Social services and court

[worriedandneedlegaladvice]

Apologies in advance for the VERY long post, there is much more than I can possible include here but I will try to mention everything necessary to allow people to offer advice.

My sister has 3 children aged 6-9. Father has had inconsistent involvement since before the youngest was born (not turning up to see them or returning them late/early, cancelling seeing them, not paying regular maintenance etc). My sister has always tried to encourage proper contact, even allowing him to stay in her house overnight (while she stayed with relatives) so that he could regularly have 'normal' family time with them when he was unable to have them stay with him because he did not have suitable living arrangements. She stopped offering this when they were small as it never worked consistently, but she has always maintained that he should see them every other weekend and has allowed overnights when he has lived in a suitable place.

The relationship between my sister and her ex has always been very conflicted; the main sources of conflict are his lack of consistency with visiting the children and his lack of regular maintenance. Arguments over money were compounded when he often bought expensive gifts/clothes for the children, even borrowing money to do so, but then couldn't/wouldn't contribute towards ordinary living expenses e.g. uniform, shoes etc. Eventually my sister went through the CSA and they are still trying to process his arrears.

There is a history of domestic abuse, mostly emotional but also physical. This man has been convicted of battery and harassment (he headbutted my sister in front of her son, and came to the house shouting abuse and trying to kick the door in while the children were present). The only time my sister has ever stopped contact was during this case; she reinstated it the day after he was convicted. He has called one of the children a 'f*ing idiot' when he was naughty (to his face), and once allowed one of the children to walk out the house during an argument and didn't follow him... a family friend found him about half a km from the house, walking up a main road. He was 6.

The father petitioned the court for an access arrangement in Nov 2015. He requested every other weekend and half of school holidays. My sister agreed to this but was unsure how it would work, given his unreliability and his work commitments (when he works; he is the sort to hop between jobs with long periods of unemployment thrown in).

At that time, he was having the children overnight every other weekend anyway, but the court removed this as all three children had to share a double bed with their father (he was living with his sister at the time). They gave him several months to make more suitable arrangements... he failed... they extended this... he failed... eventually in May he moved into a flat and was granted overnight visits. During this time, he abided by the court order and was on time for visits etc. He was still not paying proper maintenance as instructed by the CSA.

However, during this time the conflict between him and my sister escalated, largely down to the involvement of social services. The children were placed under a child protection order due to the emotional abuse of coming from a home where domestic abuse takes place. This meant much involvement from social services, and the father is an excellent liar and very manipulative, so he was able to 'win them over' quite quickly. My sister is not so easy to get on with and was no doubt very defensive during all this. She found it really difficult to accept that social workers were just dismissing years of problems with the father and believing everything he said. For example, they believed that he was paying regular maintenance and co-operating with the CSA, but did not check with the CSA despite my sister suggesting that they do so. This is just one example of many when they 'sided' with the father without checking anything, and suggested that my sister was being difficult and obstructive whenever she raised this issue.

Throughout, my sister has found it near impossible to get hold of the social worker, while her ex seems to have an excellent relationship with her. Countless emails have been ignored. Requests for copies of various policies have been ignored.

There was an incident in September when the father was due to collect the children from school but informed my sister that he was injured so his partner would go instead. My sister asked the children if they were happy with that and they said no (there are ongoing issues there, as the father did not gradually introduce his partner but instead had her (and often her children) present at every visit, despite the children's requests that they would like to spend time with just their father, not his partner and her children. Any comments my sister has made about this have been taken badly, as evidence of her obstructing contact or 'prepping' the children to dislike this woman, even though when they first got together my sister invited her to bring her children along to a family event etc in an effort to carefully manage the transition to a different family dynamic). This situation escalated, both my sister and her ex and his partner went to school, my sister offered to drive the children to their father's so they would not miss contact but neither would they feel that their wishes had been ignored... blah blah blah... 2 different social workers (duty social worker and the one working with the family) agreed that this was fine, then the family social worker changed her mind and my sister was left furious and upset. This incident has been used as the main example of my sister being emotionally unstable and deliberately obstructing contact. She did get very angry and shouted during this incident, but the children were not present.

The only other incident of note involved my sister getting angry with the children one morning before school when they were being difficult, losing her temper and pushing the TV (which is attached to the wall), which broke it. She called her ex, told him she was struggling, and asked him to collect them from school. He agreed.

One of the children disclosed at school what had happened with the TV later that day. The social worker arranged for the father to keep the children and told my sister she could not see them. The next day, they informed her she could not see them until she saw her GP for support with her mental health problems. She saw the GP. They then said she had to sign a working agreement, agreeing that she could see the children for 2 hours a week, supervised in a contact centre.

My sister has no mental health issues and, since this occurred, has seen the GP repeatedly. She has scored 0 on the initial mental health assessments. The social worker has maintained the anger/mental health problems as the main crutch of her argument for removing the children, despite my sister producing a letter from the GP and other agencies eg MIND stating that they have no concerns. For the record, the father has a history of depression, including being medicated for this, but the social worker has not referred to this at any time.

[worriedandneedlegaladvice]

Of course my sister is under huge stress and has been for around a year now, ever since social services became more involved. Her ex has threatened for years to get social services involved and once made a claim that she was neglecting them, which social services immediately dropped once they investigated, and told my sister that it was a malicious claim and unfortunately these often escalate. He also once took the children's passports and told them they couldn't go on holiday with their mother. They went in the end but not after much upset among the children. He has told the children for years that if they are naughty, social services will take them away, which means they are very uncomfortable with social workers. My sister has always told them to just tell the truth to social workers and that they will never get in trouble for this.

My sister has definitely made mistakes and is by no means the perfect parent (is there such a thing?!) but if I were not closely involved in this case, I would not believe it possible that social services could get it so wrong, and continue to do so.

In court in October, the social worker recommended the current arrangement of supervised contact only should continue. My sister has therefore only seen her children for 8.5 hours in 8 weeks. However, the court also stated that the social worker acted with no legal authority when she removed the children and that my sister could pursue that outside the court. What does pursuing it outside the court even mean?

Back in court today for a final hearing today, the judges did not seem to have read any of the documents submitted in advance to the court. The previous judges (they are different every time) had allocated a full day due to the complex nature of the case, but in fact the hearing did not begin until nearly lunch time. The social worker gave evidence for 20 minutes and then my sister and her ex were allowed to ask questions. Neither of them have legal representation. My sister started speaking and was cut off - 'That's a statement, not a question'... but we had not prepared any questions as previous hearings have involved making statements and general discussion, with each person speaking in turn. She was basically bullied and only managed to ask one question, which was 'Did you check if ex's statement to you regarding the hospital was true?' (referring to ex claiming that my sister kicked off at the hospital when she went to an appointment for her son, who has broken both his wrists while in the care of his father). The judges said the social worker didn't have to answer this question.

The social worker was then allowed to leave, meaning she wasn't even present for the rest of the hearing, and my sister and her ex were allowed to say very little apart from to ask each other questions. When my sister asked questions, she inadvertently provided her ex with a platform to wax lyrical about how much he loved his children. Her ex chose not to ask her any questions, therefore she did not have the same opportunity to say anything much at all.

Court have upheld the social worker's recommendations and said any future decisions will be made by the local authority. The catalogue of problems we have with social services is so long it's a joke... the sort of stuff that if you read it in the Daily Mail you would think, 'oh but there must be more to it than that, that can't be the whole story'... they have actively obstructed my sister making a complaint, covered for each other, lied in court, misreported things... lots of things that add up to a terrible case against my sister which is based on very little but which reads to a judge like she is some sort of horror of a parent. Much of this can be checked, for example some of the things reported are clearly taken out of context from disclosures made by the children to the school, and the disclosure reports are available to the court. But they don't seem to have read any of this or joined the dots, despite the statements my sister submitted pointing all of this out.

We made a complaint against the social worker about 6 weeks ago but were advised that most of the aspects of it could not be dealt with while she is still involved in a court case... but the fact that she is involved is affecting the outcome. At a previous court hearing she was so ill-prepared that the clerk called for a break so she could call her manager for clarification of a few points, and when we returned to the waiting area we found her in a private meeting room, on the phone to her manager, with the ex in the room. I would certainly question the professionalism of their relationship.

I don't really know what else to say... if you have read this far you have done well! I don't know where to turn for advice, my sister cannot afford legal representation but she did call a good family law company who advised her some time ago that she did not have to sign the working agreement after the children were removed, so she had her consent removed from this (not without a battle from the social worker). The legal advice we received was that as she shares parental responsibility with the father, a lack of working agreement means that they can legally arrange whatever they want, but the father continued to stick to the letter of the working agreement, firstly claiming that he was following the court order (which was not the case, he clearly did not understand the court order), and later that he was uncomfortable with her having unsupervised contact. But in the court hearing just days prior to this, he had said he was willing to go for a 50:50 custody arrangement...

I strongly feel that the father is after having the children so he will be better off financially (deluded, but he thinks my sister was on a fortune in benefits, and clearly has no idea of the cost of caring for three children), because he likes to be seen as some sort of 'hero' single father (why are the single mothers never heroes?!) and because he wishes to hurt my sister. The children have expressed that they want to go home, the youngest in particular, but he has ignored this. He has not permitted phone contact. He has failed to give them cards and photos my sister has posted to their house. He has removed them from all their after school activities, which my sister has paid for so this is not a financial decision.

Does anyone have any advice at all??? Can we appeal the court's decision and if so, is it worth it? How can we push our complaint? I have read that we can also complaint to the HCPC. I would certainly like the social worker to be fully investigated. I am very concerned that there are other families, perhaps people without the support network my sister has, who may have been very badly affected by a seriously unprofessional and incompetent social worker.

Can we insist on being assigned a different social worker? The family support worker recently assigned to the family has not even met my sister and has said she won't work with her due to the conflict between my sister and her ex (although there has only been ONE incident of conflict in the past many months, since the court order was put in place). So my sister does not have any support and it is clear that social services do not plan to help her make whatever progress they think she should make. She has had 8 contact sessions, supervised by 5 different social workers... one commented that she was not strict enough because she smiled when telling her son off, and another that she was too strict because she pulled them up on their grammar/pronunciation.

OK I'm going to stop writing now as I have too much to say and could go on all night.

Please, please, any support groups, online resources, law firms who may offer free support etc would be much appreciated. Apparently my sister does not qualify for legal aid in this case because it was brought privately and not by social services.

[BiscuitMillionaire]

Bumping for you. It sounds horribly unfair.

[worriedandneedlegaladvice]

Thanks. Length of post will no doubt put people off but I didn't want to drip feed and there is actually sooooo much more than this! Just don't know where to turn.

I'm also shocked that social services and court will take someone's children from them and then just say 'thanks, bye' at the end without offering them any support, putting them in touch with a suitable charity or support group etc... how many people leave court in this situation and just want to jump off the nearest bridge?? I am very aware that however awful this is for my sister, there must be people in similar situations who do not have family and friends to help them. Who is looking after these people??!!!

[BiscuitMillionaire]

This has slipped off 'active'. You could try posting a short version with a link to this thread, in Relationships or another topic.

[worriedandneedlegaladvice]

How do I do that?!

[BiscuitMillionaire]

Just copy the page address from the bar at the top, then paste it in to your new post. If you put two square brackets around it - - then it makes it a live link (see instructions below). I know it's hard to write a shorter version, but just try explaining the bare bones of the issue.

Sorry I can't help with any advice myself.

[worriedandneedlegaladvice]

Thanks, much appreciated