Social Services Watch
Understanding UK children’s services and child protection
Social Services Watch is an independent platform documenting practices and decisions within the UK child protection system and their impact on children and families.
Our work covers disputed assessments, procedural concerns, inter-agency working, child removals, babies separated from their parents at birth in hospital, children in care and adoption without parental consent.
Inform
Understand how UK child protection procedures work in practice: referrals, pre-birth assessments, social worker reports, child protection conferences, decision-making, parents’ rights, complaints against social services and family court proceedings.
Highlight concerns about how terms such as emotional abuse, neglect, lack of insight, non-cooperation, anger issues, parental capacity and risk of significant harm are used in social work assessments and child protection decisions, raising questions about evidence, fairness and proportionality.
Explore upcoming FAQs on child removal, care proceedings, parents’ rights and families’ experiences of child protection proceedings in the UK, addressing questions such as:
- Why do social services remove children?
- What happens when someone reports me to social services?
- Can social services take my child without a court order?
- Can a baby be removed at birth?
- What happens to children taken into care?
Document
Bring together official reports, legislation, court decisions, public data, research and publications from professionals, organisations and public figures who have raised these concerns.
Highlight documented concerns relating to inter-agency working, NHS, hospitals and police involvement, information sharing, disputed social work reports, social worker workloads and turnover, disclosure failures, family courts secrecy and rporting restrictions, discrimination and poverty-related concerns, parental disability, domestic abuse and victim-blaming, border alerts, cross-border child protection practices, illegal children’s homes scandal, complaints handling and the protection of personal data.
By bringing together evidence and perspectives from different sources, Social Services Watch aims to identify recurring concerns, explore connections between practices and contribute to a broader understanding of the UK child protection system, including the organisations and professionals involved.
Raise awareness
Make long-standing concerns about UK social services and child protection practices more visible where they have been documented through research, official reports and public publications: inadequate parental assessments, defensive decision-making, procedural failures, allegations of social worker misconduct, family separation, fear of child removal, adoption without parental consent, children’s experiences in care and the protection of family rights.
Encourage informed public discussion of difficult and sometimes overlooked questions about child protection, including how decisions are made, how evidence is assessed and how the rights of children and families are protected.
Voices questioning the system
Public statements and published perspectives on child protection and family justice in the UK.
Sir James Munby
Former President of the Family Division
“findings of fact must be based on evidence (including inferences that can properly be drawn from the evidence) and not on suspicion or speculation.”
A judicial reminder that child protection allegations must be supported by evidence, 2011.
Professor Eileen Munro
Child protection researcher
How fear of blame can contribute to defensive decision-making in child
Research on decision-making under uncertainty and the influence of blame culture, 2018.
Professor Karen Broadhurst
Child and family justice researcher and co-author with Claire Mason & Harriet Ward.
“parents’ rights to a fair trial are undoubtedly compromised”
On urgent court hearings where parents receive only hours of notice after a baby’s birth, 2022.
Stay informed
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