Social complete incompetence and favouring the alcoholic mother

@actd 9 and 7

@Greyo01010 - apologies, I've only just seen this.

Reason I was asking is that I (or more accurately, my children) went through a bad time with their mother, who was an alcoholic. Bear in mind, this happened over 20 years ago, so some things will have changed, an in my case, I hadn't reported anything to social services, and there was no court case going on at the time. My children were, at the time a son of 15, and daughters of 12 and 5. I was aware of some of the circumstances in the mothers home, but I hadn't realised the true extent of how bad it was until I had them all for the summer holidays for a week and a lot of what was happening came out (including some physical abuse). My wife at the time realised that we had to get the children away from my ex-wife and the children couldn't believe that this was even a possibility, but really wanted this to happen, so my wife and I decided that we'd look into the options with a view to discussing it with my ex-wife once the children had gone back after the holiday.

This plan was cut short by a phone call from my daughter, a few days after they went back, where she was obviously extremely distressed and very worried that her mother was going to be violent. I had a quick call to my brother-in-law (a commercial solicitor, but with a good general law knowledge) and realising that social services weren't available at that time of the evening, rang my daughter back and told her to ring the police and when they turned up, under no circumstances was she to let them leave as we believed she would be harmed if they did, and I was going to set off imediately (I lived about 3 hours away) to go and collect them.

After about an hour, on my way up, I got a call from the police - they had entered the house (my daughter had been waiting on the doorstep for them) and seen the state of the house (I had taken photographs of the house when I took the kids back from the week with us - I had been invited in by the children, so I was clear on that one), found the mother in a drunken stupour and had roused her and persuaded her to let them take the girls with them and they were going back to the police with the girls to await my arrival. (My son had elected to stay with his mother - he had just got into the sixth form college and wanted to go - though he chose to move into supported accomodation in the area a couple of weeks later, spending every weekend with me after that).

The police going in was the vital step in my case - their evidence was sent to social services, who opened a case and rapidly closed it again on the condition that the children were not to go back to live with the mother, and their report and the police report meant that the case for removal of the children in court was barely contested, my ex realised she didn't have a chance (though the contact hearings went on for another 5 hearings and £45k of costs)

I would say that your older daughter is getting to the age where she could contact the police if she felt she was in any danger, so you possibly need to tell her that this is an option, but she can't use it if she's simply had an argument. 

Hope that helps in some way.