Family Rights Group | Kinship carers’ Forum

I need urgent advice regarding a friends and family report going to the court...

Background
Unfortunately, one of our best friends passed away a couple of years ago leaving her 3 daughters. One is an adult the other 2 are now 10 and 8
They were removed from their father's care as he was struggling to cope and various other reasons last year. The 2 girls are currently with their aunt.

It's all going to court for a special guardianship for the aunt and we have offered respite and to supervise our other best friend(girls father) on his contact visits

We had a positive viability assessment for respite and day visits but not full time as we don't have a spare room.

We recently had a ss lady for the court come to visit and took a statement from us.
Unfortunately our friend has difficulties and doesn't believe he is in the wrong for some of the things that we as friends can see.
We agreed with the lady that things needed to change for him and agreed we would support him. We also told her the things we have seen and how we as parents ourselves would do things differently in his position.

Anyway a few days ago he phoned us and said he'd received this report from the lady and so has his solicitor he cannot show us the Report as its confidential which we know but he was angry with us and told us that we had stabbed him in the back and his solicitor has said the report comes across as if his worst enemy had spoken to ss and not people who were supposed to be his closest friends. He's said a couple of bits which we have denied saying. it's almost like the lady has twisted our words used everything we said against him and not relayed any positive things.
This report is going to the court next month for the final hearing to decide if girls go home or stay with aunt. I'm really angry about this report and don't know what we can do to either stop it or get it changed and we cant read it ourselves to prove what we said and didn't say . We absolutely adore these girls and have been friends with their parents for 20 years. We all call ourselves family and I'd hate to lose the friendship and the girls. We swore to my best friend before she passed we would look after her babies and help her partner now I feel like we failed her.

Sorry for long post hope someone can help us.
Thankyou

Dear Disneyprincess

Welcome to the kinship carers’ discussion board. Thank you for your post. My name is Suzie, and I am Family Rights Group’s online adviser.

I am sorry to hear about your friend’s family’s situation. You are trying to support a family whose two children were removed from their father’s care as he was struggling to care for them. Sadly, the children’s mother, your friend, died a couple of years ago.

The children are currently being cared for by their aunt who is their kinship foster carer. She has been positively assessed as a special guardian for the children if the court decides that they cannot go home to their father.

You have had a positive viability assessment to provide respite care for the children during day visits. You mention that you were also being assessed as a potential supervisor for father’s contact with his children if the SGO is made. I am not clear if that part of the assessment was positive.

The social worker should have spoken to you about their recommendation, and to tell you about anything that worries them to give you the chance to explain. The social worker should have given you a copy of the written assessment. If you do not agree with anything included in the assessment report, you should explain this in writing to the social worker.

If you do need to challenge any aspect of the viability assessment, please see this template letter (3) here.

You say that a lady from the court visited and took a statement from you. I think she was the Children’s Guardian. This may have been to pick up on matters discussed as part of the viability assessment or for her to undertake her own assessment of how you can support the family. During this visit, you discussed your view of the children’s father’s difficulties, his lack of insight and what you think he needs to do differently. You made it clear that you are happy to support him in terms of his relationship with and care of the children.

Your friend is now very upset at what has been recorded in the Guardian’s statement and feels that you have denigrated him. As the report is confidential you have not had a copy but are worried that some of what you said has been misrepresented. You want to know what to do about this. This has caused a major rupture in your relationship with the children’s father. You want to continue to support the whole family. Care proceedings are very stressful and difficult for all involved particularly of course the parent. It may be that your friend is struggling with all of this and does not understand that you want to help but also recognise that there are areas he needs to work on.

If the report you are worried about is the Guardian’s, then you can contact her/her solicitor to clarify what statements have been attributed to you and to highlight your concerns that you may have been misrepresented in some areas.

You can also consider writing a letter to the court setting out what you discussed and what you think may have been misinterpreted. Your letter can then be attached to the report so that anyone who reads it sees your account of the situation.

You could also consider getting independent legal advice from a solicitor or asking the court to attend the hearing to contribute your views.

It may be helpful for you to call our freephone advice line on 0808 8010366, Mon to Fri, 9.30 am to 3.00 pm to discuss your situation further with an adviser and to clarify further.

The court hearing is next month so time is pressing.

You may also want to discuss with the children’s social worker and your assessing social worker the current difficult relationship with the children’s father and ask their recommendations for resolving it so that you can continue to offer support to the family.

I hope this helps.

Best wishes

Suzie

Thankyou for replying.
It was not the guardian sw this was an independent sw lady the court has apparently appointed. She has done home visits at my friends house and she kept saying she wanted to help him. Then she has written a report after visiting us and she also invited us to a contact visit with friend and his daughters to see how we interacted with them all. She also called after and said we picked up on things that she also picked up on ie: 1 daughter is lactose intolerant but he still brought them a hot chocolate to share.. some other little things. She said she was putting us forward as supervisors and respite to the court. The main sw disagrees as she thinks we're too close to Dad but I thought the whole point of asking friends and family was to have them help. I'm confused on that. Then as I previously said this independent sw has written things we agreed with but nothing we disagreed with. She was asking things like do we agree he shouldn't smoke around the girls or do we agree this and that as if leading the questions.

Dear Disneyprincess

Thank you for your further post. Thank you also for clarifying that you were referring to an independent social worker, directed by the court to undertake assessments and not the Guardian as I had thought.

This independent social worker is recommending you supervise family time between the children and their father and as respite carers. However, you say that the main social worker disagrees. I think this is the children’s social worker?

You remain concerned about how information attributed to you has been recorded by the independent social worker. My advice in my previous response about how to challenge this still applies, apart from contacting the Guardian’s solicitor which is not relevant. And of course, you need to raise your concerns about misrepresentation with the independent social worker not the Guardian.

You may also want to clarify for the court that you are not too close to the children’s father, the children are your main priority, but you would want to support him to be the best father he can and to have a safe relationship with his children too.

I hope this helps.

It may be helpful to ring the freephone advice line to speak to an adviser; the number is 0808 8010366 and the lines are open from 9.30 am to 3.00 pm, Mon to Fri (except bank holidays. Please post back on this forum if you prefer.

Best wishes

Suzie