Sometimes I despair

[IDM]

Credit to you for being foster parents. You are a credit to society.

I'm baffled though. Given that you have a lot of experience of social services, then you should know they are useless. You should know that they would do nothing with an incident like this.

I really am at a loss to understand the way your mind works but take back my 'people like you comment'. You have already done more than 99% of the population to help these poor children that have crap parents and are to be commended.

I do trust the social services, where I live anyway which isn't Doncaster.  They do have failings, but that is due to constantly shrinking funding.  And yes, they would be reliant on being informed of such incidents to build up a case.  For any legal action, they would need to follow the correct procedures otherwise risk their case being dismissed - not  because of the evidence etc - but simply by not following the legal proceedings properly.  This is also an argument against vigilante-ism.

And anyway, I repeat, if you witness such an event, then report it to the police who you trust.  If they then believe a crime is committed they can go to the CPS to arrange prosecution.

Back to what the OP reported, if you had taken the action you suggested in front of the child, that would be wrong as it would be potentially even more damaging to the child.

[Filo]

IDM, I do a lot of social services transport jobs and deal with Children in foster care or children in local authority children's homes and foster carers on a regular basis. Each child in the care of social services has issues that are unique to them, be it  mental, behavioural, emotional, or physical issues, you already know this being a foster carer. But for Micks benefit I'll back you up regarding social services, believe me our brief from social services transport is to report anything that is remotely odd, it might be something thats said in conversation that seems pretty innocuous, it's about learning those little signs that could make all the difference. With Doncaster Social Services being in special measures recently, I don't know if they still are, they are on the ball with everything, to the point that if we taxi drivers miss something while transporting these kids, they want to know why, despite us not being aware of the background of the kids we're transporting. Mick hasn't a clue how Social Services operate!

[IC1967]

I have a lot of time for social workers and you Filo are also to be commended for your work helping these poor children. It is not the fault of social workers that the situation is so bad. It is the level of funding they receive and all the red tape that causes most of the problems.

I am a cut through the red tape type of person and am prepared to stand up and be counted even if this means I may risk my liberty in protecting those that cannot protect themselves.

I must say though that I have been heartened to read the posts of IDM and Filo. You have both helped restore my faith in human nature (a little bit).

[IDM]

You are quite right Filo, sometimes an off the cuff remark that may mean nothing on its own will be essential to the whole case.  Also, and you will know this as well, it is often the parents that have issues, not the children,  but the children come under local authority awareness and or care in order to protect them.

IC1967, or Mick, whoever you are, we respond to you in this thread in the way we do, not because we want to disagree for the sake of it, nor to have a pop at you personally if you have a reputation for being controversial on here.  But in this case your potential approach whilst you may believe you have a commonsense or even moral justification, the actions would not help the child nor the police or social services' case in respect of that family. 

That's all - the rest is just reaction and answering individual points.