In autumn last year my partner and I had some great news from the doctor – she was pregnant, and was due in April coming. The buzz was building right up to the day before I filed this article when I had to attend a safeguarding meeting with all the professionals involved in the pregnancy. Though I cannot discuss the details or outcomes of the meeting I can only say I am in the darkest space in my head since I was given the diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia 15 years ago. If you are working with a mental health service user who has had this joyous news, please give them the advice I suggest here. If you are a service user, take every word seriously.
Early intervention
People with psychiatric diagnoses are known to lead unconventional, sometimes chaotic lives. As such, it is right for the child that people like us should have support from the authorities from pregnancy until the child becomes independent in their late teens and early 20’s.
I approached my local children’s social services for an interview for this column prior to my own safeguarding meeting. They were unavailable for comment, though pointed me to statutory guidance for professionals working with children, Working Together to Safeguard Children (NOTE 1). It states, “Providing early help is more effective in promoting the welfare of children than reacting later. Early help means providing support as soon as a problem emerges, at any point in a child’s life, from the foundation years through to the teenage years.”
The earliest intervention a service user can take to ensure good relations with those interested in their child’s welfare is by engaging with services and complying with any medication regime they are offered. This shows a willingness to cooperate and will reduce the chances of admission to hospital during the child’s upbringing. If a doctor, midwife, social worker or any other professional asks the service user to do something, this should be done almost without question – never refused outright, though the more the service user cooperates, the odd minor negotiation is acceptable.
When Children’s Social Services get interested in your case they do not phone you in advance and give you due notice of their visit. They are solely interested in seeing how you live, so will visit unannounced. If your home is a tip smelling of cat pee, they will note this. Again, proper preparation prevents piss ups, so they say, and this means the service user needs to start thinking of living their life with a baby from very early stages of pregnancy. Would you want your child crawling around a dirty carpet and eating mouse turds? If not, keep your home clean.
The stick
If any professional has sufficient worry about the parent’s behaviours they have a duty of care toward the child. The Working Together document states, “Everyone who works with children – including teachers, GPs, nurses, midwives, health visitors, early years professionals, youth workers, police, Accident and Emergency staff, paediatricians, voluntary and community workers and social workers – has a responsibility for keeping them safe.”
As a mental health worker, you are one of that group. You should call for intervention from social services the moment you have a worry. In the recent Serious Case Review over widespread child sex abuse in Oxford after Operation Bullfinch (NOTE 2) the report suggested, “… scores of professionals from numerous disciplines, and tens of organisations or departments, took a long time to recognise CSE, used language that appeared at least in part to blame victims and see them as adults, and had a view that little could be done in the face of ‘no cooperation’…”
In the face of apparent neglect or abuse the child needs protection. Vulnerable adults need support in bringing up their child. Cooperation between the service user, and every professional concerned with them and the child will ensure that the child has the best possible chance in life.
If all the early stages fail, a child protection planning meeting will be held with the possible outcome of fostering or adoption. In this meeting, my partner’s care co-ordinator was off sick and his manager represented the mental health team. He hadn’t prepared at all. This was the grossest lack of respect to us as a family. Child protection is a very serious matter. If you are parachuted into such a meeting, spend a few hours beforehand doing your bloody research into the case.
The meeting I sat through is confidential and the outcomes have yet to be finalised. I was warned it would be extremely stressful. I will just say I fought like a cornered dog to keep my future family together. Ensure that the service user attending the meeting has some sort of support whether in an advocate or personal supporter – I guarantee that most service users won’t have the knowledge or expertise I have in health and social care, and will be chewed to bits.
I came out of the meeting feeling violated in the worst possible way. I tried to cooperate from the start of the experience leading to the meeting, but in a partnership, it takes two to tango. In the next few months instead of preparing my home and life for the birth, I have the biggest fight I have ever faced to ensure that my child grows up in a loving family environment – and doesn’t end up in care and despair. The child comes first – the parents second. In engaging and cooperating from the start, the parents and child should end up together in the normal way. If they don’t? A joyous occasion could be forever tarnished.
Post script
My child was born on Tuesday 24th March. Under the eagle eye of all professionals my partner and I did everything the child needed. Social workers love a cooperative parent, and this has been proven in the current projections for the child’s upbringing. Though in bureaucratic chains, we should be able to function as a family one day soon. Child and mother will be cared for together, and though I somewhat resent having to drive upwards of 350 miles a week to be in the bosom of my new family, it is a victory in itself to be able to do so.
Those who know me in Dorset will fully understand how much of a Rottweiler I can be without resorting to breaking the law in any way. I have regrets about not being in Weymouth to clamp my proverbial jaws around a certain aristocrat’s proverbial backside during this election! Even so, the powers that be beat me into a cowering cur. In learning how this system worked I was beaten to a pulp – now I have learned, there is no way I will be beaten so severely again.
NOTES
1. Working Together to Safeguard Children
2. https://www.oscb.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/SCR-into-CSE-in-Oxfordshire-FINAL-FOR-WEBSITE.pdf
