Anyone who has a negative experience with NYAS Guardians? (National Youth Advisory Service) - particularly minorities or those under abuse?

[Ann990]

Dear all,

I wrote this thread yesterday but it got removed for breaking forum rules - I cannot found how it broke them (I went through them) but in any case I will rewrite in another way.

I have had an extremely bad experience with NYAS. The guardian I had was extremely racist and Islamophobic. The things she wrote were horrifically racist. She told many lies and these were all exposed in court. However, this is not the point really. The point is, she did it and she gets away with it. The only people this really hurts are the children. The fact that her own prejudices can come before children's welfare cannot be understated.

The lies were such an extent that I paid an ISW to observe the children and I together. The guardian has never seen my children and I together. The guardian then spoke to the ISW about this observation and wrote a report, not realising at the time it seems, that the ISW was also commissioned to write a report. The two reports were starkly different - the guardian's presented me extremely negatively - the ISW's was extremely positive. It seemed the guardian was so desperate to paint me in a bad light that she twisted the ISW's words to try and make them sound as negative as possible. Obviously, this is colloquially known as 'shooting oneself in the foot' or 'exposing your biased a**' and 'egg on your face' - and proved her prejudice and agenda clearly. It was quite glorious. Though, as mentioned, what can be done about such open-ended and blatant lying? Should the ISW have not written a report, only the guardian's would have been presented to the court. This would have been extremely prejudicial. In both cases - she has gotten away with it anyway.

One thing which was extremely distressing was that even though she me extremely unwell and hospitalised, she kept implying I was lying about my health. This - even though I presented medical letters proving my health status. It is of note, that my health isn't something that people can minimise in these situations - e.g. mental health and anxiety (which are serious but such people deride), but serious, vital organ condition which cannot be argued against. It is extremely strange she tried to. It was akin to having no eyes but her arguing that I was lying about not being able to see. That's how bizarre it is.

The most alarming thing is, that while this guardian's report was like it was, NYAS contiuned to push forward with it. To me, this was contrary to its purpose - when the lies had been clearly exposed, how can a NYAS solicitor - an officer of the court - continue with it? But they did, knowing it was fabricated and full of falsehoods. It is one thing not knowing - but they knew as I had shown them even prior to court. To me this is clear contempt of court.

As such, I would like to take legal action against NYAS. I understand they are a charity and there are a few options, depending if they obtained a public certificate of funding or not:

1. Discrimination under Equality Act
2. Human Rights claims (art 6, 8, etc)
3. Judicial Review
4. Potential criminal - though I do not know how
5. Breach of any statutory duty of care?

If anyone else has had any similar problems with NYAS, please do let me know. It would be good if we could get a few people together and see what we could do. I am happy to take legal action and a class action would be best.

At the end of the day, these (in my opinion) lazy charlatans hurt children and they need to be held to account.

Thank you for reading

You are clearly upset. I'm not sure legal action against NYAS is appropriate. However...

To get a Group Litigation Order (the UK equivalent of a class action), you need a group of claims that give rise to common or related issues of facts or law. You may find it difficult to find cases with enough in common with yours to justify a GLO.

NYAS is not a public authority, so you cannot make claims against them under the Human Rights Act, nor can you take them to judicial review.

I don't see anything in your post that gives rise to criminal proceedings.

The big question is what you are trying to achieve. Depending on what you want, legal action may not be the best way to achieve it. Remember that you will have to fund any legal action and, if you lose, you will have to pay their costs as well as your own. If you want to pursue legal action, you need to consult a solicitor. They will be able to advise if you have a case.

Hi,

Thanks for your reply.

I am upset because it is deeply upsetting to be lied against particularly due to your race or religion. I'd hoped equality would have gotten further than that. It is of note that the Domestic Abuse Commissioner report of this year, the UN report of this year, domestic abuse statutory guidance of various years, the Ministry of Justice Assessing Risk of Harm...in private law cases (I've forgotten the full name!) all point out that BAME women are in fact prejudiced against in courts and family systems (including heavily by guardians/social workers) - and put numerous recommendations for all systems - including judges- to improve.

I have not put the details in my post due to family matters being as so. However, I can say I have had success in at least raising my ECHR rights against NYAS. This is because NYAS if on a public funding certificate are then acting as public bodies for purposes of the HRA, irrespective of their claim they are a charity. This also opens them up to JR. Equality Act claims are obviously there anyway.

From the people I have so far for example, there are shared factual matrixes both in fact and law thus far.

I totally appreciate however, there is not much further I can disclose on a public forum about my case thus I've asked for anyone and everyone to contact me about their experiences to see if we do have common ground we could work on together.

Thanks for responding :)

Hi, NYAS are currently involved in my ongoing family court case. The guardian is poor at her job and at reading situations that aren't blindingly obvious. Asks me questions she should be answering for herself, and I feel she has written off the main reason she was brought into the case in the first place.

I am so sorry to hear this :(

Hi
I've just seen your post - I'm so sorry to hear you've also had a shocking experience with NYAS. Our experience was a few years ago but as a DV victim who had previously been supported by Cafcass in the Family Court it is hard to put into words how appalling our NYAS Guardian was and the extent to which she was prepared to lie, twist my child's words and make false allegations to suit her blatently pro-father narrative and to disguise her utter incompetence. I am certainly keen to join you in a class-action against NYAS if that is still something you are considering? I have spoken to another mother who received similarly biased treatment by the same NYAS Guardian and we found there were some clear parallels our cases:

• Shows blatant bias to the abusive/violent father (the DV perpetrator)
• Writes reports having only interviewed the father (or supresses the mother’s evidence) so that the report is biased towards the father causing upset to the mother in front of the Judge so she can then allege the mother is emotionally ‘volatile’ or ‘dysfunctional’
• Falsifies accounts given to her by the child in the father’s favour and takes factual incidents of domestic abuse admitted by the father and reverts them back to being mere “allegations” – she does this to minimise feelings of fear by the child of him and to claim that the father is not a danger to the child/ has never been a danger
• Fails to put factual detail given by the child which would put the father in a poor light eg. description of DV incident perpetrated by the father against either mother or child
• Claims the child ‘fails to substantiate allegations’ when they have been perfectly clear
• Falsely claims the child ‘echoes’ or ‘mirrors’ the mother or speaks in a ‘rehearsed manner’
• Falsely claims the mother is putting pressure on the child to say things or make allegations against the father
• Asks leading questions to the child eg. ‘are you afraid of your mother?’ to try to generate a response she can use to allege the mother is emotionally abusive to the child
• Puts words in the child’s mouth (either her own words or those of the father) to allege the mother is emotionally abusive to the child
• Fabricates evidence against the mother to cast her in a poor light and falsely alleges she is ‘intimidating’ or ‘emotionally volatile’ in order to allege the mother is emotionally abusive to the child

From what you say I would anticipate that the above points will resonate with you. And as in your case NYAS acted in our cases with publicly-funded certificate so it would be good to discuss things further with you regarding a possible class action against NYAS. Please PM me or give me your details so that I can contact you.

Hello i am a dad and have a guardian from nyas at present completely 2 faced tells lies orders a pschological test and only 3 out of 4 people are assessed they paid for 4. They have been on the case for over 12 mths - 12 months ago the local council social worker recommended direct ocntact since then this nyas guardian has blocked completely everything and i onloy get to write to the children once every 2 weeks based on childrens wishes and feelings. The funny thing is she states it is unclear what the true wishes and feelings are. She also reports that during the time i have not seen them the children have suffered emotional harm tells ex to go to gp she goes to gp and from info received from ex they say no treatment as 12 year old says she doesnt want it. Guess what Nyas guardian despite a couple of week sprior says children have suffered emotional harm now agrees with a 12 year olds diagnosis of no treatment required when she asked for GP initially

I just had a very similar situation as you had, the caseworker has a clear bias and favoured the father who is a white British. The caseworker failed visit the child at our home and changed my words and child’s true wishes, tried her best to describe the mother is strict and the father is a perfect loving daddy, after I explained her that father had a serious alcohol addiction and mental issue which approved by the court, and still put lots of bad impact to the child, the guardian wrote in her report “the mother clearly has no concern about the father’s care to the child”, after I made a formal complaint to her report, she changed her two years long standing recommendations of “the child still lives with mother and spend time with the father” to “joint live with” order, which resulted a very negative court decision, I am in the process of making an appeal, but I really like to make a further complaint or any legal action is necessary to NYAS as they are not helping the children, and their behaviours are very harmful. please let me know if we can do something together.

Hi MengMeng I'm so sorry to hear your experience with NYAS was just as dreadful and, as in our case, the Guardian was blatantly biased towards the father, twisted yours and your child's words and ignored your child's true wishes leading to what sounds like a very bad outcome (as in our case). If you would be interested in pursuing legal/ class action against NYAS please send me a private message (PM) and we can do so together.

I'm sorry to hear that you are suffering at the hands of a NYAS guardian.

We had a similar experience, the first guardian became so unprofessional and spun such a web of lies that she tripped herself up and caused multiple GDPR breaches. We got her removed as the children's Guardian, but the court allowed her to be used as a PERSONAL witness for the father. Safe to say after hours of interrogation during fact finding, she was no longer a credible witness.

We now have a second one that hasn't bothered to see the children in 6 months, has completed a 15 minute home visit and speaks constantly to the father only.

The children don't trust her, and paternal family are using her name as a threat if they do not wish to go into contact, and I have been verbally abused and threatened by the paternal family to which she put the blame on everyone for not behaving appropriately because she didn't bother to speak to anyone but the father and his brother.

NYAS are not fit for purpose, have clear biases towards certain types of families and do not hesitate to hide this. They are far from impartial, and easily swayed by manipulation.

They demanded psychological assessments, and claimed that ADHD is a reason that a mother shouldn't keep her children as she is 'inconsistent' - it was all a bunch of lies and clearly had the wool pulled over her eyes by a father who was previously arrested for various offences against the children and the mother.

They do not have the children's interests at heart at all, and never will.

Im really sorry to hear you’ve also had a truly dreadful experience with NYAS. Sadly I’m not surprised by what you say about the dishonesty and blatant bias towards the father and how easily they have been manipulated.by him as that is exactly what we experienced. Also I note the same about his arrests for previous offences being ignored as the same happened with several serious DV offences against me and the children previously admitted by him in the family court in 2011 and a Caution for assault on the PNC all ignored to suit the support by NYAS of his victim narrative.

We also got NYAS struck off at the Appeal in the High Court but only after it was too late and the damage had been caused to my son … he was physically assaulted by his father and has suffered mental health issues all ordered by the judge relying on NYAS dishonesty and bias.

Please can you PM me so we can see how we can meet up to discuss? There seems to be quite a large group of us who have suffered and are suffering because of them.

Hello I've had a bad experience with a nyas guardian some time ago would support you

So sorry to hear that you also had a bad experience with NYAS and thanks for offering your support. There are now more and more of us on this thread who have suffered at the hands of NYAS - we seem to be gaining considerable momentum.

Can you pls pm me with where you are based / some more details so that maybe we can meet up to discuss?

Hello, I am just see

Hello. I am reading this as I just googled "has anyone sued NYAS?"
I have put the caseworker on notice today of my intention to sue for :

-Potential breach to duty of care
-Defamation of character
-Personal injury.

I can't say more as I have a live case at the central family court.

The caseworker has been bias, caused emotional distress at court and outside, spent unequal time with parents on visits, will not accept my son's wishes and feelings are his own, dragged litigation on for almost 2 years. She is a private consultancy. Maybe on a retainer
Ignored potential physiological difficulties of father and only made the mother have physiological assessment.

Trust pilot has all 1 star reviews but this is much more serious. I fully intend to sue separately the caseworker has been appalling. Absolutely horrendous and could not have got it more wrong if she tried. The damage can not be forgiven.

Good afternoon

So sorry in the slow reply, I've sent you a PM

Hi Dawn

im so sorry to hear you’re having such a dreadful experience with NYAS. From what you say it sounds like exactly the same caseworker we had - she behaved in exactly the same appalling way and also had a private consultancy. I know that the other mother I helped (who did the Trustpilot review you refer to) had the same caseworker as we did - as I explained in my post. Please PM me as we are trying to get a group together.

I had the same experience, it’s the same patterns with Nyas for every case. I’ve spoke to other families. Nyas takes a route that will drag the court proceedings for longer, so they can get paid for longer. They do not care that children suffer. Our case worker never saw my child or me with my child together. She spoke to him over the phone for merely two minutes. She lied to the court that I refused to leave the room (this has never happened) and that she saw me standing in the corner (I wasn’t in the room). She produced a report with complete lies, she twisted all the words my child said. For example he said : “I speak with my mum” , she wrote : “im
scared of my mum”. She spoke to me for merely two minutes over the phone and produced massive report that made me look crazy, she used negative words to describe me. She later produced report where she lied that I ranged her and “accused her of bribing the judges” (this has never happened, I never ranged her or spoke to her ever again after that unfortunate 2 min of the phone conversation) . The lies she has made was deliberately misleading the judge to keep the case running, so Nyas scam government and parents for more money. As a result of her actions, my son became sick with severe panic attacks in school and home that affected his studies and his every day life. He had missed many school days as he was scared she would come to his school. Nyas ignored and dismissed all the GP reports and pleas to stop this process to save the child. Nyas persuaded their actions to portray me as an abuser when I was trying to save my son’s health. Nyas convinced the judge to order section C37 (Social Services involved to remove the child from the mother). Social Services produced absolutely opposite report to hers, stating all the truth: what my son said, what kind of mother I am, visited school. Bare in my mind Nyas never saw us or visited the school, nothing, they made a case out of thin air based on 2 min phone conversation. It’s all about money. Nyas should be shut down. My son grew up. Myself and my son would gladly be witnesses in the court against their corruption.

Please can I join this group too. Together we may be able to make a change /impact.

to continue this funding scam NYAS are calling themselves a guardian which requires a social worker for the past 6, 7 months all reports are coming from a solicitor labelled as guardian....... when you use the term guardian you are funded by Legal Aid Agency however the guardian must be a social worker not a solicitor

Hi Theo543 - I’m setting up the group on WhatsApp. I’ve sent you a pm.