How long do other parents of looked after children get

[Pebbster]

Hiya, my children were taken into care April 2025 I was allocated 90 minutes every Saturday to me this doesn't seem enough after some heated discussion with social and the iro they won't change it said its sufficient amount of time. What do other parents get and has anyone had any success on making a court order change etc.
Thanks

The children would have been appointed a guardian. The guardian would have made an assessment to the courts, if the children disagreed with the guardian’s recommendations then at their ages they would have been appointed their own legal counsel who would have argued their wishes.

There is no way on earth, given the legal thresholds that need to be met, would your children have been removed because of educational neglect or because you hadn’t given a child medication correctly.

But anyway to answer your question 90 minutes sounds about right if the full care order has been granted. It’s usually more when it’s just an interim care order.

Yes they all had a barrister and none understood why the so called case was presented at court long term neglect doesn't usually meet the criteria of breaching threshold but the accusations of poor parenting from both did barrister said the judge acted legally so was no grounds to appeal even though he disagreed on every aspect of the case, thank you for the details on the duration.

You had 5 barristers who all said social services didn't have a case but none of them managed to win the case for you? They were all pretty shit then. I know that spurious and flimsy applications for teenagers would simply NEVER happen. Why would they? Applying to court is expensive and a fuck of a lot of work. It's never done unless there is a strong case.

So 1 had completely stopped going in 2023 then another had 30/40% until mid 2024 when stopped completely the other had 85% most years.
Yes I had discussions with the Drs/Nurses and told social i can't administer a injection on my own with a child who's refusing but that was for a 8 month period till they adjusted to it with positive play positive parenting etc.
So 1 had severe anxiety around school and the other mixture of sen and anxiety with sensory overload stuff, social anxiety etc.
The school wouldn't do anything as they need the child to be in school to help, we did the timetables change reduced by 1 hour but wasn't enough to change, only one was reffered to camhs which is a 2 years waiting list which they are still on.

I work in family contact supervision and would say 90mins/wk sounds a normal offer for school age kids.
Not saying it's enough though.
It's also sometimes to do with the availability of contact spaces....if they gave everyone hours each week there just wouldn't be the room to accommodate it in many centres.
And it's also about being fair to the foster carer, especially if they have other/their own children to transport about places or that they have committments for.

I'm in the process of getting it looked into by ombudsman and other organisations, the first day of court was postponed as social came with no case literally nothing and they had to further update as the court proceedings went along.

I hate social services. They go after a parent with stupid reasons and to me based on what you say in my it seems crazy they took the kids into care. You cannot physically man handle a teen into school with being accused of physical assault. Yet kids that desperately need help seem to fall by the wayside.

as much as I hate saying this, try to do your best to maintain the relationship with the kids as you can and just hope once they age out of care at 18 they will come back home as you are longing to welcome them back.

there is always 3 sides to a story, yours, theirs and the truth but they will have the upper hand as parents are always deemed at fault. I was almost in your situation but a new social refused to write bad things about me and actually got my kids out their grip. Now they are adults and the stories of manipulation they have now told me that a previous social worker did on them has left me horrified and unable to believe a social worker is always right. Good luck

I'm sorry but what you're describing isn't possible.
i think there is a lot more to the neglect than you are willing to say.

Yeah during school week it will never be feasible for visits i understand that but the weekends are free they are in placements with multiple staff available and i was only accussed of potentially being neglectful not charged so being in my care their entire lives 10 years on my own doesn't seem unreasonable to me to have several hours unsupervised.

@Pebbster your children are all old enough to express their own opinions about the contact they would like with you. @Ted27 said the same thing.

Why do you think your children do not want an increase in contact with you?

@Ted27 also mentioned being a foster carer, they said if a child wanted extra contact outwith court mandated times, they could not stop them.

I wonder if you are so determined to "beat" the system that you may have lost sight of what your children, actually, want?

Well it happened and I was told by the barristers its becoming more common for minor cases to be dragged into courts barely meeting criteria for thresholds to be met.

I'm glad to hear you didnt have to go through this situation words can not describe it.

This sounds unbelievable to me, which makes it terrifying that it happens.

My own DS attended 2 days of year 11. Yes 2 days. I did get him signed off by the doctor and we had to have a weekly home visit from school to make sure he was safe and cared for etc. There was never any mention of SS though, or of him being removed.

It's absolutely NOT more common for this to happen. Not in the least. Please question who benefits from local authorities issuing poorly evidenced applications? It costs a fortune to apply to court and it creates a lot of extra work. It's in nobody's interest to do it if it's not a) needed and b) well evidenced

This is wrong.
Thresholds for removal are ridiculously high, so even if you ‘barely’ met the criteria you still met it.
Can I suggest, if you are working towards reunification that you actually look at the changes that need to be made in your parenting? This would not have happened suddenly and there would have been a period of Child Protection planning prior, and if you had a period of pre-proceedings that would have been another 6 months of work towards improvement for your children.
Did you undertake a parenting assessment at all? This too would likely have recommended areas that needed improvement, or suggested whether they felt improvement could be made.

Do your children have contact with each other? I think that if your contact is with all 3 children then it might be worth asking to have some individual one to one contact, if it’s separate I would be asking for a family contact in addition to- but only after a period of adjustment and settling in

There is just no way that social services remove children - especially teens - because of potential for further harm. They have already been harmed/imminent risk of actual harm. It is an extremely hard process and high threshold for a judge to agree and sign off that children need to be removed. It’s just not possible given what you’ve said here.

I assume we will be seeing more and more of such cases now the councils are struggling, social services was involved for 4 years for my youngest as I admitted I physically couldn't administer a injection safely on my own so trauncy happened during their visits and inspections. Honestly I could talk for weeks and say all sorts of failings but I was just here mainly to get a idea of what contact can look like what others have gotten so I can bolster my complaints, appeals etc

Children's Services tried to work with you for 4 years? 4 years they tried to help you.

There's definitely a lot more to the story than what you've said. The threshold for removal is so so high, there are children in appalling living conditions with neglectful parents and they don't meet the threshold for removal.

Children's Services do everything they possibly can to avoid removing a child from their family. This is because research shows kids going into the care system are highly likely to have poorer outcomes in life. It's also because it's an absolute ball ache to find somewhere for them to live, there really aren't that many children's homes or foster carers. Kids can end up having to be placed hundreds of miles from where they're from because there aren't any spaces anywhere. The social worker is usually based where the child used to live so that means the social worker has to travel up and down the country to visit them once a month. I say all this to make it clear, it's not in Children's Services best interests to have a child removed from their birth family.

And even when they know it is absolutely necessary for a child to be removed, which is where the child is at serious risk of harm, they can only present the evidence to the judge. It's the judge who decides. The judge also has no skin in the game - the judge doesn't benefit in any way from authorising the removal of a child.

Bottom line: no one wants to remove a child from their family. It is only ever done when there is no possible alternative, it is only ever done to protect the child.

If you've only been given 90 minutes of contact per week, that suggests there is some significant risk. If that risk reduces, it might be possible to increase contact time but you'll have to prove yourself first. And the kids would have to be open to it and it must be beneficial for them. It sounds harsh but it's not about what you want, it's about what would benefit the children.

I have a family member in this position and they see their child (young teen) for half an hour/one hour a week supervised contact. During the pandemic they didn’t see them for six months. Heartbreaking all round. Different situation to op.

In my family member’s case it’s not about what the parent wants, more what the child can cope with. One hour doesn’t sound much but if the child has challenging problems and needs a lot of help and supervision, then an hour is about right for them.

There can be a lot of emotional fallout after contact, depending on the child and the situation of course.

Op, are you allowed to take your children out when you see them or is the contact supervised in a centre?

In the situation I know, there were several years where the contact was supervised but as the child got older they were allowed to go for a walk or out to a cafe but still only for an hour or so.

Thanks everyone who's posted and discussed with me got some useful information out of it, what ive said is pretty much what the case was and what barristers had told me I have no reason to lie or withhold information it is publicly listed somewhere but I dont know how to access it 23rd April 2025 it was handed down in Chesterfield Court by Judge Vickers I will be taking the post down as its going into a different path then just a brief conversation about others experiences of visitations.

This isn't really correct. If contact is supervised then the risk is managed. While care proceedings are going on, contact is often frequent (with younger children it's usually 2/3 times a week) and it will be supervised. Risk is a given, as if there wasn't a risk the children wouldn't have been removed. Once care proceedings conclude, if the children aren't going back to the parent then contact will reduce significantly so that the children can settle in their long term placements. It's a bit different for teenagers and contact is usually at a frequency that the teenager wishes. It's really really unusual for care proceedings to occur for teenagers unless they have significant additional needs.

@Pebbster Really sorry to hear about your situation it all sounds very difficult. I'm not sure what the norm is with contact, but if I were you I would be worried about antagonising social services in case they cut contact further. I have no reason to disbelieve what you are saying, I think other posters are a little naive about social services, their decisions are often very arbitrary and vary massively from area to area and from year to year. So you can easily have one situation where children are taken into care for very minor reasons and another one where children who should really be taken in to care are not. They are massively understaffed and struggle to attract and retain decent staff which can lead to some poor decision making.