People who have never experienced being in family court

[SavanahXx]

It really does my head in when people side with social services. They have an opinion that "they are just doing what's best for the child". These people that have the opinion mostly have never even had involvement with SS, therefore don't see the lies and manipulation of a situation that they use.

It's easy for them to say that a parent 'could pose a risk' but do you know how hard it is to prove you wouldn't?

I seen an utterly revolting article that really baffled me. Social workers manage to get away with this stuff daily. Yet its not reported as it should be. This child was removed, with a judges permission. Then placed back with the mother by another judge.
There is so much corruption in our society and it needs to change.

www.google.com/amp/s/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/06/13/social-worker-criticised-child-taken-away-mother-refused-give/amp/

Apologies if I’m wrong but has anyone on this thread said they don’t believe the OP because she seems to be raging when (I hope!) we all recognise that miscarriages of justices certainly do happen.

Of course she isn't telling the truth. It's patently obvious her case didn't do to court just because she had a history of abuse.

No, it wasn't just that. But because of false allegations, and when proved false. They used my abuse because they wanted to save face. Even the judge had a go at them for what they did.

@SavanahXx I totally agree that SS can not face up to any of the errors that they make. They may be scared of being sued. They create their own hate. These are mostly female SW who are making life difficult for mothers. From what I have seen they seem to be in fear of men.

Before anyone takes a rip at my statement I can only speak as I have found and what I have found varies from sheer stupidity to gross maladministration.

I think at one point CAFCASS even got bonuses for a change of residence. You couldnt make it up.

Apparently you can just make it up. You just did.

Also, the talk of focus being on removal rather than support, yes of course by the time the matter is in court the focus is on removal because they are care proceedings and the application is for removal.
That doesn’t mean that support hasn’t been put in place and months spent trying to help people to parent safely and meet a child’s needs. Most of the time the court will expect this to have been tried. Every care proceedings I’ve been involved with - everything was tried. I remember crying in my car sometimes when I’ve thought that a parent had turned the corner only to slip back into the clutches of an addiction. I put everything I had into keeping those children with their family. But love is not enough.

Once it has reached court then yes, the focus is definitely removal, so no, they wouldn’t be looking to support at that stage. The support would have been put in before that to support and assist parents and do whatever is possible to try to keep that family together. By the time it’s got to the Court stage, parents have been given every opportunity to show what they need to do, but have reached a point when they are failing to protect their child! If an adult can’t protect their child, then the needs of that child are the priority and they need to be protected, if that means removal then yes that should happen. Parents inability to protect their child, means they give up their rights, and quite rightly so.

A malicious allegation was made against me by ex (during the residence proceedings for our children).
The social worker came, was very polite and nice, spent 10 minutes and the case was closed.
Her report was requested later by my ex's counsel, and I was absolutely horrified. Not only it read as if she visited some sort of a halfway house, it had a section on my personality assessment (surprisingly detailed after a 10 minute chat, with invented details from my "past relationships history" or that I had a disturbed childhood myself - absolutely not true), and a statement that she had discussed the allegation with my children's school teachers and while they raised concerns, it was below the threshold for intervention.
My children did not have teachers, they were 1 and 2 at the time.
My solicitor said not to overreact, they see things like this all the time.

That's awful silver!

@Skyejuly
I would not call it awful, because at the end no harm was done, and the judge, thankfully, did not take it into account. I don't think it was an intentional lie, more likely a lazy copy-paste from another report or a template. For a case that was closed, so no one would probably ever read that report again, unless there is a new involvement with social services down the line - and then the author of the first report won't look bad, look - she had noticed all the red flags early!

That is shocking @silvercuckoo you should have had a copy of the report in the first place!

I can honestly say the authority i work in support families incredibly hard before going to court, sometimes for too long actually meaning that children are in bad situations for longer than they should be.

But i think the original point of the post

'people who say social services are just doing whats best for the child have never had involvement with social services.......lies and manipulation' ect is a you are being unreasonable.

I have plenty of experience of SS. I grew up in care. Being in care under a protection order saved my life. The amount of kids that came through the home who should have been removed from their parents far earlier was shocking.

What probably got to me is that there wasn't a single positive statement in her report. Everything was either vaguely neutral (e.g. "could not ascertain whether there are other residents in the property", "could not ascertain whether there are addiction issues" etc.) or negative. I get that social services are not there to praise and support, but come on, it does create a certain impression.

That is shocking@silvercuckooyou should have had a copy of the report in the first place!
I thought they are confidential? For clarity, my family court residence case was between my ex and I (i.e. private), not about the children's removal from my care. I probably would have stayed oblivious to the report's existence, had it not been requested by my ex's counsel in the court.

In my experience OP, “potential for emotional or physical harm” is used mostly where one parent is the victim of DV, or where a parent has significant mental health issues. Both are valid reasons for social services intervention/support. In my experience some of the victims of DV who came to us for PLO assistance did not really believe that their children where at risk of removal just on the basis of the DV relationship, as they could not understand why the relationship was damaging to the children when the abuse was not directed at them, and they were otherwise adequately cared for. In most of these cases it took getting to pre-proceedings stage for the parent to take the risk of removal seriously.

Firecarrier, actually you have misquoted me.

And my cases, I did admit, were not quite what OP was referring to, not late stage court removal:

Admittedly Most of my involvement in cases I was quoting were at early stages of an investigation. Often related to a disputed SN or disputed SN diagnosis. And in some cases: bruises, and/or suspected hitting, that in all/most of the cases turned out to be not was initially assumed.

But, Yes, visits took longer to arrange than they should of. So in the 5 cases, it took longer to arrange visits than it should of.

And I saw evidence, deliberately not included in the files. And blatant lies. So, it was only for that reason that I posted, to support OP's claim.

silvercuckoo yet another parent with a false report. My solicitor said not to overreact, they see things like this all the time. Yet SW's and a barrister on here claim this never happens. Who to believe?

"Spero, yet again you are twisting words. You have confirmed that there is a lack of support and removal is being used instead. Therefore good parents who only need some support must be having lies told about them in order to achieve removal. Like some sort of collateral damage. I believe my family came into this bracket (ds with severe autism)"

I am not twisting words. You however are making extrapolations where none exist. It is a massive leap from saying 'there is not enough good support so children have to be removed to keep them safe' to 'that means that lies are told to achieve removal'.

I know of a handful of cases where lies were told and documents altered. Who found out about this? The parents lawyers. Who analysed the documents they saw.

To the poster who says a report was written about her by a social worker she never saw - i have no clue how that happened if the matter was in proceedings. The Judge would want to see it, your lawyer would want to see it. NO PARTY can rely upon a document unless every one has seen it and had a chance to challenge it.

I am very sad by this thread. Since the 2014 discussions which resulted in the inception of the Child Protection Resource site I have worked hard in my own time and on my own money to try and help people with reliable information. It seems that nothing is changing. Nothing is getting any better.

I remain of the view that many of the problems stem from denial. It is easier to believe yourself a victim of deliberate corruption and lies than ask yourself whether or not you could have done things differently.

I do not for a moment disagree that the system is hurting people and that social workers do not get the time and space they need to build relationships with people, and that surely is the essence of good social work.

But to jump to that to say that anything in a report you don't agree with is a 'lie' is simply wrong.

I am not commenting on this thread again. It's pointless. In keeping with the spirit of the age, people think what they want to think and aren't prepared to engage with anyone who challenges them.

i will leave with one last post that I hope might be of some use to any parent lurking here.
childprotectionresource.online/the-particular-dangers-of-conspiracy-theories-for-parents/

You are vilifying a whole group of people , it's like saying "mothers are abusive they lie and don't work honestly with professionals, put men over their children's needs and don't care about the impact DV has on their children and continue to hit them. Damn those abusive mothers".

@spero I don't blame you for not coming back. I find this OP and her friend as vile.
Echo chamber springs to mind.

@auntethel
I try to be balanced in my judgment. It totally shocked me at that time, as I expected to read something like "came to see silvercuckoo at her house, she's doing a great job, house's a bit messy with two toddlers and a full time job, but no welfare concerns". I never expected to be assessed behind the scenes for personality disorders, substance addiction etc. But I think the real reason for their negligence was that they just wanted to write something asap, file and close the assessment, and never thought that these notes would surface anywhere later. The lack of quality control (so to say, I don't know if there are a peer / manager review mandated by the internal guidelines) did surprise me. But the judge dismissed the report immediately on reading (if I remember correctly, even using a strong term like "nonsense"), so overall my experience of the family court is very positive.
On the other hand, I can see how something like this could sway the court's opinion in case where a parent has some - perfectly manageable - problems or some history. I also faced my ex in court, not the state, so there's also a difference - I did not have to be the "ideal" parent, I simply had to be better than my ex (which wasn't difficult).
What also annoyed me is that they did not note that the initial call was malicious. I know it was my ex as it was very "his" style: "she does not buy organic food for the children, they are playing with cheapo plastic toys, ah and - by the way - she's a mass murderer who hides from justice and runs a brothel from the children's bedroom". Exaggerating, but not very far from the actual allegation made.

Spero

Silvercuckoo
My dil had same malicious accusation levied against her.
Police car parked outside her ( rural) home two nights running.
I told her to ring police and thank them for protecting her as she wondered if there was an escaped prisoner on the run and to offer them her cctv footage to see if they’d tried to approach her or her neighbours house.
Then the sw turned up and asked if she could see the children’s bedrooms, to which my dil complied.
Ooh..what a lovely princesses room..
( hopefully she was relieved to see it wasn’t a dungeon with whips and chains)

Hae we still got people saying it must be the parents fault? I have never heard so much crap... I understand why SS got involved with me in the first place. The allegations weren't about me. We had no chance to prove this given that they got involved 2 weeks before my child was born. didn't bother with us. And got an emergency hearing 10 hours after my DD was born... When the allegations were proven to be false. They felt beyond stupid because they didn't really have anything to fall back on. They wanted to save face. And they used the stuff I have mentioned in a PP. How is that not lying? If they did what they did with other people. Hear us out then close the case. I wouldn't of had a problem. But they didn't. They ripped my whole family apart. Because thats what they wanted to do. They thought that because i was a young parent, who's had a bad past, I'd be an easy target. Jokes on them though because I made it so awkward for them and they didn't like that 😊😊😊

I think you are both YABU & YANBU! I have experienced family court and I was very fortunate for court to see right through my exes lies and to not promote possible dangerous contact between him and my son from day one and SS were on my side as in stopping contact. However I had a friend who is a health visitor, best friend of many years in fact, knew all about his past (violence, drugs, alcohol, criminal record) and whilst I was with him continuously reminded me that if SS found out what he was like and what he was doing my Ds could be taken away from me, yet when he tried to take his own life as someone else had seriously threatened it and also had it in mind that he was going to take mine and my sons too, her tune changed and all of a sudden she saw things from a “professional” point of view. Insisting that the relationship had to be maintained and that a court wouldn’t see that he imposed a danger to both DS and I. I saw a side to her that seemed as if she was impartial because of her role and it was the right thing to do, I feel this is how they are trained now and not to go off their own instincts. She disagreed with how my family court experience went and despite my DS declaring he did not want a relationship with his father she still thought it was in his best interest to have one. That friendship ended lol! My point here is that if she could promote putting a child that she “loved” back in danger what would she support in her community setting where she is the professional responsible for children’s lives?? SS are in impossible situations at times, I just got lucky

No Spero yet again it is you who refuses to understand where damaged parents with damaged and traumatised children are coming from. How about this: it is evident that Spero is not caring for dc adequately. She spends a lot of time on an Internet site called MN. We have concerns that Spero is not a good role model for dc. During further investigation (as per procedure) we found she also has her own website. This, along with her employment as barrister with much of her time spent in chambers, means dc does not receive adequate interaction with her parent. Furthermore Spero has long term mental ill-health and shows very little emotion. She is unable to recognise the possible emotional harm caused to dc by this inadequate parenting and showed little understanding of dc needs. Conversely she does have a nice home but it has a distinctive odour. A neighbour claims this smell is often present and he has seen regular visitors to Spero's home at night. At the cp meeting Spero was unable to comprehend our concerns about dc and concentrated solely on her own rights, claiming she has never had mental ill-health and that the sw and neighbour are "lying". The authority recommends that dc is placed on register with a view to commencing care proceedings on the grounds of possible future emotional harm. How does that feel Spero? Disclaimer: obviously what I've just written about Spero is rubbish.

Now try to defend yourself against that example Spero. Bearing in mind that any doctor's report denying mental ill-health could be ignored, other neighbours claiming you have no night visitors could be ignored and if dc (during interview) says one thing "wrong" such as "mummy does go on the Internet", you're screwed. These allegations will then get added to and added to and any good parenting reports will be withheld. Your solicitor will be told there are no other reports. An "expert" will say you are addicted to the Internet, you have a personality disorder and dc is neglected. Basically *Spero", you are screwed. Bye bye dc. You know it and I know it, this is what happens.