Failure to protect?

[Sarahslaw]

This follows on from my other thread in which I was asking about to how to get a Sarah’s law request without the information as the mother was blocking it. We have now had disclosed our worst fears about the partner and mom has claimed that she won’t have any more to do with him. However, she also told us that she knew he had a restraining order preventing him from seeing his own child.

We suspected but are aghast at the confirmation that she was knowledgable about the danger he posed to children and still continued to put her children at risk by bringing him into their home. this is really the pinnacle of a long list of times she has failed to safeguard the children.

so, my legal question is, does this count as ‘failure to protect’ and is it something social services will take seriously. We honestly would appreciate their help and intervention to keep the children safe but are not sure if SS will simply close the case because she ended the relationship after the full Sarah’s law disclosure, despite her having tried to block our requests for this (she made false accusations to SS about us and threatened not to let us take the children on holiday in direct response to our continual requests).

FWIW we are not trying to take the children off her (care is currently 50:50) we simply want SS or someone else to take seriously our concerns about her failure to safeguard them, offer support to help her do better in future and to alert us if she doesn’t so that the children can be placed in our care if they’re in danger again.

You can report but they won't do anything at this stage if she's already stopped the behaviour so to speak.
How old are the children? If under 5 might be worth speaking to health visitor, or school if older with your concerns.
I would be careful of making problems though between you especially if you've been able to manage it yourself.
The best you can achieve is to get SS to record it & it'll be there for any future problems

@Nextdoor55 we haven’t really been able to manage it, our safeguarding concerns have continued to escalate for years. She brought in a new partner and we had immediate worries but were unable to do the Sarah’s law request without her help. The school spoke to her and social workers apparently visited her home but she still blocked the request. In the end we got his number plate and the police processed it and immediately called my DP in as a matter of urgency. It’s terrifying us that the kids were being groomed in front of her eyes and she protected the man doing it.

Not entirely unusual though unfortunately, is he away from the children now? Because that's all the ss will be interested in, & there's a chance she didn't know if he was that manipulative.

I would say absolutely be there for the children as a secure role model but if he has contact you don't want to mess that up & she could make things very difficult I'm sure.

She probably didn't block SS assessment because if they'd been worried they'd have done it anyway I suspect they just closed the case because they weren't worried, even if they should have been.
It's a bit of a rubbish system I'm afraid I'd just stay with the children emotionally as much as possible.

Oh sorry I see that she knew of safeguarding concerns, you could raise it & ask for "advice" but if he's no longer in their lives they will just log it.
You could call the nspcc they're sometimes helpful especially if they need to refer, ss will take it more seriously & you could do this anonymously

Thanks. We spoke to social services today and they do seem concerned that she knew he wasn’t allowed around children. I suspect they will close the case but I hope that they offer her support to prevent this happening again.

we are also going to pursue court orders that protect the children, we’re not applying for greater custody, just an agreement around safeguarding the children and not allowing people who aren’t checked by Sarah’s law around the children, no overnight supervision by anyone who is their parent or grandparent (as they regularly stop at her parents house and we don’t want to prevent that) etc.

I don't really understands the legal action if you aren't looking for greater custody time. All parents should ensure that they keep their child's safe and don't give preaditors access. But how would you be asking for this to be enforced? The police won't care if she uses a babysitting instead of grandpa, or if she has a string of boyfriends. Even if the children tell you that "Uncle Dave" looked after us last night, it is their word against hers. You can't legal action someone into parenting properly. Social services seem more key here.

We were looking for an order that stated all new partners needed to have a Sarah’s law request done before introduction to the children. Myself and my partner are both DBS/security cleared but we still offered her the option of checking me before I was introduced to the children. There are other things we can put in place surrounding who can collect the children from school etc. And these can all be court ordered or put in a child arrangements order that is agreed by both parties.

we don’t think seeking greater custody would help as even though we might get more this was, if she had any then she could fail to safeguard them in that time. Realistically she would get some custody because the kids love her and she is not the abuser, it is her partners and they are now exes. Wr would have the children full time in a heartbeat but we know that isn’t likely unless more failures are made and the children come to harm. It would be better for the children to prevent any harm happening in the future than to wait until it does and for us to get full custody because they have been harmed.

As an update we did manage to secure a court agreement that all future partners would be Sarah’s law checked. It was definitely a good move as there is now a new boyfriend but at least this time the checks are being made before he may meet the kids. Fundamentally we just want the kids to be safe.