CAFCASS Court Guardian fiasco

[january123]

DB has full custody of his DC.

Their mother is an abusive alcoholic who has lived in a brain injury facility for the last year due to an alcohol induced fall.
A court order is in place preventing any contact from the mother and there has been no communication fof 18 months, following years of emotional abuse.

This has obviously been hugely traumatising for the DC but they are starting to rebuild their lives as a 3 and are now living near me.

During this time multiple professional parties have come and out of the DCs lives; social services, therapists etc and apart from the counsellor, it's been a constant turnover of individuals.

Their mother is now fighting to resume contact and a CAFCASS court guardian has been appointed. This involves the DC undertaking psychological assessments and meetings with the guardian;'which in itself is naturally difficult for them.

However to make things worse, there has been a huge turnover in local CAFCASS resourcing and we are now on the 3rd Guardian! Each time the process has to start again and the DC are expected to deal with yet another stranger and the ordeal is prolonged.

Can DB put a stop to it? Medical reports show no change in the mothers mental state; that she still doesn't accept her addiction and that she sees no reason why contact can't resume. Surely there has to come a point where it is decided enough is enough and contact is only resumed when the DC are old enough to decide for themselves or there is clear evidence that the risk has been reduced sufficiently?

I can't help feel that if this was the other way round and it was DB who was the abuser this would all be handled very differently. Not to mention the only people who seem to beniift frkm this shitstorm are the solicitors and "professional experts". The small savings DB did have for rebuilding their lives has all been sucked away in legal fees

He can apply for a s 91 (14) Order under the Children Act 1989. This doesn't stop someone making applications, but it does mean they have to have permission for the court to issue them. So a judge will review beforehand. In your DB case that for example could mean that they wouldn't allow them to be issued unless there was clear evidence of reduced risk. They are to stop individuals dragging ex-partners and children back to court repeatedly.

I would advise your brother to speak to a solicitor (this is a new enactment in law).

He could also ask about the children having a Guardian appointed by the court. The advantage of this would be this would have legal aid funding. The Guardian represents the child at court. So if your brother is worried about the impact on the children this would hopefully protect them and advocate the impact on them.

@BlueBellIris thank you!

Think I may have been a bit confused (so many parties involved!). It is actually a court appointed guardian that has been instructed. Trouble is they keep leaving and a new one allocated.
My niece (13) is already flatly refusing to talk to yet another stranger and none of this is helping her recovery

@january123 the appointed Guardian's are usually CAFCASS officers.

There's not a lot your brother can do if the court has ordered these appointments etc, apart from support the children. Apart from raising at any further hearings his concerns about the impact on the child's MH.

It sounds like at the end of this application, it would be useful for your brother to apply of a s 91 (14) (to minimise harm in the future). So I would really recommend your brother raises this his solicitor (and or the court if he is unrepresented).

Guardians are court Guardians, there arent any other sort of CAFCASS Guardians

The problem is, that CAFCASS do like 'expert assessments' when really they're not necessary. What his solicitor needs to focus on is whether anything has significantly changed from the mother's behaviour or capacity and if nothing has, then his son shouldnt be subjected to unnecessary assessments.

Thank you.
DB has used the same solicitor throughout this and it does occur to me that she may not be as forthcoming as she could be in shutting this down. I do sometimes wonder if she is truly acting in DB/DCs best interests or he is just a gravy train.

I work in care proceedings in public proceedings, not private. Unfortunately solicitors are often in no hurry to shut things down and also often will press for expert assessments.

Spookily relevant because DB received the latest medical report today which said in a recent home visit she purchased alcohol and "put herself and others at risk". Sounds like drunk driving to me and hopefully conclusive evidence to shut the contact application down.

Courts will always want to know timescales. So often its not enough to say, no contact, because the question will be 'well if not now, when'

Because its not sustainable to say that a child will never have contact with one of their parents during their minority

What needs to happen is that clearly mum is not able to have safe direct contact with her son right now and her prognosis needs to be given by the experts who work with her, do they expect for example that this may change within 6 months, a year, 2 years, 5 years?? Or never?

Then there needs to be a discussion about whether indirect contact might be of benefit to the child, xmas cards, birthday cards, notes or letters, or even face time or phone calls. But you need to be careful not to invite someone to say, 'well the child needs to be assessed to determine what level of contact is right at the moment'. If for example mother is very inconsistent and doesnt always send cards or forgets etc, then its better for the dad to send mum every 6 months a very brief update of what their son is doing or how he is. Then dad can gauge over the years when their child is or isnt ready to have any more contact with mum.

It's possible that here, he could choose to represent himself rather than paying for the solicitor?

I found a big weight was lifted once I wasn't paying for lawyers.

My dc also had an appointed guardian.. 4 to be exact.
The last one compiled his report over 4 years.
And admitted on the stand it was based on 'facts' he received from exh. He was actually thrown out of court
. Your dB and his dc have my sympathy op. It's an absolute shit show..

Agree I have found cafcass to be a nightmare who spend very minimal time getting to know the children and so of course the children don't open up to them . And it's horribly traumatising for them to talk about it with strangers.

My daughter is 4 and has a Cafcass guardian, she was the Cafcass officer who authored the section 7.. She's awful, makes repeated excuses for abuser ex but she also knows she can't recommend unsupervised contact because he's so dangerous and perpetrated an act of abuse that almost killed her. She gets my back up hugely when I speak to her but I try to keep it very factual with her. My Dd is traumatised with the comings and goings of various professionals and now the guardian wants to obtain her wishes and feelings.. I hate all of this.

Cafcass have a real agenda of pushing for contact even when it's a palpably awful idea. It's really frustrating.