I was thinking something along the line of maybe having a playable or NPC serving as a Social Worker. Any kids who are taken away will appear in a designated Social Worker's family until the maximum number of allowable lot occupants has been reached. Another idea would be to have the nannies or police officers double as social workers to minimize any interactions with the original social worker NPC. Or would that bork the sim's character file? Gotta take that into consideration.

Fix her?
Elementary aged kids should not be taken if left home alone for up to twelve hours. After twelve hours with no adults, elders, or teens in the house, then elementary kids should be collected. They could be taken sooner if a baby or toddler were also left unattended. Kids should not be taken for failing grades.

But the big fix would be to the family relationships: kids adopted by social worker should still recognize their biological family as being related. Family trees should be doubled, with both bio parents and adoptive parents visible on them, with both adopted siblings and bio siblings counting as siblings.

There should also be an option for a stepparent to adopt stepkids, that would give them the same function in the tree and family flags as any other adoption, maybe via phone and computer, like how buying a lot works.


I'd probably still want a playable orphanage, so maybe a "Would you like the social worker to keep these children or place them with a family?" and if you pick family a dialog tree with the families in the neighborhood that can foster should come up, like you get on the summoners' menus. Then if you call to adopt a child, a dialog box that asks if you'd like the social worker to bring you a child or if you'd like to adopt a child that is currently fostered, and you choose the second, you get the list of any child who lives with no adoptive or biological family.

I like those ideas - and ditto for failing grades. I mean, go for the Dennis Prager-style parenting - have a child who is GOOD - not just a child with good grades.

But do you like my idea as well for playables or townies being designated as social workers? I think it'd be funny if Cassandra Goth were to marry Darren Dreamer and somehow mess up BIG TIME and then... Don Lothario comes along and takes her kids away. It'd also be funny to have Goopy GilsCarbo or Brandon Lillard take the kids, or even have PT #9 pay a visit to General Buzz and have Buzz be totally unable to do anything but cry as Buck is taken.

Or what if The Curious brothers rack up too many babies and well... either PT#9 or one of the Beakers comes to take the kids off their hands? So many possibilities. And so much drama. And so much heartbreak for Vidcund if he were to get scolded by Circe... but it'd also be funny because sims voiced by David Boat are HILARIOUS when they cry.

And the playable orphanage sounds cool too. It'd be kinda interesting to have the Newsons being placed in an orphanage with the Tricou teens and maybe even the other teen townies.

I have a playable social worker. I don't do anything fancy with her. She looks just like the regular social worker and has a social worker career. I just SimSurgeried a playable I didn't care about. I also have a foster parent career I've written for Jennifer Burb to drive a particular story where she takes in one of the Newson children who got left alone in an itinerant camp. I use Inge's cat to move in/adopt so children keep their ties intact, but I'm not one for introducing a lot of heartbreak and crying so I don't have a game social worker (Kids and Pets Unattended) and I don't just rip kids away from parents. I will call the adoption pool if sims want a child, but I don't have my in-game kids disappearing into it. I don't have an orphanage, but I have a little daycare for babies and toddlers that I suppose will run similarly. I am thinking of creating a cabbage patch, though....

I'd like to have Pescado's sshack modified so that children aren't taken for bad grades at all, instead of it just being if the amount of passing children is greater than the amount of failing ones. Taking a child is not what you do if they're having trouble in school. You work with their teacher to help them.

I think they shouldn't be taken at all imho. After all, even with no adult around, the Sim kids have us to take care of.

Which mod is that? I use BO's Unattended, but I'd like to look at Pescado's.

BO's is a little extreme for me. It lets the parents get away with downright neglect. http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/s...pic,7705.0.html

Thank you, I'll look at it. I agree with you, but as Orphalesion says, they have me. I would be downright horrified if a child were left alone for 12 hours! But the idea that we can't leave a pet alone is ridiculous to me. And, during my zombie apocalypse, I needed children to be able to survive alone, seeing as they were the only ones left alive.

I have never had a problem with pets being in the house alone. It happens all the time when sims are at work.

Yip, you can leave a pet - I am not sure about a puppy or kitten, though, because those that I left were with their mothers.

Never had a child taken away since 2005 or perhaps 2006 - I use the nannies. No sweat. If I need them to live somewhere else, I will move them out with an adult, move them n somewhere else, and move the adult back (it may take a bit longer, but it works).

As everyone else has said; she's a little strict. I've had her take children who came home from school at 3, and their parents come home at 4/5 o'clock. I'd prefer something like 6 hours left alone, they get removed - because I presume during a 6 hour window at least 1 parent would be home for at least 1 hour. Also with a low grade. I can kinda understand it, because not doing homework / going to school in a low mood implies the sims needs are low - but honestly sometimes I just plain forget to do homework if sims don't do it straight away.

I think maybe relationships should be taken into account though. A negative relationship with both/one parent probably isn't a good sign the child is being taken care of...

Also the adoption process could be better. I would prefer if there were options to adopt certain children. When the adoption pool is empty, then a random one will be generated, but when there are several ex-playable sims - it makes more sense. It's really annoying to have to summon certain Sims to the lot and then manually set the family ties and whatnot. Plus I have this one poor boy that's been in the adoption pool since the beginning of the megahood. Generations of sims have brought him home with them on the school bus, but yet adoptions happen so little, and I filled the adoption pool so much, he still hasn't got a home.

I have no social worker at all. Problem solved.

And which mod are you using to stop them completely?

Supposedly, if you leave a dog with a child, the dog will get taken away. Imagine if you wanted a Peter Pan story and Nana got taken by Animal Control... that.

I use BoilingOil's mod, and if the parent is being neglectful and is found out by another sim, move the baby/toddler/child to my orphanage. But that doesn't give the taken by social worker memories, which would be nice to have for those sims.

I figure twelve hours is the point where the aliens have returned the parent, the kid has called someone for help if they are a generally well-raised child who expects adults to help them and knows how to use 911, or the neighbors have noticed a problem and intervened. Two or three hours after school shouldn't be a big deal. No one should even notice the flying saucer swiping an adult at midnight, so the social worker should not react to that until enough time has passed for the neighbors or the children themselves to have reported a problem.

No social worker patch

http://www.simlogical.com/sl/Sims2P...2_Childcare.htm

I use Inge's patch as well. I don't feel a need to "fix" the social worker at all, only to eradicate her. The way she works is ridiculous. I mean, she's RIGHT THERE if a kid comes home from school while both parents are at work. Or if a kid gets (Oh noes!) bad grades. Or even if they're just a little cold from an afternoon of playing in the snow or a little too warm after hours of jumping on a bed. But if you leave a baby outside, in the snow, in a messy diaper, with no feeding....it takes her DAYS to show up, all while the kid is pitifully wailing away. Sure, I know it's because the game sees babies more as objects than as actual Sims and there are pretty strong protections in place for its motives, so the programming doesn't necessarily "know" that that's a child that's being severely neglected, but it just feels all kinds of wrong, wrong, wrong to me. I have a playable orphanage in my neighborhoods, with a playable caretaker (or three) and they become the neighborhood's "social worker."

But yes, I also don't agree with modding the game to allow for leaving babies/toddlers alone without so much as a child-age sibling to look out for them. (Which they can't do too well, anyway, since there are limited child-to-younger-age interactions.) Sure, they're just pixels, but that feels all kinds of wrong to me, too. So, I've nuked the Social Worker -- So I can have latchkey kids and kids who aren't into the school thing and kids who like to play in the snow or jump on beds and adults who like to hang out with aliens -- but I don't mess with the other "rules" the game has because those generally make sense to me.

Sometimes I play with Social Worker disabled, for kids AND pets - yea I know it's police that pick up pets; why is there no ASPCA? If there is a toddler and a child, the child can call a nannie. I have a CC crib that(on a community lot) will contain the latest baby or toddlers put up for adoption or taken by Social, or it will generate toddlers. That way you can see and pick. And I think I have a mod that allows adopted toddlers or kids to keep memories.

Which mod disables both? Also, the police officer is actually an animal control officer - I don't think they respond to burglaries.

I just banned social worker completely when i kept having offenses for leaving children on the roof, they keep saying no you cannot do that it's child abuse but since when is it child abuse to let them sleep outside? I remember the one incident where i lured the social worker to my house then built a prison around her and starved her but somehow she teleported away and just came back! I also put the children in the basement 5 floors underground with tunnels with tons of locked doors but she still got to them .

so i just got rid of her via patch and now i just play with the kids how i want

This one by BO does both.
http://www.leefish.nl/mybb/showthread.php?tid=3005
But I finally decided on the Simlogical patch myself..I think my pets will be ok.

Well, I want SANE social workers, and preferably either townie or playable social workers. Maybe even nanny, police officer, head witch, or bigfoot social workers. And if a bigfoot is selected to be a social worker, then the message could be altered to say "Bigfoot has a special connection with children, and gets VERY angry when they are neglected. You wouldn't like him when he's angry." And if social worker bigfoot takes a kid, it'd be really funny if he scared neglectful parents, rather than lecturing them.

I like a lot of Sunbee's ideas except I don't think children should be alone for 12 hours or even for 6. I would have the game send over a teenage babysitter once the game registers that the child is alone and have the player choose either a playable or an NPC teen as a sitter, not an aged nanny. Playable teens could make a little bit of money sitting.

I would not have kids taken away for bad grades full stop.
For heat or cold, I would only have them taken temporarily by ambulance if they passed out/froze. If you are so cold you freeze and fall over you need a doctor. They would be returned in good health after a couple of hours.
For being taken for neglect I would have that be a combination of very low social, hygiene and hunger or in the event that all the sims teen+ had died on the lot.
I think also a sign that would stop all SW activity on the lot for any reason so lone children could be played if the player wants to. It would also have an option so the SW (again picked by the player) could be called to take a child away for adoption, game adoption or custom.

Well, my idea would have a controller like the one for ACR. It can be changed to blend in with the rest of the decor, and there would be several different switches for social workers. Like, you could have a dialogue asking which sim type could be a social worker - Playable, Townie/Downtownie, or specific types of Service sims like police officer, nanny, matchmaker, Mr. Big/Diva, Head Witches. Dangerous NPCs would be disqualified, though if you *really* want to, you could even designate Hobby Instructors as social workers. Great for drama, really. It could even ask if you want to designate specific Playable, Townie/Downtownie, or NPC sims as social workers, so if you want, you could for example designate Goopy GilsCarbo, or Clarence Philippine, or Sarah McCarthy as social workers. I don't know if it would be possible to put the children in with the Townie/NPC's specific family and make it mandatory to move the children in along with the Townie social workers that are made playable, or if you would have to adopt them or move them in.

The mod would also have switches to make the social worker programming more or less strict, with warnings disabled if removal is disallowed for certain conditions (like leaving a child unsupervised, bad grades, or too hot/cold, or disease). There could even be an option to call the nanny or a playable doctor to the lot if a child is left alone by accident or sick.

Another idea I have is, if a child is orphaned and there are no playable teens, adults, or elders on the lot, a sim from a selected Townie/NPC household will drive or walk onto the lot and become playable. The replacement could be set as 'next townie walkby' or as a Head Witch, Hobby Instructor, or other service NPC - even a burglar. The dialogue would state that the NPC is moving in to foster the orphans, so the dead need not fret about the social worker. The walkby or NPC can only be adult or elder due to obvious problems with young adult sims, and will likely exclude Vampires during the daylight hours. It would also exclude any sims that would be dangerous to be made playable. The foster parent would walk onto the lot and give the children an automatic friendly hug, and snuggle the toddlers and give some attention to any infants on the lot.

The foster sim could even be a close friend NPC, and that could also work for any pets on lots where all playable sims teen+ have died. This can make for an interesting challenge if you for example wish to add the Crittur family to an empty lot with no human sims.

Now for bad grades, I think the 'Headmaster' or a Playable/Townie/NPC sim could drive onto the lot and lecture the adults there, and then fine them a certain amount of money for neglect, and then mandate that one of the adults go to school WITH the child.