Social Work and police

[Ore]

Dealing with social services and police can be frightening and tiring. Wearing you down and instilling fear in you is their most effective weapon against parents that they want to split up. They have taken it upon themselves to decide who you spend your life with or not. This is your decision, not theirs. Anxiety, depression, doubt, confusion and fear in you are weaknesses that they desire to exploit. You need inner strength, resilience, self confidence, composure and clarity of mind when dealing with these tricky elements that are social services and police. I have helped friends in developing these qualities in unorthodox ways that help build them up so that they are not torn apart by these harmful antics. The key to this is simple, control and contain your fears! Panic is when fear has overcome you, at which point you've lost control of yourself, thus cannot possibly be in control of your situation or environment. It's all about control over your mind using your fears against you. Control and contain those fears and believe in yourself, what your heart is telling you while you're in control is usually the right thing. Self doubt is questioning what you're heart says is right. Your first instincts are valuable and should not be dismissed lightly. However, on the flip side, when your fear overwhelms you, your mind becomes distorted and your initial instincts are thus distorted. Do not be afraid of social services or police and realise that everything they do is done as a means to an end and not an end in itself. Think of the bigger picture and the end game then reverse engineer it and you'll see that these are only tactical manoeuvres aiming at the end game, which is usually parents split and hating each other. Children raised around this will suffer terribly as a result of it, so pull yourselves together and learn to stand first, then learn to fight back and question everything until you know exactly what they are saying.

When dealing with ambiguous and vague comments or agreements, you're in danger and need to clarify every sentence. Things are often asked by these service agents in general ways, leaving your mind to assume certain things, things they want you to say or believe. This information is what they need as evidence against you or for you to hold as true, so you remain trapped in your fear. If it's a written agreement, anything they verbalise concerning the agreement should be contained in the written agreement. Verbal agreement is worthless and you should always seek legal advice before signing anything. Fear is a tool by which to control others. Conquer your fears and learn to control them. Find as many things in your lives that you fear then practice at facing them. If you have a phobia of bees for example, practice getting close to them. Even if you find that you're running away a lot, don't give up. Those bees are scared of you too, but would rather not sting you and fly away. Now know this, if you were taken and threatened with bees, then you'd learn to sing or dance for your captors, anything other than sharing a room full of bees. So conquer your fears and don't allow yourselves to be controlled by social services or police in this way.

Hope this helps you worried and fearful parents out there.

[LD66]

Thanks for posting that. Makes a lot of sense to me right now x

[PerfectlySafeDad]

That's a very good piece, Ore. There is so much of that in my situation. You're right about panic and fear, they mess with your head by their lack of clarity, verbal 'advice' or half-instructions, or often none at all! (the limbo and foot-dragging or downright uncaring) and the sheer threat of their 'presence' out there somewhere: you rarely if ever get to see the actual decision makers, and it's impossible to tell if their silence is due to them happy with the way supposed 'risk' is coming down, or simply because they believe the offender is reliably sawn up, out of the picture because of their phone threat to the spouse 2 years ago, and then they'll be all over you like a rash again when they learn there's been progress, such as reconciliation in the relationship or an innocent outing with the children in a crashingly obviously safe circumstance.
I keep my fear down by knowing I'm no risk, reminding myself how I love my kids like any normal parent, by feeling 'normal' around friends who have accepted me despite the offences because they 'trust' and understand the limits of those offences, and that I'm just a human on the mend from mistakes which never remotely threatened any child in the contact sense in the first place. Also, whether you're religious or not (but it can help) I know that God knows who I am, so I hang to the belief the truth MUST out eventually, surely it's got to be obvious, because it's true.
When fear and despair gets the better of you, you can do silly things (we're human and fragile) like a bit of domestic bickering, an argument with the social worker, showing emotion around the child (forbidden!!) and then they chalk up any excuse for a further safeguarding measure - in actual fact a damaging measure, which would cause still more fear if we let it.
Prime example of their toxicity is their 'advice' to my wife 2 years ago, 'no unsupervised contact, no postcards or phone calls to my kids even' and she follows this to the letter because of her fragility and awe of authority, so now we're in a situation that things can't move on because she thinks it's forbidden by them and just waits for their ok which will never come, and yet by the terms of the SHPO it is HER consent that is needed! The result is it drags out the stress between us and blocks reconciliation.
I fight it the only way I can, by keeping calm (except on here, obviously!), and knowing the truth must out, I love my kids (safely) and they love me, and the offences were the offences but that's all there is and was never anything to do with my kids anyway, and have been addressed anyway.
I would just add, though, that I think the police are way better than the CS as a reasonable, knowledgeable and fair agency. It takes a little time for them to get to know you, especially if a first offence, but then they realize that risk is coming down and the actual nature that risk is/was in any case. The problem always is that CS don't know you (the offender), don't try to and don't have any expertise or man-management skills besides the skill of being dictatorial with a smile.