The day I was reported to social services, I was with my two children at a local play centre. I remember trying to hide out of view as I sobbed inconsolably.
It was seven years ago and I’d received the call while jogging around the park with my baby in the running buggy. I was due to collect my other daughter from nursery and had already promised her a trip to the local soft play, so I didn’t want to let her down.
The phone call stopped me in my tracks. All I remember them saying was: ‘Somebody has called us saying you may need some support.’
But all I could hear in my panic-stricken head was that they were social workers and immediately, I assumed the worst: they wanted to take the kids off me.
The voice on the other end of the line was calm and reassuring, but that didn’t help much at the time. They said they were looking into my case.
I took my daughter to soft play as promised, but the rest of the night passed in a blur as I did my best to keep the ‘mask of motherhood’ smile on my face, occasionally bursting into tears when I couldn’t hold them back any longer.
This felt worse to me than someone wrongly reporting me to the police. I may not have been physically arrested, but mentally I felt shocked. How could this have happened to me?
Worse still, I would never even know who had such an issue with my parenting because any reports are confidential.
While feeding my baby to sleep that night, with her elder sister snuggled next to us, I felt a deep sense of panic rising up in me as I lay there in the dark. Was I parenting wrong? Was I so ‘bad’ that the social services were going to remove my babies?
The next day, I kept replaying the conversation in my head. Someone, it seemed, had reported me for seeming ‘over-tired’ as I was still breastfeeding both children, who were aged three and one.
I didn’t know who it was, and I still don’t, because I had received so much criticism about the fact that I was naturally weaning my daughters from ‘friends’ on social media as well as passers-by if I breastfed my kids in public.
This felt worse to me than someone wrongly reporting me to the police
I was tired, like any parent. If anything, I was less tired than the average parent as I co-slept with my children, so I wasn’t up and down all night.
The following morning, in the cold light of day, I was thinking more clearly, and I decided to call social services to find out what was happening.
The social worker I spoke to reassured me that it was standard procedure to look into any reports they received. She explained that their initial response would be to contact some of the playgroups I attended. I felt so ashamed that a number of playgroup leaders would discover I was in ‘trouble.’
She kept trying to allay my fears, reassuring me nobody was talking about removing my children. I was told that they were there to offer any support I needed, but I found it hard to trust what she was saying.
The service then began the process of reaching out to the various groups I was a part of, I felt so scared and ashamed. I must be an awful mum, I convinced myself. I vowed not to return to any of them.
But then, something amazing happened, two weeks later. The bottom didn’t fall out of my world. The social worker who had been assigned to my case and who had been speaking to my playgroups commended me for how much I was doing for my children.
‘You’re doing some amazing things with your children,’ she said. She spoke about all the groups I attended and that people were praising how much I did.
This support gave me the confidence to return to those groups. It took me another week to ‘recover,’ but I eventually plucked up the courage to go back. I knew I had to bite the bullet because my daughter loved that environment, and so did I.
The playgroup leaders gave me the confidence that I wasn’t a bad mum after all
I was petrified before entering each one, thinking everyone would look at me. But the group leaders who did know were just their same, welcoming and friendly selves.
My fears weren’t realised, quite the opposite. Nobody brought it up with me, until I did with them, when I would check with each group leader that they were still OK with me coming. They all welcomed us back with open arms. They praised my mothering skills and were angry on my behalf about the judgement of someone else.
What had initially felt like a harsh spotlight on my ‘weird’ parenting methods, actually ended up putting me into the limelight for a different reason. Each leader recognised what I was doing well and acknowledged my love for my children, and they gave me the confidence that I wasn’t a bad mum after all.
Throughout that time, I was struck by the compassion of the social workers I dealt with. Most of them do such a hard job, and there’s such a lot of stigma attached to the work they do.
Yes, there might be some awful ones but I have been fortunate enough to only experience the majority of good ones.
In the years since that phone call shook my world, and now as a single mother, I’ve come to view that most of the social services are professional allies who are there to support families rather than remove children.
To the person who reported us, I am sorry you must have been in a difficult situation at the time. I think people who do such things are actually the ones who need to own up to the challenges they face. I am honest, open and perfectly imperfect.
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