trigger warning this involves domestic abuse, family court, social services
it’s a very long post too, if you don’t want to read this don’t, but please don’t critisise me for a long post, am very fragile as it is
* I promise everything I’ve put down here is how it has been for me, there isn’t some secret neglect I’ve done and not shared; I wish that there was tbh because then I’d have something to work with, something to show insight to, to get help with, but there isnt**
I don’t know what I’m asking here, but I am feeling like this is a deliberate ploy to make me disappear from my children’s lives. It’s taken a while, but I have finally understood how this situation came about.
i was in an abusive relationship, but before I did therapy, dv recovery & education course and learned about dynamics of dv, I stupidly thought if kids didn’t see it, then they wouldn’t be impacted. I wish I could share the entire story details but it would be mammoth.
essentially, whether I did neglect or not, this is how the process went.
CPP due to external factors impacting our family & ‘gap in service provision’ in the LA not implementing care act assessment outcomes.
SW initiating PLO unilaterally against HV wishes (I saw this in my medical file, and HV was the only pro at this zoom meeting)
PLO didn’t take place - just initiated in writing. The SW used incorrect school attrition, citing less than 50% when it was actually 78% with the drop related to the support necessitated from the care act not being in place.
DV background, but i was so gaslit and frightened I fell into the fawn response - MIL was overstepping boundaries, when I told her to stop, the pressure against me from the sw Increased - the sw kept writing down what MIL said as fact, I challenged this just before my respite break and my complaint was upheld - all reports by this sw were to be gone through & amended by a different sw.
My health hit crisis point and I needed a short break for a small operation. Children went to paternals and were due to return home. Day of return, confirms by the SW manager, I then got told I had 2 hours to go to court for an EPO. The allegations were absurd and false, and the app was ‘stayed’ however a few days later an ICO was granted and I couldn’t understand why? If allegation are made, and there is evidence from professionals showing these are false then how does this get ignored?
i was only allowed contact centre. I am not mentally unwell, no criminal or drug record. I wasn’t allowed to speak about the day my children left to them and to this day I haven’t been told what they were told. I find this insane, how can something so enormous happen yet you aren’t allowed to even acknowledge that one day you lived with siblings and mum and the next you’re split up amongst paternal family and see mum in a contact centre and we are all to pretend nothings happened?
I then discovered MIL had sent hundreds of email to the sw about how awful I am as a parent. That I made racist remarks; implied I was under the influence; home conditions, leaving them alone, breastfeeding against medical advice (I followed my perinatal midwife plan specifically for breastfeeding as I have to take meds for a genetic condition). MIL made outlandish claims re the presentation of children and what my very young children had ‘said’ to her. At no point did the SW ask me. No photos taken, no reports by any other professional negative about me or my care, entirely from MIL.
I thought that given during process of the ICO as evidence was produced either already existing, or from court ordered tests, all proving me truthful, that children would return.
threshold changed four times at least during. Then the SW said they were no longer seeking orders and had effectively passed over to the paternals so making this a private law yet the proceedings began under public law - despite no active public law which is 26 weeks to remedy any concerns before court is considered, this wasn’t done.
the guardian didn’t meet me to assess or observe me with my children.
the parenting assessment for me, was heavily influenced by paternals, and I was asked two questions on WhatsApp. When I went to organise at least 12 other topics to cover, I’d been told the report was completed! The sw had used the reports that had been upheld as hearsay, but without the fact check amendments promised from the complaint meeting??
I begged at one point to the sw to tell me what do you need me to do to turn this around? I was either met with silence or told to go away
the sw made false statement to the LA legal team, via MIL, that were false, and could have been shown to be via the contact centre if they asked, which they didn’t. The Sw also stated I had been verbally abusive on several occasions at court where I had not!
the sw maintained I had failed to meet needs inc hospital, doctors, opticians and presented wildly to inaccurate school figures. Despite all evidence proving the opposite; it didn’t matter, the sw said whatever they wanted to and there was nothing I could do.
my contact became less and less throughout, blaming travel or holiday periods etc.
all the extensive DV records from multiple sources were ignored and in its place it was stated I was simply ‘fixated’ due to an unmet childhood projection ie the abuse didn’t happen, and further more, the father was the victim and I was the perpetrator.
his hair strand test showed drugs in court and his mental health is unstable. So given we were in court as a PLO but then the LA withdrew from seeking orders, it continued under the guise of a PLO but the format was private law. So no finding of fact, simply who presents best.
at the final hearing, the LA who were hacking the paternals, switched tack and without any opportunity to refute, decided to claim that I was too disabled to parent unless a full time support worker could do so on my behalf ergo they recommended MIL had court given PR shared with dad, and me, and that contact going forward, was at their discretion.
MIL is acting as if she has kinship / guardianship and has blocked any and all contact moving forward. Blocked me accessing therapy involvement, dental, doctors - when I managed to get a FOI for child’s doctor she promptly switched to a different one. Child is desperate to come home but again I haven’t been allowed to even acknowledge that they were with me one day; then never came home.
last Christmas, MIL blocked further contact making up a wild allegation that I was causing harm, and I have the evidence to show this is false, but what I keep finding is that the false narrative created in the first place; means I am dismissed. Any other professional comes into this, assumes that we would have undertaken the 26 weeks PLO first, assumed that the PLO robust threshold would have been fully tested and evidenced, and that there must be reasons strong enough to continue to force me into over a year and a half of supervised contact.
this MIL is making claims that are so easy to disprove such as lying that school raise concerns when they haven’t, or that I am forcing a medical condition upon my child when I’m not etc, but this barrier is solid in that, nothing I say or have produced will be even entertained. The SW produced a report to court (am in proceedings) and wrote that they were unable to gain my views as didn’t have my contact yet on that date, they were contacting me on WhatsApp! This sw did zero work with me - another sw did and ergo the report didn’t match up with how the work post court went, and continued to go along with this false narrative.
I have been completely alienated from my other child - won’t be given their mobile number, they’ve been told I’m mentally unwell when I’m not, they don’t want to see me, are afraid of me according to dad. They either sell any gifts I have sent or send them back or they don’t give them at all.
the Sw produced the most disgusting ‘narrative’ 8 months before the final hearing took place and within weeks of them not retuning my children, I saw from FOI that internal comms between LA and new schools claimed children won’t be going home, neglect and of course the false school figures.
I then found out that we had been agreed to the support needed to avoid the crisis, but that the Sw had initiated a meeting in order to have it removed
It’s now another Christmas where not only am I not with my children, but I’m not even allowed to be in the same room when they speak to my family. MIL has refused all Xmas, birthdays, you name it - I’ve been slowly erased from their lives for what? A disability? Which turned out to be a direct impact from the domestic abuse to which I have had a full recovery.
how can it be that reports, documents, evidence all saying that I’m a wonderful safe mother, the only risk is the DV and then beforehand, the barrier was the support not provided by adult care assessment, all completely buried and the false allegations are taken as fact and because of the risk which nobody can actually identify, I must remain supervised?
their counsel is stating that the concern is that impact of involvement for the children - the implication is if I walk away then they won’t have to endure the animosity towards me by their ‘adults’ picking up the atmosphere from their stress and the abrupt cancellation / blocks of contact by MIL who wants me to say that she had to step in because I’m not capable of parenting.
this has hit me so hard. I am a shell of who I was. I cannot comprehend how this is happening or how I can articulate myself to court to show them that I cannot accept a narrative that doesn’t exist nor can I have any insight into what hasn’t happened? None of it makes sense.
already, I feel that I have been a ‘martyr’ by not telling the children that I’m prevented from talking, telling, and all other things I am not allowed by them to do. I know they think I don’t care, that I don’t have time for them because that’s what they’ve been told. But when I try to talk to anyone outwith this, they don’t seem to believe me. No matter what evidence I produce or what I say, they all seem to be following some mystery risk I pose despite the clear harm happening by them to the children.
is this actually normal as in, I always believed you’d have to do something horrific to be separated from your children, to be supervised and to be erased by all but legal name on a paper from motherhood. I always thought that there would be concrete evidence if you’re in my situation. That every professional would go on evidence? But this isn’t the case with me.
I don’t want my children to hurt any more because of me, if I speak out to them it would devastate them, which is why o don’t, but then they’re growing up believing a lie. If I keep fighting then they’ll be impacted longer but if I stop, they can find me when they’re older?
I’ve tried everything. They won’t engage in mediation, therapy, anything at all unless it’s their decision.
I have evidence of coercive control ongoing, evidence of everything, if I don’t walk away then how do I make my voice heard when the weight of a social workers report is nigh on impossible to overcome?
I just don’t know what to do, if anything
l keep going because there has to be a solution. There has to be.