through emotional hell yet people on here say I'm overreacting x

I would be absolutely beside myself if this happened to me. I'm so sorry your family has to go through this.

I don't have much advice to offer, except that maybe googling stories isn't the best way to pass your time. I'm sure it's easy to find horror stories when you look for them.

I hope everything is put right very soon for you, and if I was in your shoes I think I'd just have to trust that the social services system will not fail you when they realize there is no potential danger to your babies.

Yes I definitely know google is not my friend at the moment but it's like an itch that I just had to scratch! I'm terrible like that x

 

[susan_1981]

I can assure you that innocent families do NOT have their children just taken away and stories stating otherwise are exaggerated, missing information or scaremongering. As I've stated before on a previous thread, obtaining a child removal order is extremely difficult and rare. And I say this having friends who are social workers and working with them in a professional capacity.

I understand that this is upsetting for you but it's simply not the case that your child would be let home the following day following a skull fracture. A head injury is dangerous at the best of times let alone in a child. I had an adult patient become self injurious to the point where they developed a minor skull fracture and they were kept in the head injury unit for a week. This is entirely normal.

The reason your son is not allowed to leave the ward is because of how quickly a complication with a head injury can develop. Likewise his BP being taken frequently - it's an easy to monitor test that will show any issues quickly. He's in the best place he can be.

I just don't agree with this. The doctors said the only reason we are staying in is because it's an unwitnessed attack. It happened almost a week ago. They've given him a CT scan, they've x-rayed him which has confirmed it is a minor skull fracture. It hasn't depressed into the skull (something like that).

And innocent families DO have their children taken from them - even if it is just temporarily. My mother in law knows a family that it happened to. I know there are always going to be horror stories on the internet but people do go through this. I just hope that my family isn't one of those because we've done nothing wrong.

 

[redlemonade]

Thank you but innocent families do get their children taken away, even if it's temporary. My mother in law was telling me about her friend whose child managed to hurt themselves by the ironing board or something falling on them. Then their uncle came to see the child later and he kind of lifted the child in the air, you know, harmless kind of thing that children love, and he accidentally banged her head on the light. She took her daughter to hospital because she'd bumped her head (I don't think it fractured). They took her daughter away until they had further investigations.

I can't help but worry and I think anyone in my situation would be the same.

I wish people, like your MIL, wouldn't scare you with stories like that. It sounds to me like she doesn't have the full picture because obtaining a care order, even on a temporary basis, is incredibly difficult. There's just no way that children will be taken into care for a bump on the head.

It sounds like what might be happening is that your son's injury doesn't entirely match your story (I know it was unwitnessed which I'm not blaming you for). But then there was a delay in bringing him in. So perhaps they are being cautious? I know it's scary, I really do. But, from what you've said, I don't think you've any reason to worry. I work with SS in a professional capacity and I can tell you that getting a care order would not be on the cards, based on the information you've given here. I say that not to disagree with you but to reassure you

Take care.

 

[Cariad_x]

I can assure you that innocent families do NOT have their children just taken away and stories stating otherwise are exaggerated, missing information or scaremongering. As I've stated before on a previous thread, obtaining a child removal order is extremely difficult and rare. And I say this having friends who are social workers and working with them in a professional capacity.

I understand that this is upsetting for you but it's simply not the case that your child would be let home the following day following a skull fracture. A head injury is dangerous at the best of times let alone in a child. I had an adult patient become self injurious to the point where they developed a minor skull fracture and they were kept in the head injury unit for a week. This is entirely normal.

The reason your son is not allowed to leave the ward is because of how quickly a complication with a head injury can develop. Likewise his BP being taken frequently - it's an easy to monitor test that will show any issues quickly. He's in the best place he can be.

I just don't agree with this. The doctors said the only reason we are staying in is because it's an unwitnessed attack. It happened almost a week ago. They've given him a CT scan, they've x-rayed him which has confirmed it is a minor skull fracture. It hasn't depressed into the skull (something like that).

And innocent families DO have their children taken from them - even if it is just temporarily. My mother in law knows a family that it happened to. I know there are always going to be horror stories on the internet but people do go through this. I just hope that my family isn't one of those because we've done nothing wrong.

You can not agree with me if you like - I'm actually part of the medical profession and what I'm telling you in the truth. It was unwitnessed as such they can't match the severity of the injury. Plus it was a head injury and requires further monitoring. As I said this is standard procedure for both adult and child. I'm not having a go but I AM a medical professional so I don't understand why you're arguing against me when I'm actually reassuring you by telling you it's the norm and I know this because it's actually my line of work!

And again: they do NOT. As myself and another used have stated it is incredibly difficult for this to happen and stories stating otherwise are missing key information. I know it's easy for us to say but try not to worry. They're not going to take your son away from you.

 

[twobecome3]

im sorry if my post came off as negating your feelings - that wasn't my intention, was just trying to offer a diff perspective and reassurance that it was very unlikely this would happen.

its clear to me now that this is a very real possibility to you that he could be taken away - I cant imagine how terrifying that must be for you