Social workers providing evidence in family court

[Ihaveanidea33]

Hi all.. Does anyone know if a SW who was allocated as a result of a MARAC referral can give evidence in court towards family court proceedings? She's written a C&F assessment where she's completed blasted my ex partner..

@closetbeanmuncher no I know it wasn't :) yes.. You actually couldn't make it up.. I only know that through a family member of his who told me. He's deranged. I think I need to brace myself that he will get supervised contact at a contact center on completion and pass of the DVPP.. There's no way they cannot make him do that. I just have to hope the court's will think it's in DDs interest to not see him but I can't go into it thinking that's what I'll get. It's hugely disheartening to think dad's get contact pretty much no matter what happens.

OP the courts WILL be sceptical of his motives, they see this stuff all the time. That's why I'm suggesting you just need to let your solicitor know of the paperwork/evidence that exists and let the court do it's job. CAFCASS know to start digging once they know of previous social work and police involvement and the evidence will speak for itself. You don't need to worry about convincing them. Judges and barristers may be diplomatic but they are clever people - 'give them enough rope...' is the phrase that springs to mind!

A contact centre is less likely than you think. Courts will usually only agree a contact centre if there is a realistic chance of moving to contact outside of a centre, eg where the centre is to rebuild a relationship with a parent the child doesn't know, with a relative taking over the supervision once that has been done (usually 3 months or thereabouts) Contact centres don't have the capacity to supervise one person's contact for a decade or more. It sounds like noone else could supervise contact for your ex so it's quite possible they'll look at indirect contact instead. It's not just that noone would come forward to offer but the courts would have to be satisfied that whoever said they'd supervise could lay down the law and wouldn't be afraid to do so and that's not the case from what you've described (eg his mum being afraid of him)

@Aroaringfire you're right - nobody would supervise for him, it would have to be someone from my end and nobody would want to commit to that and see him as well!
There would be very little chance of him working up to unsupervised access so quickly, not with the level of abuse that DD was subject to... but then you never can be too sure. I saw a thread a few months back of a woman who went through horrific abuse with ex partner, her ex regularly abused the children as well AND admitted to it! and he was still given 50/50!!
Just so so flawed.

Hi All.
Just found out today we have a hearing at the end of November, so not an urgent request obviously.
Can anyone advise what happens at the first hearing?.. feeling a bit anxious.