Taking mil to court to return my son & remove her PR?

[Crowamongstdoves]

Please be gentle with me. A year ago I had a breakdown due to the impact of domestic abuse by DH. At the time my health was seriously impacted to the point I thought I might have MS.

DS never missed school, had no more or less bugs than the average four year old (GP letter confirmed this) and my breastfeeding on medication which was overseen by the perinatal team and breastfeeding friendly, did not damage DS as mil stated.

DS had a hair strand test - was negative for my medication and a paediatritian assessment found no Issues nor neglect.

i had been accused pretty much, of having factitious induced illness / munchausens because both myself and DS have ASC and at the time I was having tests for MS

my DS was having his usual time with mil and DH (DH has a litany of health and mental health issues and the lions share in his time is by mil) during which I had my breakdown.

that was basically exhaustion and lot of tears. I lost basic skills and decision making because I had been abused for so so long and I didn’t realise what was going on.

when I expected to have DS home, I had short notice as they had put in for an EPO and lied on the form stating I was having a psychosis

an ICO was in place & a guardian appointed

i since found that I had a breakdown not for MH reasons but for neurological overload

for some unknown reason, despite providing evidence to prove no harm was done or could be done likely from breastfeeding and no harm from the paed assessment, the reason for threshold was that I had put DS at risk of significant harm by breastfeeding.

I also had a psych evaluation and of course I don’t have FII / munchausens or a personality disorder.

despite this, the social worker involved sided with my mil and DH and disregarded the police records of assault on me by DH and many other serious incidents. The sw decided that he felt I had misunderstood the abuse and was projecting onto mil and DH some kind of trauma. IF there was DV it was historical and I was equally to blame.

the sw he didn’t work with me. I had a parent assessment but they had forgotten to do mine and so I had two meetings of about an hour and answered education questions. When I queried when I could have the meetings for the rest of the questions i was told it had been done and had been taken from mil and DH!!

In short I had done nothing wrong and had evidenced this and naively believed that I would have my son returned to me.

it turned out mil had sent approx 250 emails equating to one per day to the social worker about me as a parent and my home and my parenting (she and I are poles apart) despite not actually being inside my home nor witnessing me as a parent.

i had never had a psychosis and had no mental health issues yet the judge decreed that I had no insight on account of my not taking responsibility for this psychosis?!

the children Guardian did not even meet me

what ended up happening was mil was given PR alongside DH and I

there were no legal stipulations on access other than I had to do some intervention work and remain supervised ( I haven’t had a concern at all in supervised but mil has had concerns raised from ds behaviour & things he has said) and was to be unsupervised and fall into line with usual separated parents ‘sooner rather than later’

not a week goes by when mil raises a petty concern or makes an allegation about my time with my son, despite it being supervised with cameras in the room, she has alleged I feed him junk food, force expensive toys on him, or too many toys, that I whisper to him or that I am inappropriate in all kinds of ways from the games we play to the jokes we make.

i cannot seem to have a voice in this where the positives and work I have done is recognised

it is almost a year since court and not one thing has moved forward. She denied me wishing DS a merry Christmas, denied me wishing DS a happy birthday. Denied having community contact. There is now no more interventions to be done. I am not a safeguarding risk!

i have also initiated myself during this, DBT and one to one trauma therapy. I have completed an 8 week dv course and I am doing another one of the same. I have had a complete recovery. I’m free from the toxicity and I feel confident to know what a red flag is. The guilt I have from remaining with DH I will never forgive myself for as ultimately it has lead to this.

DH failed his drug test but it was deemed irrelevant as mil was sharing custody with him and I, she had removed me from my sons GP records and won’t allow me to see his school plays and what not

my son never stops asking to come home and wanting to be in his real bedroom and to be with me. It is heartbreaking to have been breastfeeding him one night, and now more than a year and a half later I am still forced to be supervised not bcause I am a risk but because it is my only option or not see him at all

would I be unreasonable to initiate court proceedings and ask for my son to be returned to my care? He wants to come home; I’m well and thriving, I have a stable home and I am competent as I always was.

I had a crisis and I needed support not for this to have happened. I cannot understand how it did other than a judge will take a social worker and a guardian at their word and of course they didn’t meet or work with me.

mil and DH have all the power and control. I wonder if this is an extension of the abuse? From my courses it certainly seems so however it isn’t him doing it, it’s mil

I don’t know what to do and I’m so afraid that I’ll make things worse if I go back to court because I was totally thrown under the bus and it will surely be impossible to explain my side and the fact no assessments were done as they should and no harm was ever found? They’ll think I’m as crazy as I’ve been made out to be. I feel so helpless.

i would appreciate any thoughts or advice on this.

This is what should have began when court ended, mil said she wants 50/50 recognises how important it was but I am to do this work first. I’ve done this work. I’ve initiated therapy both for trauma, dbt and acceptance commitment therapy and completed my dv course and I am even doing voluntary training with rise to be a community advocate. I’m only in contact centre because without that I’d have nothing. The sw who has seen firsthand with her own eyes MILS behaviour created support for me where she could be my voice and for ds, having never interjected to a parent with a sw in another dept before. Mil won’t move. Xmas no call, birthday no call. Mother’s Day no call. She has been told I am no risk, I am completely recovered, i don’t speak negatively about her, my ds still expects to return home (he thinks I’m in mummy school) my ds cries for me, he also spends a lot of time talking about me, making things for me, he has consistently said that he can’t wait to ne in his real bedroom at home etc. the step in sw is able to remedy the prev false lies by reflecting who I am and what kind of parent I am now. I guess I worry that if I cannot say to a judge that what was given was profoundly wrong and that without an assessment how could anyone determine my capacity etc, if they believe the damning judgement without my being able to say I can’t take insight for something I haven’t done for example then how can I state my case that I am capable now? It’s so hard to know how to do it.

It did. But a sw who hasn’t assessed me as per guidelines who isn’t a fan of mine after having a complaint about him upheld and a guardian who did not even meet me ands relied upon sw reports, up against an abusive DH and his mum, their case verbally was more important than the evidence buried beneath an avalanche of a multitude of tiny little seemingly insignificant lies but which all subliminally add up to make a very different picture. It’s creepily clever how manipulation happens in the way. I have to ask even if it WAS true and I was mentally unwell and incapable to parent fill time; what begs the question, is the justification for not progressing to unsupervised contact when even the sw begrudgingly recommends I see my ds in my own? The sw, he dislikes me immensely but even he conceded its beyond time for unsupervised: the sw himself said court is my only route now which I had hoped we would have been far down the road by now so when I did ask for a return home I’d have more meat on the bones. It’s shook my faith that professionals do the right thing and guidelines are followed. If I was reading this I would be thinking ‘there must be more to it’ but I assure you my story is true.

I am absolutely terrified reading this. I'm in a similar situation but only six months in. I have a meeting with the social worker this week and don't know what I'll do if they don't lift the supervised access. I am terrified and heartbroken for you op. Please feel free to pm me. I have no advice but I'm here.

With kindness, you don't know what your child is doing or saying when he is not with you. As a parent, you need to be reassuring him and pointing out that his home is with his granny at the moment.
If you believe your ex MIL is breaking the terms of a court order, then you have no choice but to return to court.

I don’t think you stand a chance of going from 1 supervised visit a week to back home apart from eow and 1 week night regardless.

Your argument needs to be on the basis as completing what’s been asked and your child’s best interests. That you for your child want to build up more contact to eventually go back to living together/50:50. No matter how much you say he talks about you, him living somewhere for 18 months full time will of become his normal and to then go from 1 supervised to moved out wouldn’t be in his best interests. Slowly slowly.

Not that the sw hates you and is a lier that won’t help you.

You have a right to initiate court proceedings but you absolutely need a better solicitor and a learning disability advocate.
Did you have a cognitive assessment, a psychological assessment (which utilised medical documents) and a pams assessment?

Nope! I had a court psych assessment stating I am autistic & my struggle with autism in this scenario is advocating for myself and being heard. I did not have a PAMS. The sw didn’t use an up to date care assessment, he used one from when I was unwell. He spoke to adult sw for 10 mins and dismissed her saying that I had recovered, reduced support gourde and in line with the court psych assessment that it was rebuilding my confidence and I did not need support long term. The LA said if my witness statements and assessments that they did not dispute them. As a result they claimed they accepted the positive assessments etc but then turned to say actually we don’t agree but dismiss it, don’t give it any weight because we didn’t task the psych with parenting capacity. Instead they asked the psych stupid questions about if I had borderline or FII and spent my time googling illnesses. They very well knew I didn’t have MH issues and that I had an NHS dx. So I did not have a voice in court. I didn’t have a PAMs. I didn’t meet or engage with the Guardian. It was 6 months before my ‘parenting assessment’ was crammed in, so much so that I spent three separate hours at the most without having a structure to follow , more like a chat, thinking I had many more to go, and when I enquired when we would be discussing the next dozen topics I was told that there wasn’t any time, he had taken from the first sw reports of whom had been acknowledged to be in need of fact checking but this wasn’t done because sw said he had been ‘redeployed’ sw took my relationship history from DH and mil. My assessment was done about me not with me. And almost every paragraph makes a false statement or an opinion on nothing they have any business making a decision as as the sw he is not an autism specialist, and backed whatever he sworn not with a professional report but with the email chronology from mil which was fabricated. So if you are a judge you rightly expect that a sw would do a thorough assessment and with ND, a PAMS. You’d expect a guardian to have completed a report first hand and not upon DH & Mil views and reports that are known to not be correct factually. You wouldn’t expect a mil to go to THAT much trouble sending daily emails if she wasn’t genuinely concerned would you? And they can’t ALL have dropped the ball right? That is how parents like me and others get stitched up by social services who then go oh well it wasn’t our decision, it was the judge!

You’re quite right. I wouldn’t know except mil reports to the supervisor what DS says. Communication doesn’t occur towards me. A narrative was agreed by everyone and has not been provided. Because mil gushed about wanting ds and I to have shared care with her, the judge took their word and didn’t put legal access protected for us both and to have the goodwill she claimed she had instead. That hasn’t happened. I have even had supervisor document to sw that I am never negative and always positive and encouraging. It makes no difference. The only way I can see ds is if she changes her mind or I go to court. I feel this is alienation. Why would you want a mother out or a child’s life if they pose no risk?

You had a barrister though and yet the decision was still made that you were to have supervised contact only. As others have said, it will take time.and that is in your dcs best interest.

My barrister did their best but without the necessary assessments, without my witnesses coming to give evidence / cross, without being able to essentially challenge the entire case, they did what they could do, but the case was like whack a mole. It wasn’t clear exactly what the issue was as soon as a concern was addressed up came another one and honestly they tried to have guardians evidence completely thrown out but there were too many people saying the same thing that evidence was not even taken into account and I don’t understand and neither do they, how and why this happened. It makes no sense.

I’m a care solicitor and what you are describing, I think you do not understand the court process at all. You cannot have a guardian’s report “thrown out”.

Go back to your original solicitors and see if you have a case.

If your son is with MIL under and SGO you will really struggle, in fact virtually impossible to get it revoked.

If your originally solicitor/barrister thought the case was mishandled and all the evidence was not before the court then you would have been given advice on how to appeal.

According to my autism psych there is. When the brain is literally thrown too much, for too long, it shuts down neurologically, that’s what they said, what would you call it? I just want to know what happened to me, to turn me into a total wreck of tears that day.

Crowamongstdoves who are you talking to?

You can copy and paste a name, and put an asterisk ( ) either side of it to make it bold, or you can click the first icon under their post which is quote* and it will show who you are answering as I've done with your post. HTH

As you can see though I can't quite get it right! 😂

@Crowamongstdoves were you detained? Offered an advocate? It all seems very very heavy handed and intense from the one off teary breakdown you describe?

Suspect she was replying to my comment of:

It's reasonable for you to want this reviewed, but there is no such thing as 'neurological overload' so I would make sure that you get your facts straight. good luck.

It is not a medical term.