“Failure to protect” child protection plan

[Amy2611xcx]

Help. Children (4 and 7) are currently on cp plan. Me and their dad are separated currently with shared care via CAO. Reasons for plan were due to emotional abuse from dad. Physiologist has been involved and is now questioning sexual abuse due to oldest repeating things dad says to say / do. I’d already raised this to ss during section 47 report and disclosure was repeated by child to sw. Plan said dad was to only have supervised contact which he refused so I raised emergency court hearing, still waiting for listing in court but am not allowing contact in the meantime. Sw now saying I failed to protect and I’m also risk to children 😞 how can I prove to them that I can protect my children and stop them taking them from me?

How long were the children being abused by their father before you left him? You say "currently separated" which implies this is just temporary - have you separated and got back together previously? Are you married, have you started divorce proceedings?

Thanks for your reply. We were engaged but weren’t ever married, split up 2.5 years ago and no haven’t been back and definitely no plans to. I left with the children (woman’s aid told me to leave when he wasn’t there because of his abuse to me) and then he took me to court and got 50/50, I fought against it but he claimed I was making up alligations to alienate him, he was a loving father ect and Cafcass didn’t believe me and said there were no risks so he won. That’s when it appears the abuse started. I really don’t think it ever happened when we were together as he literally never had them by him self (his choice), I even had to take the baby into the bathroom with me as he would refuse to watch him for even two minutes. SW is saying I should have taken it back to court sooner and I really wish I had now, but when I spoke to solicitor last they said it’s difficult to change such a new order without any new evidence.

@Amy2611xcx please forgive me if I've got the timeliness wrong here but if I've got it correct I think that you can turn this around and put the blame squarely on the ss and courts for failing to protect your children.
So if I've got it right you left your abusive ex when dc were about 18 months and 4 ish at this time you made crts ss etc aware of your ex being abusive (physically and/or emotionally) however you were not believed and no action was taken by either to protect your dc infact he was given 50/50 custody. Shortly after this you saut legal advice about challenging the crt order but was told that nothing could be done without more evidence.
You had no choice but to comply with the crt order. You made sure that your dc saw a child psychologist who informed you and/or ss that they believe that your ex is sexually abusing your dc at which point you communicated this with social services and agreed to remove all unsupervised access to dc from their father and have initiated crt proceedings against your ex.
The question becomes why if ss believed that dc were being abused especially with a child making disclosures before, during or after the custody case didn't they intervene and rase it. Why haven't they gone to crt for an emergency crt order to remove care from him (which they can do much quicker than you). Why are you (the only person who is truly trying to protect your dc) being blamed for there bad decision and lack of action? What more do they expect you to do when you have been raising serious concerns from the start and have done everything legally possible to protect them and are continuing to do so and engage with ss.
You had the same information at the same time as ss and are acting on it so why are you being held to a higher standard than an official body with statutory responsibilities (ss) to protect your dc ? If the experts couldn't prevent the abuse (which is there job) how can an ordinary person do so.
A good lawyer can word it better than I can. But basically your hands were tied by the crts and legally you had to obay the crt order or risk losing custody all together until you had more evidence which you now have and are acting on. The ss had no such issues and could of taken there concerns to a crt at anytime but still haven't because you are doing there job for them.
Get a good lawyer and push back ask them why they didn't act sooner, why they didn't do there job. Good luck and keep doing what you are

@Hoardasurass thanks for your Jon-judgmental reply. Yes you’re pretty much spot on. The biggest issue seems to be that the sw doesn’t seem to get that you can’t just keep taking things back to court with no new evidence. She keeps saying that I should have just exercised my pr and not allowed the children to have contact. However if I’d done that before now (whilst as we’re saying there was no evidence of abuse) then my ex would have probably ended up with more contact. She also seems to think that I should have been able to see what was going on at his house. I knew there was emotional abuse, but I couldn’t prove it in court. And yes, I’m feeling less anxious after another talk with my solicitor.

OP Id write a timeline down with dates, times of phone calls, what was said by you and by others like SW and the lawyer you saw, when you found out about the abuse, when you told SS, any evidence you have of in writing, screenshots of phone log to show when you contacted SS and so on. I don't have any experience of this, but I was thinking if you could discuss how to handle SS with your lawyer, if it would be good to push it back on them asking them what steps they're going to take to keep your DC safe from their father. It seems a reasonable question to ask. SS should be focused on keeping your DC safe not on persecuting their mother.

It sounds like the SW doesn’t really understand the family courts. You’re correct - if you’d done as she suggested and “exercised your PR” with no additional evidence, you’d be likely to find yourself in court for enforcement proceedings, very likely with your ex going down the parental alienation route.