cafcass, mediation and agreed contact...

[wavesandwellies]

just looking for advise really. I attended mediation this week at court as ex has requested full weekend contact with dd6.

he hasn't seen her for over a year and I have restraining order in place against him.
he has a history of serious drug abuse. I missed the initial cafcass telephone interview and was told it would be done before court. he's told them that I stopped contact because I found out he had a GF and that contact and communication was regular. this is untrue.

i was on my own on the day and anxiety anne got the better of me and i dont feel like i articulated myself well. I feel like I've been completely strongarmed by the officer into agreeing to contact and I don't feel like my concerns of his abuse were taken seriously. he refused supervised contact at a centre as him DM does exactly that job and has sufficient experience of that sort of thing. so I agreed that contact could be supervised by her at her house. I suggested that contact be every other weekend and then after school contact every other weekend. she insisted that the latter needs to be every week.

I suggested a drug test but he refused as he didn't want to pay for it. cafcass have ordered a section 7 report and to do level 2 safegaurding checks as these werent done. he also raised concerns of safegaurding about my dp and his history of DV (this is completely untrue and I believe fabricated to cause trouble).

my questions are, will cafcass now do police checks on my dp. can I insist that contact take place alternate weekdays and weekends, even though I initially agreed to different? should I inform dds school that cafcass are going to be interviewing dd?

hope it all makes sense and sorry if any of it is jumbled.

If you have concerns regarding drug abuse then I would reiterate that at the next cafcass meeting and push for a drug test.

I'm surprised he's been offered this amount of interim contact whilst the court process is ongoing, especially as he hasn't seen dd in over a year. You could argue that it is in your dd's best interests for contact to be built up gradually.

In the end, he will most likely end up with alternative weekends and once a week, unless you have good reason not to (i.e. If he lives to far from dd's school for mid-week contact to work, etc). However if you are agreeing to alternate weekdays, what would be your reason to disagree with one weekday a week? That's how the court would see it.

I'm not sure regarding your DP, I think it all depends on how serious your ex's claims are against him and whether or not cafcass believe these claims.