Family and Friends Forum

Hi Dragonmama,

It both upsets me and frustrates me when social services say no contact. Contact is right of child and not right of parent and they have no right to strip a child from contact with their parent or even a step parent.

I am not familiar with the background or children's ages but can you have a contact plan, starting with indirect contact (letters and gifts), to increase it to professionally supervised contact (see if your social services are willing to fund a contact centre or perhaps your social worker do it?), and after that had gone well a while, move to contact supervised by you?

No advice as I'm in exactly the same situation other than the fact up until recently we was still together but even so i have told them i still wish to supervise and i will still be supporting him wktb his recovery and talking to him every day especiallg when at ths moment he is unable to see his daughter.



From what I can gather no 2 social workers are the same, but most just don't give a shit especially in situations like ours were they have just wrote off the men and it seems there is nothing we can do to change it.

If the children have not had contact for years and depending on the age then there may be a concern on how the kids would manage reconnection.

My person's ex cut all communication on arrest. He hasn't had any direct contact with them for seven years now.

He went through family courts to try to get supervised contact, he had assessment of his risk. But it was concluded that it was felt too detrimental to the children due to the length of time and he would have to wait for his kids to actively request contact with him.

It is true about not having the same language.

My partner has had multiple assessments with different criteria and it cost a lot. He even got a judge ordered assesment done by a person the judge instructed. But when he had it done I think ss said the assessment didn't meet their reuirements and would ignore it!

He has since been told be would need another at a cost of 6k. And tbh I just feel with all this uncertainty and the authorities not being clear what they want is a big waste of time and money.

Would having a meeting with SS and the probation officer help?

My person waited until he was deemed low risk by probation to pursue contact. This might be a consideration?

This is just my experience when it comes to SS not allowing us to supervise access. They start from the absolute worst case scenario and work from there. At first they're wondering if we're involved in what our person has been arrested for. We know of course that we haven't. However, you simply can't argue with them because they always come back with the argument that our person used the family/shared ip address to download stuff under our roof and we didn't know so how could we possibly protect our children. We are 99% certain that our person hasn't and wouldn't harm their own children. SS's start off thinking that they're 99% certain that they could/ might. My person was remanded but when I spoke to SS's about our children aged 12 and 14 at the time being able to visit him in prison, I said to them that basically their Dad is a good man. They're reply was, "clearly not". They said that our children were not allowed to visit, or receive letters or calls from him. I was outraged! I asked them why then was it ok for there to be about 30 young children in the visiting hall when I visited him but my children weren't allowed? They said, "He could be speaking to them in code." I even went to see a solicitor about it and they told me in no uncertain terms to stop pushing for the visits or SS's would start to suspect me in some way. So I gave up. We ended up in the position that my 18 and 19 year olds were allowed to visit him whenever they liked but my youngest two weren't allowed any contact whatsoever. They wouldn't even let my older two take them instead of me. My ex was convicted of IIOC, no communication or contact offending and my children were old enough and savvy enough to understand what had happened and to tell SS's that they desperately wanted to see their Dad. It made no difference. SS's were adamant and I can tell you that the harm SS's inflicted on my two youngest children was every bit as bad as what the original issue was. He got out of prison after 15 months and even then SS's wouldn't allow them to see him until they each reached the age of 16 and even then it had to be supervised which they did allow me to do at that point. So my poor Autistic youngest suffered the most. I strongly suspect that alot of the issues we all encounter with SS's are down to an individual's personal opinion and little else. Apologies for rambling, hope I'm making sense! X

Dragonmama, I hear you. Its all so very wrong but they get away with it because, "safeguarding ". To me it's hysteria that's getting in the way. They won't listen because, "safeguarding ". It's all gone too far the other way, I'm my opinion. X