Emma

Before you read on i would like to tell you that this morning 15.2.2010 i met Emma and her grandparents. Emma is such a lovable wee girl that has beem badly affected by abuse and has difficulty with talking because of it. Due to the determination of her grandprents pressurising the social services over four years she has been rescued and is now getting all the love and care she rquires with her dad and grandparents. It will take a lot of years and love for Emma to fully recover from the ordeal she has went through, no thanks to social serevices.



A couple split up in 2005 when Emma was 20 months. The mother did not want Emma unless the father stayed too. The grandparents took Emma in and cared for her for 9 days before the police came and said she had to be returned to the mother.

Emma is a little girl whom the social services knew was being abused continually as it had been reported to them by the grandparents but they ignored them and did nothing.

During this time the grandparents had access and kept reporting to the father that Emma had bruises and once they had to take her to the local A&E for blood droplets coming out of her ear where she had been slapped hard. While they were there they were told there was signs of an old injury to her other ear that had never been attended to and still the social services did nothing saying it was because Emma didn’t speak clearly and that it was difficulty to determine just how she came to get these bruises. The mother always maintained that she got them whilst playing with her siblings.

Even with the hospital contacting the Child Protection Units of the police and Social Services and the subsequent videoed interview of Emma the social services still refused to accept these injuries were due to Emma being physically abused at her home.

This family has been the subject of social service scrutiny since 2002 and even although Emma was placed in the fathers care four times in one year and is now the subject of Child Protection Conferences the social services have never once acknowledged the possibility that the mother or stepfather could have inflicted these injuries.

Emma attended the school with a large bruise on her forehead and informed her teacher that she had been hit by her step father. The Child Protection agencies were informed by the school and two days later Emma was placed into the care of her father.

At the end of last year Emma’s brother was punched so hard by the stepfather he was placed in the care of members of his family and he is still with them.

The couple have problems which are critical and in need of attention they cannot control their tempers and have been advised to attend anger management sessions. Both have dependency on alcohol. The social services knew of the domestic violence in this house as did Cafcass but yet refused to acknowledge it.

The social services are now applying for an Interim Care Order for the three children.
The father and his solicitor wonder why as Emma is safe now and doing remarkably better at school.

There is a lot more to this story but it is cloaked under the veil of confidentiality. The question needs answering why when the Social Services knew of the physical and emotional abuse these children were probably suffering did they not take action sooner to protect them.

Social Services failed to believe the father was the father preferring to believe the step father who said he had a DNA test which proved he was Emma’s birth father and did not engage with the real father until late 2007 The Social Services preferred to believe the step father who had changed Emma’s name claiming he was the father

This case is well documented by the amount of correspondence written to the Social Services workers and their superiors highlighting the concerns of the father and grandparents regarding the child but these were mostly ignored.


Jimmy Deuchars
Grandparents Apart UK
22 Alness crescent
Glasgow G52 1PJ
0141 882 5658
http://www.grandparentsapart.co.uk