In the media at the moment is yet another case where a child has been starved and tortured to death. It seems to happen regularly somewhere between every five and ten years. Like all the other cases in the past there had been an intensive Social Services involvement for years not months, yet they’d completely screwed up again, and the child should have been taken into care a couple of years before. All the evidence had been in front of their eyes for years, and yet again, despite their book of best practice, their inadequately perceptive staff hadn’t recognised it and had been hoodwinked by a manipulative mother and her boyfriend.

Social Services had been criticised for their lack of action, some social workers had been sent on extra courses, they were over hauling their procedures and said ‘Lessons have been learnt, and we shall make sure this can never happen again.’ It all sounded only too familiar, and the intelligent with any perception knew it would happen again, and again, and again. As a teacher for forty years who’d had a major pastoral rôle for almost as long I’d heard the same nonsense coming out of their mouths at least a dozen times in my adult lifetime after a brutalised child had been murdered. The truth is they have never learnt anything because the only good social workers get manipulated out of the job because they ‘don’t fit’.

There is something fundamentally flawed with the selection and training of social workers. I used to teach near Manchester and regularly attended case conferences concerning children in care and those with a Social Services involvement. Our kids collectively had more social workers than the school had teachers. Most social workers that I met were upper middle class women with professional husbands, many of who worked at the UK Atomic Energy Authority Headquarters at Risley, whose children had left home and being bored they’d looked about for something ‘worthwhile’ to do. Sure, they had all the requisite paperwork qualifications before they were turned loose, but they lacked the life experience to relate to and understand the lives of the kids they were sitting as judge, jury and tragically occasionally executioner on. A lot of them only worked two or three days a week and such was the shortage of social workers they were employed rather than no one.

There were a few other social workers I met who had the life experience to understand the lives of the kids, but in my opinion most of those had escaped the estates [US the hood] and were only in it for the money which was poor, but at least three times what they could have earnt anywhere else. None were over bright and despite poor performance had been allowed to qualify as a result of the ‘positive discrimination’ policies of the left who dominate education, social work and much else in the UK.

I consider Social Services in the UK to be a disaster and unfit for purpose. The number of times they have made kids lives worse that I could quote from my own direct experience run into dozens and the number from colleagues whose word I trust into hundreds. A major problem is that no magistrate, who in the UK would have have to sign off their application to take away parental rights, will challenge them in case things go badly. In effect their requests are rubber stamped and they may do what they wish, till a kid dies. Then after another lengthy, costly and pointless investigation the public is presented with another whitewash via the media.

I come from an upper class hell hole of a family where I’d been subject daily to extreme violence, and even at the age of five my worst nightmare was of being removed from my home by ‘them’. I knew enough kids who were in care to appreciate that would make my life even worse than it was. Yes, I admit that fear that I lived with for years has undoubtedly coloured my views, but it was real, and whilst it has coloured my views it has not in the least clouded them. If you don’t understand the difference I pity you, and you may as well stop reading here. I still won’t sleep in a room with the light off, for when the nightmares of being grabbed and taken away strike I need to be able to see as I awake. What I can see I can run away from. At its worst, as a child I would sleep under my bed rather than in it, for then when they came to take me maybe they would overlook me. Funny thing is I’ve never been frightened of the dark. I don’t have a problem sleeping outside as long as I’m in the open. The nightmares don’t come as frequently these days, but they are still every bit as terrifying. My wife won’t touch me when I’m asleep whether I’m having a nightmare or not for fear of being hit in that split second before I’m awake enough to know where I am. She gets out of bed goes to the far side of the room and turns the radio on to waken me.

As a teacher I was legally obliged to report any and every suspicion of child abuse I had to higher authority for others to take action on. In my entire career I never did so, not even once. I kept and still keep many secrets, because I’ve never been prepared to assist in making children’s lives worse. There are probably hundreds of cases where Social Services’ involvement made no difference to the lives of kids and we should have saved the tax payer’s money, and thousands more where they made kids’ lives worse. In my entire experience I only know of one case where Social Services made kids’ lives better which is what this story is about, but even in this case Social Services can take little credit for the outcome. I have of course changed all names to protect the identities of the persons involved, including my own.

Brett was the kind of pupil that every school has dozens of and every one of them is a condemnation of their school. He was invisible, a child who rarely if ever drew attention to himself, answered questions with a shrug when asked, but never volunteered anything, an under achiever, a poor attender and one of those kids that could pass almost unnoticed during five years of compulsory secondary education. In fact he was just like dozens of others I taught from the estates; he was at school because the law said he had to be, and he was just waiting to serve his time like someone in gaol. The school truancy officer hadn’t ever managed to get a word out of Brett, and it was known he despised and didn’t trust his social worker, who had never managed to get more than ‘Is that it, may I go now?’ out of him. Like a lot of our kids he was small for his age. I suspected most of them didn’t get enough to eat and their growth suffered. Watching a team of our lads getting hammered by kids the same age from a school in a more affluent area who towered above them was a regular occurrence for the games [US sports] staff. Brett was never at school for games and the games staff didn’t miss him.

The staff, both teaching staff and care staff, couldn’t engage with Brett at all, yet I managed to get along with him ok and he was always polite to me. He was reserved, you could say totally closed. Every now and again I had a glimpse of something under his impenetrable shell that puzzled me, but he would close up immediately he realised he’d been incautious. Surprisingly his long hair was always well groomed and his clothes clean and tidy, and unlike most of our boys, and many of the girls too, his standard of personal hygiene was high. The only thing he ever smelt of was faintly scented soap.

Unlike the rest of the staff who ate at the tables reserved for staff, I always ate my lunch with the kids because it was a good way to keep up with what was going on and the kids appreciated it, and I was usually asked by someone, "Sit with us today, Sir?" I never said anything to other staff because you don’t win friends and influence folk by telling them what they don’t wish to hear, but I rarely had any discipline problems in class, and I put it down to the kids not wanting to give a hard time to someone they interacted socially with. I know a lot of the kids who knew me told the kids who didn't, 'Mr. Ess is ok, so don't give him any shit, he doesn't deserve it and he's on our side, Ok?'. The day I’m thinking about Brett was sitting next to me at lunch. He had free school meals like virtually all of our kids and had chosen a piece of cake for his pudding. I watched him carefully wrap it up in the paper napkin it was served on and put it in his coat pocket. He saw me watching and embarrassed said, “For my little brother and sister.”

As he rose to put his used dinner things on the trolley, I don’t know why but I said, “Wait a minute for me, Brett.” I went and bought another piece of cake, it was only five pence, and gave it to him saying, “Now they can have a piece each.”

Brett looked at me suspiciously not taking the cake, and asked, “Why?”

“Because it’s not a very big piece of cake to share is it. If you’re bothered, Brett, go and find five pence off the yard and pay me back, but I’ll only put it in the poor box.”(1) I did yard duty every day for the second half of lunch. I was paid separately for it and it gave me free lunch. The kids used to throw small change at each other on the yard and I had a team of kids who collected the coins for my Diabetes UK collection box. Some kids put the coins in the box direct. Typically over a term we’d collect somewhere between a hundred and two hundred quid. Towards the end of term I’d take a couple of kids with me to the local bank where the kids would break open the sealed boxes and pay the money into the charity’s account. The kids considered it to be yet another of my idiosyncrasies, but thought it a good thing to do, and put their names into a draw to decide who went to the bank.

Brett smiled and said, “Thanks, Sir,” and that was that. The day after he gave me a five pence piece and watched me drop it in my charity box.

There was one only thing that got through Brett’s impassive shell: after school detention. I never had a problem with him, so for me it wasn’t an issue, but he became abusive and would run. He jumped out of a first floor [US second floor] window on a member of the geography department and didn’t return to school for weeks. When he did I was approached by the head with Brett’s social worker and asked to find out what was going on because as the head put it, “You’re the only member of staff who has anything remotely approaching a relationship with him.”

“No. I’m not going to pry into his personal life outside school. The reason I get on with kids is because they know I’m not a spy for the system.” There was a lot of argument but I just point blank refused. I don’t know what happened after that. As a senior pastoral teacher I would normally have been kept in the loop, but I wasn’t Brett’s head of house, so had no right to be kept informed. I suspected I wasn’t because I’d upset the system, again.

Brett was fifteen when it all came to a head. The year before his head of house had given him a week’s worth of after school detentions for consistent lack of homework. Brett had tried to negotiate and offered to do two week’s worth of lunchtime detentions. His head of house refused. Brett freaked and pushed past him to escape. His head of house had fallen through a pane of glass suffering serious injuries. That was why Brett was transferred to my house and became my problem. One Thursday morning, I was told Brett had been caught wearing one of his mother’s dresses forging her signature in the post office on her family allowance(2) book in an attempt to withdraw the money. Brett had been taken into custody and an emergency case conference was being held. I’d been contacted and had to be there. Brett had been refusing to respond to anyone and no one knew what was going on. The social worker was the one I’d refused to spy for. She said, “Mr. Svenson, you can’t refuse to talk to him in his hour of need.” All very melodramatic.

“Yes that’s true, but I can refuse to help you in your hour of need. I’ll talk to him, but I won’t promise I’ll tell you what he tells me.”

“You can’t do that. You are legally obliged to pass all information on.”

“Fine. You talk to the boy, but I suggest you are replaced by one of your colleagues because he neither likes nor trusts you. In addition if and I said if not when I talk to Brett it won’t be here or anywhere else where we can be overheard or recorded. Take it or leave it.” Two hours later I said, “You lot all make me sick. There’s a boy in a cell, no one knows why, and two bloody hours later you’re all bitching about who is higher up the pecking order than whom. You call yourselves children’s services, you’re doing anything but providing a service for Brett.”

I had my way and as I was outside the cell Brett was in whilst it was being unlocked I said, “You’re in fair deep shit here, Son. I’m here to try to help you, but they’re all giving me shit about it too, so you’ve got to give me something to help you with to make it work.” I could hear the gasps behind me, apparently you weren’t supposed to talk to kids like that. “Come on, Brett, let’s go get a burger somewhere, and see what we can do, but for Christ’s sake don’t do a fucking runner on me or they’ll bang me up in that cell. Ok?” More gasps of indrawn breath.

“Yeah. Ok, Mr. Ess,” which apparently was four words more than he’d said since being apprehended.

Brett made a pretty convincing older teenage girl even in his mother’s clothes, but I asked, “You ok dressed like that, or do you want to change first?”

“They took my school bag. It’s got my school clothes in it. I’ll change as soon as I get it back. These are clothes I wear to look older, like Mum. I’m fine, hungry, but fine. I haven’t had any lunch.”

After Brett changed, we went to MacDonalds where Brett ate like he hadn’t had a meal for a couple of days. “What do you want me to tell you, Sir?”

“I’ve no idea, Brett. Anything you think that may help. Start with the Family Allowance. You’ve been in all sorts of trouble at school, but never even been accused of stealing, so what was that all about?”

Brett sighed, the sigh of one who was weary of the whole world, a sound that had no business coming out of a fifteen year old. “Mum’s a user. She’s not at home for days at a time. I know what she’s doing, but don’t want to talk about it.” I just nodded. “When she’s home mostly she’s out of it. There’s me, Jonno and Sophie. Jonno’s seven and Sophie’s five. There were others, but they died when they were only babies before mum left the hospital. I’ve been collecting the family allowance for a couple of years now. I hide the book so Mum can’t get it, or we’d have nothing to eat. I can’t afford to get caught nicking anything, or the others will get taken into care. S’pose that’s what’s going to happen now anyway isn’t it?”

“I don’t know, Brett. Like I said, I’m trying to help. You’re telling me you spend the money on food to feed the family?”

Brett sniffed, nodded and said, “I was hoping I could get away with it till I left school. I’ve got a part time job on Mavis’ second hand clothes stall on the market and I’ve got work to go to when I officially leave school.”

“How have you got away with it for so long? How do you manage?”

“I get decent clothes cheap off Mavis for us all, and I’ve got some women’s clothes to make me look like Mum. I know anyone can cash the family allowance, but they take the book off you if the proper person hasn’t cashed it for a while. Six weeks I think, so most of the time I cash it in my name but every four weeks I dress older like Mum and sign her name. I use a different post office to be Mum every time. I rotate them and I went back to one I’d used months before. I didn’t think the woman would remember me, because I always go first thing on Thursday morning when they’re busy. That’s the day when all the family allowance and pensions are payable. I guess I got unlucky.” Brett had tears in his eyes, “What’s going to happen to the kids, Sir?”

“I don’t know, but at fifteen and a very responsible fifteen at that there’s got to be something we can do. Maybe the Manchester Evening News could help.”

“I’d rather not do that, Sir. What time is it?”

“Two, maybe half past. Why?”

“Can we go to pick the kids up from school, Sir? They'll be ok with the teachers till four, but I don’t like being late for them. Jonno wouldn't be bothered, but Sophie’s only five and she'll be ready to go home.”

The penny dropped, “That’s why you won’t do after school detentions? You have to collect them from school.” All I got was a nod. “Ok. You finished?”

“No, but I’ll take it home for the others if that’s ok?”

“You got any food in the house?”

“Enough for breakfast, some cereal. They kept the family allowance book. I usually go shopping after school on Thursdays.”

“Oh fuck it. You eat that. I’ll get some more for the kids and we’ll call at the supermarket after we pick the kids up for some food.”

“Why are you doing this? You're a teacher, not a food bank.”

“Believe it or not, my childhood was shite. I was never hungry, but I got battered all the time.”

“I figured it was something like that. You understand and you care. You’re all right.”

“Yeah maybe, but don’t get your hopes up. Those others you wouldn’t talk to have got a lot more clout than I have, so God alone knows what they’ll do. The more I know the better case I can put forward. Come on let’s go. We can talk in the car.”

I got three large fries and some burgers and we left.

“What do you want to happen, Brett? What’s the perfect solution from your point of view? We may as well shoot for the top.”

Brett though for a minute or so before replying, “The flat’s ok. It’s near to the kids’ school, the shops and the post office. It’s got enough space for us all. Mum has a room, I share a room with Jonno and Sophie has the third. I’d like for all of us to stay there, Mum too. She’s a mess, but she’s our mum. I don’t want to move because we’re known there, it’s mostly old people live round us and it’s safe. I can almost manage on the family allowance, but not quite. That’s why I never go to school on market day. I need the pay. Yeah, the family allowance and twenty quids’ worth of food vouchers would do it. Twenty quid is what Mavis pays me for the day.”

“What about the bills and the rent?”

“The rent and council tax are paid by the Social Security and the gas and electric I can manage if we’re careful. I’m usually ten minutes late for school, because I have to get the others up, washed, dressed and fed and take them to school first. I wait till they can go in before I leave for school. If I didn’t get grief for that and could leave school on time to collect them that would be good. When I start getting grief for too many lates I take a couple of weeks off. Teachers are so glad I’m back in school the lates are all written off.”

‘Sharp,’ I thought. ‘He understands the system better than the system does.’

Then there was that world weary sigh again before he said, “There are other things too you need to know, but you’ll find out when we pick the kids up.” I wondered what that meant but said nothing.

We arrived outside the primary school ten minutes early and sat in the car waiting watching the parents arrive and stand around chatting on the school playground.

“Time to go, Sir. Please don’t get angry with me when you meet the kids. It’ll upset them.” I just nodded because I didn’t know how to interpret that. As we got out of the car, a boy came running towards us with a younger girl behind him try to keep up.

“Mummy, Mummy, Mummy. Lift me,” the girl demanded. Brett picked her up to hug and kiss before putting her down and holding her hand.

“Who’s he, Mummy, and why are you dressed like that?” the boy asked.

“I’ll answer all your questions later,” Brett replied. “We’re going home in his car, but first we’re going shopping for food, and you’ve got MacDonalds for tea.”

“Wow! Can we buy a bottle of pop, Mummy?” asked a winsome little girl.

“I think so, but I’ll have to see, Stephanie.”

I was amazed. Even in his school clothes fifteen year old Brett had instantly transformed into a confident young mother in her late teens or early twenties. Her face didn’t even seem to look the same as Brett’s. We went to Tesco and bought half a trolley of foods that would keep, including a large bottle of pop. Then there was another eye opener. When we reached the checkout, the operator said, “Hi, Chelsea. What’s with the clothes?” She cast a questioning look at me as I paid. A look that said, ‘Christ’s sake! Are things that bad you have to take up with a bloke that old?’

“It’s a long story, Melanie. This is my form teacher, Mr. Svenson. It’s all hit the fan, and he’s trying to keep us from going into care. You’ve got a nasty, dirty, suspicious mind, Girl. I got caught cashing the family allowance and spent half the day in gaol. He got me out. I’ll catch up with you when I can.”

“You take care, Girl. If there’s anything Mum or I can do let us know, right? Or just come round with the kids if you need someone to mind them.”

“Thanks.”

“So, it’s Chelsea is it?” I asked.

“Yeah, after the flower show.”

“Mummy likes flowers,” Stephanie added, “but they’re expensive.”

“The kids call Mum, Mum and me Mummy,” Chelsea explained.

After we arrived at the flat we carried the food into the tiny kitchen and, Chelsea said, “Whilst I put the food away, make a pot of tea, Jonno, please. Steph, see if Mum’s back would you, please.” Chelsea shewed me round the flat. Her mum wasn’t back and her room was a tip, but the rest of the place was immaculate. Chelsea blushed and said, “I try to keep Mum’s room tidy, but it’s difficult. Actually I did tell you a lie, Mr. Ess, as you probably sussed out I share a room with Stephanie, not Jonno, but other than this I don’t have anything else I can tell you. Would you mind if I changed? The kids don’t like seeing me like this. Usually I manage to get home and change before going to collect them.”

“It’s your home. You do what you like.”

It was a neatly dressed and pretty looking young woman that returned. She wore a blouse and skirt with shoes that made her a couple of inches taller and clearly had something to enhance her bosom. She had a trace of make up on and her hair attractively tied back with a pastel blue riband. She looked to be eighteen or nineteen. I remembered what she’d said about being safe where she lived and the meaning behind the remark became clear. “Are you completely out, Chelsea?”

“Yeah, it’s only school where I’m not, and some of the kids at school know because they live round here. The neighbours all know about me, and William, my boyfriend, is big enough and hard enough to prevent anything happening. Actually he’s a big softy.”

“William’s, ok,” said Jonno, “He takes me to watch United(3) when they’re playing at home.”

“And he buys me flying saucers,”(4) added Sophie. “I love flying saucers. William’s little sister, Helen, is in the same class at school as Jonno.”

“That’s how I met him,” Chelsea blushed but continued, “We were collecting the kids from school.”

I was considering events and the future. This family was hard up, but certainly Chelsea was managing to keep them fed, dressed, clean and more to the point happy. “You’ve got the rest of this year and next to go at school. What do you think to returning to school as Chelsea? Could you handle the kids?”

“It’s not the kids I’d be bothered about, it’s the staff.”

God love the child! What the hell kind of a school did we have? I wondered, certainly not the one we thought we had. “I can make sure the staff treat you with respect and support if you can handle the kids. You can use the medical centre lavatory and doubtless the games staff will be ok about you dropping out there if you had an alternative they didn’t have to supervise. Got any ideas?”

“It would be helpful if I could do some sewing, like mending Jonno’s clothes. He’s a bit rough on them. He’s the boy I never was. What’s going to happen to us?”

That Chelsea was preoccupied with what was going to happen to her siblings was entirely understandable, but I could offer no certainties. “I’m still working on it, but we have to report to that committee tomorrow. You up for going in to school as Chelsea if I write it all up tonight? My idea is if we deal with all the problems first and only present them with solutions they’ll probably buy into the package. Most of them are idle and not over bright, so are unlikely to come up with anything else, or not quickly anyway. We’ll have a complete case to present before they can even react.

“You being Chelsea is something they probably won’t even know how to react to because their solicitors are pretty poor. They’re all they can afford. I’ll ring the head tonight, and she’ll be fine as long as we don’t spring any surprises on her. I’ll ring a friend who’s a solicitor who takes legal aid cases if they are interesting to him. He’ll sort out your name change and paperwork generally and get your siblings a decent solicitor each to represent them against Social Services if necessary. He’ll probably have the kids put into your custody as soon as you are eighteen. You ok for money?”

Chelsea laught and said, “I’m never ok for money, but I’m not taking anything else off you. When do I go back to school?”

I gave her a twenty and said, “This is not the time for pride, Chelsea. Take it as insurance to protect the kids. Pay me back some time if you feel you have to, ok?”

Chelsea nodded and said, “Thanks.”

“We have to see the committee at half past two. If you’ve got the nerve for it, go to school as Chelsea tomorrow, and I’ll get the meeting moved to the school on the grounds that there’re things they need to see at school to form a proper judgement. Put like that they can’t refuse, or they could be accused of making faulty decisions due to having wilfully ignored relevant facts and information. I’ll make sure they watch you pick the kids up from school too. I’ll have the kids’ solicitors serve them with an emergency court order preventing them being removed from your care for forty-eight hours which will give your solicitors time to put a proper case together. It would be better if there were an adult involved. You got any relatives that could stay?”

“Ok. I shan’t be sorry to say bye bye to Brett permanently, so Chelsea goes to school tomorrow, but other than Mum we don’t have any relatives. Why?”

“I don’t think the social workers handling this have realised your siblings exist yet, or they’d have had someone waiting to pick them up from school. Presumably your mum is known to them and so you and your siblings must be on file somewhere, but these particular social workers haven’t read the files yet. Have you got anywhere else to stay tonight, preferably where the kids could stay tomorrow?”

“They know all about Mum all right. We could go to Melanie’s mum’s. She’s like an auntie to us, and lives about a mile away. You heard what Melanie said. You think they’ll try to grab the kids tonight?”

“I don’t know, but if you aren’t here I know they can’t. Once they find out about them it’ll take them a couple of hours to decide what to do, so I suggest you get the kids fed and whilst they’re eating get an overnight bag packed. I’ll run you round, and take my wife out to a show. If we stay at a hotel, I’ll not be available for questioning till I get to work will I?”

“You done this before?”

“No, but I’ve been dealing with stupid people all my life and they’re predictable. Get the kids fed. How old is William?”

“Nineteen. Why?”

“I don’t know if it’s helpful. Jarvis your solicitor will know. You’re only fifteen, and I don’t want to know what you and William get up to, but has he ever stayed the night here?”

“Yeah, when Mum’s been difficult and too much for me to handle. He’s still at home and his parents’ place is round the corner. It’s close enough for Jonno to go and fetch him if we need him. He sleeps on the settee. The kids will back that up. As for what we get up to, there’s nothing to know other than kissing, nothing you haven’t seen in a classroom.”

Chelsea fed the kids and packed, and I dropped them all off at Melanie’s mum’s. We left it at that, and Chelsea was to come to my office at half eight before registration. I went home from where I rang the head and Chelsea’s form teacher, and made the all important call to Jarvis McMenemy. He said if I could keep things under control till ten the following morning he and his colleagues would take it from there, but he’d meet me at school at quarter to eight. Claire and I went out to enjoy the evening watching Les Misérables at the Palace after taking a room and dining at the Britannia Hotel on Portland Street. I wrote up the entire story, what Chelsea had told me and what I’d witnessed, sent a copy to Jarvis and was asleep by three. I subsequently discovered my answer phone was full of messages from an irate Social Services, but I’d taken the precaution of leaving my school mobile at home, and no one other than family had the number of my private phone. A neighbour told Chelsea a couple of days later that Social Services had turned up at her flat at ten that night and broken in with the police in attendance.

Nothing happened till I got to work where I met up with Jarvis on the car park. He asked if anyone from Social Services would recognise Chelsea. “Not a chance, and she’ll be in my office at half eight. I’ll take her to her first lesson and return for the fireworks.”

“I doubt they’ll be here before ten, George, but we may as well be safe. I need to talk to the head for a few minutes, shall we say to remind her of a few of the finer points of the law concerning child custody."

That day was fun. I’d informed all Chelsea’s teachers what had happened and what was likely to happen. Chelsea had no problems with any of her peers, not least because a number of them already knew about her, but had said nothing. I was amazed at that because I’d not heard even a whisper, and there wasn’t much the kids didn’t tell me. I found out weeks later that the only ones who’d tried to give her a hard time had all been boys and all had been completely cowed when she’d asked, “You do know I’m William Maidley’s girlfriend don’t you?”

It was Jarvis not I who rearranged the meetings, and he was present when his two colleagues served the papers preventing Jonno’ s and Stephanie’s removal. Chelsea phoned Melanie’s mum from my office to tell her what was happening, and the two solicitors then went to Melanie’s mum’s to assist her to take the children to school for the afternoon and to inform the head at the primary school what was going on. Social Services were well out of their depth with Jarvis and wanted to know how he and his colleagues had become involved. He stated every child in such cases had to have legal representation and it was no right of theirs to select that representative. That being the case, since he and his colleagues were all specialists in child custody law why did they wish to know? They backed off.

Chelsea was observed in class without incident, and the entire troop went to watch her pick up her brother and sister before inspecting the flat. William was introduced as Chelsea’s boyfriend, and my report was submitted along with statements taken from the children saying that William only ever slept on the settee and came to help when their Mummy was having difficulty with their Mum. All three children had appointments with a paediatrician, but Jarvis had obtained a letter from their family doctor saying he’d seen them all several times over the years for trivial ailments and he’d no doubt the paediatrician would confirm his opinion they were all in good health and thriving. Social Services were gift wrapped and ready to be given away, and the social worker who had replaced the one Chelsea didn’t trust knew it. She at least was a realist. Her only viable option was to put a good face on it as if it had been their plan all along.

The police wanted nothing to do with the matter. As far as they were concerned no crime had taken place, or as they put it, “Nothing we are prepared to try justifying a prosecution over to the Director of Public Prosecutions’ office has occurred. A child forging his mother’s signature to feed his siblings is not a criminal offence that we could successfully prosecute.”

Brett legally became Chelsea within the week and it was decided the best place for her siblings was living with her. The family allowance book was reissued in her name and a benefits award was made that enabled her to be in school full time. As I’d suggested would be the case, the games staff were happy for her to do sewing with the home economics department instead of games. To her joy Chelsea’s doctors put on her on the route to transition and fifteen months later she rather proudly told me before she left school that her bosom was now her own. Attempts were made to help her mother, but she overdosed when Chelsea was halfway through her final year at school just after she turned sixteen. She told me she was sad, but had been expecting it for years and Jarvis had the Council put the flat in her name with William as her guardian. I hadn’t known that was possible, but perhaps anything is possible if the alternative is is being spread all over the press for persecuting children.

Chelsea went on to college and ultimately became a nurse having married William, who worked for his father in his small engineering machine shop. My wife and I went to her wedding where I gave her away. Of all the children I’ve dealt with over the years Chelsea is the one who stands out head and shoulders above the rest. A child who’d been a parent from the age of eleven, and done it whilst dealing with her own not inconsiderable issues at the same time. I still get cold shivers when I think what, if left to their own devices, Social Services would have done with her and her siblings’ lives.

That was the only time in all my dozens of dealings with them that Social Services got it right.

Word Usage Key

1 Poor box, vernacular for a charity collection box.
2 Family allowance, a payment made weekly to all parents, carers of children in the UK. The recipient is usually the mother, who has a book with perforated pages that tear out. Each page is dated and on the due date the payment will be made in exchange for the page at a post office.
3 United, Manchester United a top football [US soccer] team.
4 Flying Saucers, a sweetie, or candy. A flying saucer or lens shaped rice paper envelope containing sherbet.