T-Bird Anni Rides Again

I was chatting to a lass I know at the weekend.  I’ll call her Mag.  She’s more than an acquaintance, not really a friend, something in between.  She’s a single mum, one boy of 7 and a baby of 8 or so months who are happy, healthy looking beasties.  She has a new partner who is very protective of her and her boys and seems genuinely fond of them.  All sounds good yeh?  Well, yes, things are getting good for her.  But, she is a drinker.  She’s recently realised that she is drinking too much and, quite sensibly, went to her GP for help.  So, she’s getting the help she needs to "dry out".  So that’s good yes?  Well, obviously Yes, but then again No.  Because this raised a warning flag you see.  Because despite the fact that her baby is a gorgeous chubby alert little smiler who rarely fusses and despite the fact that the older boy is a lively, normal, friendly, sociable bright lad they are obviously at risk of neglect or worse because Mama likes her beer.  And so the SS cometh.  She is phoned several times a week by her case worker who pops by without making appointments and has spoken at length with the school that the older boy goes to (who are keeping Mag "in the loop" as they say.)  One assumes that she is also speaking to the HV team at the clinic where Mag religiously takes Baby every week for his weigh-in (done stripped bare so any signs of abuse would be very evident)  This week her case worker has informed Mag that she needs to speak to OS alone.  Does this sound familiar?

I know that any concerns of abuse and neglect have to be taken seriously.  I know that the SS can never do right by everyone and are always about as welcome as a pork chop in a synagogue.  But I worry.  Because now all Mag’s friends know that if you ask for help that you desperately need in order to do right by your kids then you will end up under suspicion of being the worst kind of parent.  I worry that up and down the country mothers are hiding drink problems, drug problems and mental health issues that could be addressed safely and compassionately, to make those families stronger and safer, because of fears of such allegations.  I worry that very soon home educators with less than perfect health, physically or mentally, will be under suspicion, their illnesses used as an excuse to force children into school regardless of it being the right or wrong thing to do FOR THE CHILD, further weakening the family and putting the child at greater risk than they were before.

And I worry that because of that fear of intervention, a mother somewhere is hiding away her problem, letting it escalate until she really cannot function and a child is dead that would otherwise have been safe and happy. 

And that elsewhere a child of aparently well balanced, upright parents is being mentally, emotionally or physically abused and destroyed because no one would suspect that the child isn’t just naturally "like that" (you know, the signs that in some children mean abuse and in others is just "them") because such nice people could not possibly be irreversibly damaging their child behind closed doors.  My brother was that child.  He died with a heroine needle in his arm many years ago now.  Because no one could hear us above the clamour of false alegations on council estates.