MCA & Child and Family Assessment

[PerfectlySafeDad]

Child and Family Assessment.

[Suzie, FRG Adviser]

Dear PerfectlySafeDad

Welcome to the discussion board and thank you for your post. My name is Suzie and I will be responding to you today.

From the information you have provided you have worked successfully with professionals to change your circumstances. You are applying to have the sexual harm prevention order SHPO removed and working with your ex wife to have on going contact with your children. You are concerned that contact with your son with disabilities is not yet resolved and you would like further information on this and the child and family assessment children’s services said they will be carrying out.

You may find the link HERE useful. It offers further information and guidance in respect of removing a SHPO.

Your son has severe disabilities and children’s services have requested a Mental Capacity Act (MCA) assessment to establish whether he is able to give consent to have contact with you. An MCA assessment is designed to protect and empower people who may lack the mental capacity to make their own decisions about their care and treatment and applies to people aged 16 and over. I understand that the request from children's services may be frustrating to you for the reasons you have stated. However, it is your son's right to have the assessment to ensure his best interests are at the centre of any decision making and that any person or authority nominated to act on his behalf have followed due process. Please find further information and guidance HERE regarding a MCA assessment, the process and how decisions can be challenged.

Children’s services will be completing a child and family assessment and you would like some further information regarding this. A child and family assessment is an opportunity to gather all relevant information for the child and the family, to analyse the information and to make recommendations where appropriate.

I think it would be a good idea to ask for a copy of your local authority’s policy on completing a child and family assessment. You can request this via the allocated social worker.

The assessment should be completed within 45 working days. With parents’ permission, children's services will talk to other people involved in the child’s life, for example a teacher or health visitor. In the majority of cases, if your child is old enough and able to, the social worker will need to talk to them also. The child will usually be seen with a parent(s) and sometimes, where it is felt to be appropriate, the child may be seen on their own or in a familiar environment such as a school or nursery. After meeting with the parent(s) and the child and assessing any other relevant information, the social worker can decide what help is needed (if any). The social worker will give you a written copy of the decisions made following the assessment and, if relevant, a copy of the action plan that recommends what services should be provided. A child and family assessment takes an holistic approach and therefore, will gather information from police, probation and health and any other services the family are or have been involved with or known to. When gathering this information, it does not necessarily need to be from the person who has worked directly with the person but from the organisation’s records.

There are potentially several outcomes following a child and family assessment; - , Early Help Support, a Child in Need Plan, a Child Protection Plan or Care Proceedings. There can also be no further action.

You have engaged a solicitor and ask whether this will impact negatively on you. It shouldn’t be viewed as negative. It is your right to seek legal advice as you see fit. Are you instructing a solicitor to make a formal complaint to children services? If so, you may find this link HERE useful. The link provides information and guidance on how, and who can make complaints to children services. It takes your through the 3 different stages of the complaints process and what next steps you can take if you are not satisfied with the outcome.

I hope this information has been helpful to you. Please do post again if you would like any further advice. Or you can call our advice line on 0808 801 0366 (Monday to Friday, 9:30am – 3pm) to speak with an adviser.

Best wishes, Suzie.

[PerfectlySafeDad]

I would like to update this post, and get Suzie's further advice please:
The Child and Family Assessment was completed in early 2022, and it concluded "The Local Authority cannot conceive of a situation where it would ever be agreeable for [me] to have unsupervised contact [with my disabled child]". (I have had unsupervised contact granted with his 15yo sibling, who is not a child-in-need, since even before the SHPO was removed). The recommendation was for him to remain on a Child-in-Need plan - he has been on one for years for his disabilities - as his mother was deemed a responsible and safe parent and the ongoing arrangements for my supervised contact working well.
The good news is, shortly after this I received news of my complete discharge from my SHPO, and accordingly removed from the Sex Offenders Register. The offending behaviour ostensibly addressed - and that behaviour has never included anything towards my own children in the first place need I reiterate yet again. I was told by a solicitor that this means any family court judge would take the view quite simply that I am NOT a risk to children (meaning any children), full stop. The converse is true if under a SHPO. However, the same solicitor now says that family court judges tend to just go by whatever the social services tell them.
I have rebuilt trust with my child's mother, and she is willing for me to have unsupervised contact, but will not progress it out of fear of the SS because they refuse to re-assess their opinion of me despite the change in circumstances as 'their work is done on the matter' (such colossal arrogance and non-compassion, it seems to me).
We understand their assessment is not 'law' - it is not a 'court order' as such, but strictly just an opinion which we can in theory ignore.
Currently we are exploring whether to 1) press ahead with mediation regardless, and do our thing 2) apply to family court to ask a judge to rubber-stamp our own agreements for contact (to include the building of unsupervised contact for me) 3) have two sets of solicitors bang their heads together and give us advice that we want to hear - namely that we are in a position to safely do as we wish.
I would like Suzie's opinion on this please. Is the social service's CFA assessment and fixed position just a back-covering exercise? - or as one solicitor has put it, nobody wants to step forward to take the blame 'if' something went wrong, but if my child's mother (my ex-wife) simply took the responsibility and 'got on with it' so to speak, there would be no retaliation from the social services? Just what danger are we in if we act of our own volition now, and what would our prospects be if we went to family court to (hopefully) get a line drawn under everything and more forward with our full family human rights? If a family court judge won't grant it, where the hell does that leave us?
I reiterate there really is no other concern anyone can cite besides the historic offences (which did not include my children in any shape or form), so it is purely the 'conjecture' that I might re-offend in the future and 'might' act in such a way as to harm my child, even though no evidence of such in the first place. I am not in denial that the offences were harmful and sickening, but they have been officially addressed (what else can reasonably be asked as a roadmap for unsupervised contact?), and clearly a professional judge + the police have been convinced enough that I will not re-offend as to discharge me - not an easy thing to achieve, believe me. Can it be possible for a Local Authority to enforce for life a no-unsupervised contact opinion on a parent for this level of ex-offences? (I got a community rehabilitative sentence after all, reflecting the crime authorities' opinion of me). I find it hard to believe, but it worries me sick, the more I read and hear and experience of the SS, despite us politely abiding by everything asked of us to date. It seems ludicrous; said child's age is now 17 (although mentally much younger and vulnerable), and no longer even of the age nor of the gender that I was shown to be 'interested in' during my offences. It's such a stretch, a vile one at that, to infer I could be disposed to do him any harm.
Is it worth getting a lie detector test to that end, or a forensic psychological assessment? Really, by any stretch of fairness of common sense you would think such things are redundant now that I've gone through all the rehabilitative work set before me and got legally discharged.

[Suzie, FRG Adviser]

Dear PerfectlySafeDad,

Thank you for your post.

Firstly, if children's services are refusing to re-assess, you may want to ask them to provide you with these reasons in writing. Based on this, you may want to consider making a formal complaint. You say there has been a change in circumstances, however I am presuming the assessment covered the eventuality of you being removed from the SHPO and still found that contact should only be supervised with your youngest child.

If you do not follow children's services recommendations, although not legally binding, they may become concerned and escalate their level of involvement - for example, by initiating child protection enquiries.

If you would like to ask a judge to 'rubber stamp' an agreement between you and your child's mother, you will, as you say need to apply for a consent order. The court will ensure that the agreement which has been reached is in the best interests of the child. An agreement will not be made legally binding if it is deemed to not be in the best interests of the child. A hearing will be held to determine whether there are any safeguarding checks and it is likely in your case that your previous conviction will be raised and that the judge will want this to be further assessed. You can also apply for a child arrangements order - again, the judge will ask further safeguarding checks to be done and for a section 7 report to be completed by a social worker. You can contact Child Law Advice on 0300 330 5480 for more advice on applying for private law orders.

It is unlikely that a lie detector test would be add credibility, either in dealing with children's services, or when applying for an order in the courts. You may as part of court proceedings want to ask the judge to agree to a psychological assessment.

Best wishes,

Suzie.

[PerfectlySafeDad]

Further to this thread, my son has now turned 17. He lacks mental capacity under the MCA. I am told because of his age, he does not come under the Family Court jurisdiction and they will not deal with any application regarding him. Is this true? If so, where do I take my problem?

[Suzie, FRG Adviser]

Dear PerfectlySafeDad

Thank you for your most recent post regarding your son whom you say has now turned 17 . Your son lacks mental capacity under the Mental Capacity Act. You have been told that because of your son's age the family court will not have jurisdiction to deal with any application regarding him and you wish to know whether this is true.

It is correct that the family court would not normally make orders in respect of a child who is aged 17. One of the reasons is that any order made would come to and end as soon as the child reached 18 and, also, as it is considered that a child of 17 would be able to make decision's about who they live with or have contact with. If children services had concerned about a child of 17 they would not make an application to the court for a care order as the child would probably reach their 18th birthday before the end of the care proceedings and the child would also be able to say if they wanted to be part of that case.

If you do wish to make any application regarding your son it may be that you would have to make contact with the Court of Protection which deals with cases where a person lacks capacity. I have included a link to their website for your information.

I hope that you will find this information helpful.

Best wishes

Suzie