Marina Fogle reveals her ordeal with social companies

Marina Fogle has revealed her and her husband Ben were once wrongly reported to social services for ‘shouting at their children’, as the row over Kirstie Allsopp and her son’s interrailing trip continues.

The Countryfile presenter’s wife says she understands the ‘feeling of nausea’ that Ms Allsopp will have experienced as she and her family went through a similarly traumatising ordeal when raising their children.

Location, Location, Location presenter Ms Allsopp last week became embroiled in a row over allowing her 15-year-old son to go travelling across Europe, with social services now probing the incident.

Writing for The Times, Mrs Fogle said she could relate to the feeling Ms Allsopp likely felt when social services contacted her. 

She said: ‘I know the feeling of nausea that would have welled in her stomach and the fury of being accused of failing your children because the same thing happened to me.’

She told of her own shock to return home from a family holiday in the summer of 2013 to find a letter from social services. Mrs Fogle was convinced this was delivered in error, but was left trembling when social services turned up at her door that same morning.

It turned out, a neighbour had reported her and her husband for supposedly ‘shouting’ at their children – ‘the kind of sustained verbal abuse that was simply unacceptable.’

Upon providing proof that the family were away on holiday on the date of the supposed incident, and following further questioning, social services agreed that there was no issue.

While acknowledging many tip-offs are real and necessary in safeguarding children who are at harm, Mrs Fogle says she felt ‘tarnished’ by the experience.

She said: ‘Even though I was completely innocent, my interaction with social services rocked me. 

‘My husband, Ben, was so shocked that anyone even knew this was possible, combined with the fact that we are very much not a shouty household, that he suspected it might have been someone wanting to cause trouble.’

Mrs Fogle said that her children grew up in a household where risk was ’embraced’, with a father who climbed Everest and completed the world’s toughest row, and so is ‘grateful’ they still have a healthy attitude to risk that hasn’t been diminished by the incident with social services.

The extraordinary Allsopp episode began last Monday when the presenter wrote on X, formerly Twitter, of her pride in Oscar after he and his friend returned from a nine-stop trip by train around Europe.

Her admission prompted widespread concern from many parents who argued going on a solo trip at 15 is too young. 

During an interview on Wednesday on the BBC‘s Today programme, she insisted that mobile phones and better healthcare meant travel was safer than in the past and ‘in previous generations people did things far younger’.

But at 12.40pm the following day, Ms Allsopp received a text message from a social worker from ‘Kensington and Chelsea children [sic] services’, which stated: ‘I am wanting [sic] to have a conversation with you re a referral we have received in relation to your son.’

Ms Allsopp said: ‘I immediately rang the number and said “I cannot tell you how angry this makes me”. I was very agitated. I said I could not be more upset. How on earth have you got time for this? How on earth have you got the resources? Where the hell did you get my telephone number?’

A referral takes place when someone contacts children’s services because they are concerned about a child’s safety and well-being.

Taking to Twitter today, the Channel 4 angrily doubled down on her position. 

She argued: ‘When I tweeted about Oscar’s travels did I think it would be this controversial? Hell no! I was aware of Jon Haidt’s work on how risk averse we have become, but every year kids who have finished their GCSEs travel about the UK & Europe, it’s a right of passage that has been happening for eons.

‘I was proud of his trip, he’s our youngest, letting him go was a big deal, seeing him return so happy & confident was a joy & I thought it was inspiring. Do I regret that tweet? Yes & No. 

‘Yes, because it’s been a load of hassle & Oscar is not best pleased.

‘No, because if some of the responses I’ve had are anything to go by we clearly have a far greater problem with fear, xenophobia & restriction of the rights of teenagers to explore the world than I could ever have imagined, and that is something that needs to be openly discussed. 

‘Re Child Services, that’s just absurd & made me very angry, if anything it’s a distillation of where we have got to, but it isn’t the main issue. The main issue is that so many people seem to think the world is a more dangerous place to travel in, yet modern communications, safer transport & better emergency health mean it’s a safer place to travel in. 

‘Some stats are up, some are down, but there’s not a substantial difference in any data that relates to teen travel. 

‘Oscar’s birthday is in late August, so he is summer born, this means he was always going to be 15 not 16 when doing post GCSE activities, the obsession with this age boundary is bizarre, why does anyone think he is less mature & capable than 2 boys I know who went from London to Istanbul by train after GCSEs, but happened to be older for their school year? 

‘Anyhow I hope the silver lining of all this fuss is that a debate has begun about how we best help teenagers become confident, capable adults, and how factually & realistically we perceive risk, as FDR said so famously in his 1933 inaugural speech “let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is…fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

The Mail on Sunday revealed, in an extraordinary intervention, a social worker contacted the TV presenter to inform her that a file had been opened after child protection concerns were raised over her youngest child, Oscar.

To the 52-year-old’s fury, the social worker demanded to know what ‘safeguards’ had been put in place when she allowed Oscar to travel for three weeks on the continent alongside a 16-year-old friend. 

Astonishingly, she was told that the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC), her local council, could keep the file open ‘in case there was another referral and we needed to come to your house and look into this further’.

Speaking exclusively to this newspaper, Ms Allsopp branded the council’s actions ‘Orwellian’ and ‘absolutely outrageous’. 

She said that officials had failed to understand she had been targeted by a ‘malicious’ complaint from someone falsely alleging neglect.

‘I just felt sick – absolutely sick,’ she said. ‘Then I was cross. I was very, very cross. It was just so extraordinary. I was in a parallel universe where they were actually taking this seriously.

‘I have broken no law and nothing about allowing my child to travel around Europe is neglectful.’

Mr and Mrs Fogle declined to make further comment when approached by MailOnline.