Family and Friends Forum

We underwent this and like you both our backgrounds are relevant (we are grandparents of an adult offender who is our son) I was a teacher, my husband a police officer. I think the most difficult thing for me was that the SW (who we had got to know well) asked us lots of things about potential scenarios, not necessarily related to what our son has done. They were very explicit and that surprised me rather although now i can see their relevance. She asked us what we would do or say in each situation. I thought she would just be asking about sleeping arrangements etc. She did ask us quite lengthily about signs of sexual abuse but she also gave us a list from her own sheet, not to make us feel we'd failed as we'd missed quite a few in our answers, but to make us more aware so our assessment was as much a learning time for us as an assessment of our aptitude. When we read the assessment (which maybe a bit different from yours as ours was as part of our assessment to foster our grandchildren) the only negatives were that we might stop being so protective over time, and get a bit careless, also that we couldn't safeguard the children properly if our son was in the house overnight as we would be asleep.

Good luck and I'm sure you will be fine from what you have described about your background and also the things you have obviously studied recently.

Hi

I had one done with an independent assessor as we are at PLO. It's not just about being protective, it's your background aswell. This is what was covered in mine:

Your upbringing- was it stable and supportive. What support network did you have growing up

Your education- did you go to school, college, University etc. what you currently do for a job

How did you meet your OH, what was your marriage/relationship like. Have you ever spotted anything that has raised concerns

what support network do you currently have

The offence- do you understand why SS are involved. They are trying to see if you are minimising concerns. They ask you how you found out about it and what you thought of it etc..

I was asked if I know the signs of a child being abused

Then I went into what I have done myself- I don't let him do any personal care, parents protect website, safer lives course that I want to do and long term safety planning

From my point of view it was good that an independent assessor did it because it was a chance to show that SS haven't followed the correct procedures. For example, she asked when our daughter was classed as a CIN what safety plan was put in place. I said there wasn't one, we were never given a written CIN plan, there were no CIN meetings and it wasn't explained what supervised contact meant. They escalated to CPP because they said we breached a safety plan that didn't exist in a written format. The assessor had to stop her chin hitting the floor!

Just be yourself and don't overthink it xx

Hope you're doing ok. The whole process of having SS involved is enough as it is without all the extra rubbish they put you through! xx