LAC and social media / supervision issues

[ABERMammy1979]

My teenager children (M) 13 and (F) 15 use social media with their friends etc howver they have been told they cannot contact me. I have tried to argue that if they can have access the world at large which is a huge risk, they should be able to contact me aswell. We have no phone contact as the children struggle with being supervised during the calls and so all i am getting right now is 4 hours of family time 6x a year.

They have been in care for 3.5 years now and this has never changed, whenever i request the supervision to be lifted as there are no safeguarding concerns, they come up with vague reasons why it needs to remain.

Supervision continues to cause so many problems, as my social worker only works 3 days a week and refuses to allow family time unless it occours between 9am and 5pm on tues, weds or thurs. I live a 10 hours train ride away and am physically disabled. have to pay for a hotel for two nights just to have 4 hours with the children. I want the supervision removed to allow more scope for family time as it is so restrictive. But am getting no where.

How do i force the removal of supervision and have them allow SM access.

[Suzie, FRG Adviser]

Dear Abermammy1979,

Thank you for your post.

You say that your two children, aged 13 and 15, use social media and have been told that they cannot contact you. You think that they should be able to do this. You have contact for 4 hours 6 times a year and no contact in between. You children have been in care for 3.5 years and you have asked for contact to be unsupervised as you do not think that there are any safeguarding concerns. You say that contact can only happen on certain days and at certain times. You are disabled and have to travel 10 hours, with an overnight stay, in order to have contact. You are finding the supervision aspect difficult and want to know what you can do about this.

Firstly, I am sorry to hear about the difficulties you are having. Children’s services share parental responsibility for your children. As looked after children, the local authority have a duty to allow reasonable contact with their parents. This contact must be in their best interests and safe for them. You would like contact to be unsupervised, but children’s services do not appear to agree.

I would suggest that you write to the social manager, and the team manager, and put forward your hopes for unsupervised contact. You can outline why you think this would be in your children’s best interests. You may want to ask them to clearly explain what their concerns are about contact being unsupervised, and what steps you could take to address this. You can offer to undergo a risk assessment.

You may also want to speak to then Independent Reviewing Officer (IRO) about your hopes for unsupervised contact. The IRO’s job is to oversee your children’s care and to ensure that their needs are being met.

If you do not feel the local authority are acting reasonably, you may want to make a formal complaint this. Take a look here for more information on making a formal complaint.

You could also consider applying to the courts for a section 34 contact order. This is a court order that says who a child in care (so, looked after under a care order or interim care order) should see or keep in touch with. You may find it helpful to speak to a family law solicitor about this.

As with face-to-face contact, all the above points can apply to your hope for phone contact.

You also mention that the current contact arrangements are restrictive and difficult for you. Please take a look here for information on how children’s services can assist with the expenses of contact.

I hope this has been helpful.

Best wishes,

Suzie.

[Frazor]

Hello, my 2 children are LAC so they are both under a care order where the LA share parental responsibility this as been dragging on for nearly 8 years now and as any parent who's been through or is going through this knows it's horrendous. My children live at home with me and always have since the care order was put in place. They have a different social worker every few months so I've lost caught how many have come and gone all with no concerns because there isn't any, the whole thing is based on false allegations with evidence at all because what was written about me 8 years ago was a pack of lies. So when things seem well another sw comes along then they have no idea what's going on and it's back to the start. I received a letter just before the summer holidays a PLO meeting the reason was school attendance as my daughter had genuinely been poorly her attendance last term was in the 80's . The other reason was lies saying my children had missed dental appointments ,the sw at that time had been phoning a totally different dentist so when i gave her the number to phone my children's dentist,i asked her if she could verify that this was true,she said yes i forgot to mention that I'd spoken to them and yes your children are up to date with the dentist . So why is the PLO still ongoing. It's because they're in a total mess themselves and don't have the staff to do the job properly it's families like ours that are suffering . I really don't know whether im coming or going with them,the thing is all there wrong doings are making innocent families lose their children me and my children could not be without one another . From my opinion they have messed up so much and still are they can not possibly afford to put things right so then all them poor kids that genuinely do need them are the ones suffering real harm. It's causing so much trauma and mental abuse on innocent families and something needs to be done. The stooped so low last week and phoned the police to my home the police woman asked to see my 15 year old son as ss had rang them saying they were extremely concerned as no one had seen him. The police woman who came knows me from living on our estate all my life if i see her we stop to have a chat which was lucky really because she said this isn't fair at all she had no concerns and knows that my children are looked after by me ,the reason they have phoned the police is to cover up there own back that's what im thinking that because there's another sw that asnt a clue what's going on they put 2 and 2 together and cum up with 5 . Most sw are agency workers there's been a few that have said they're agency staff . That's not good in itself i always find the agency staff will go above and beyond to make there manager happy just to get a permanent job with social services. I have not got a solicitor and have been told by ss that i can not get legal aid at this point because there is a PLO still going on. Is it right that from July until now the PLO as been going on because of they are understaffed .

[poundedskate7]

Hi, How do you have a LAC but they live at home? i don't understand that, maybe Suzy can explain that?

[Skysie98]

You can have a LAC with child in your care.
It's a care order where they live with their parents
My daughter is under this as well we have been on it for 5 months.

It doesn't happen very often but is an option when social still have concerns but also feel it's in the child's best interest to remain in parents care.
My daughter was in foster care and then returned on a care order into my care.
However unlike poster above mine is being discharged next year by social services.

Hope that helps explain how can have LAC in parents care.
Skysie98

[Suzie, FRG Adviser]

Hello, my 2 children are LAC so they are both under a care order where the LA share parental responsibility this as been dragging on for nearly 8 years now and as any parent who's been through or is going through this knows it's horrendous. My children live at home with me and always have since the care order was put in place ...
(PLEASE NOTE THIS QUOTED POST HAS BEEN SHORTENED TO ALLOW MY RESPONSE TO REMAIN WITHIN THE WORD COUNT LIMIT. THE FULL POST CAN BE READ BY SCROLLING UP. APOLOGIES SUZIE)

Dear Frazor,
Thank you for your post on the Parents’ Forum.

I am sorry to hear that you are having such a challenging time.

You explain that your children are looked after under care orders – but for eight years their care plan has been to live at home with you with regular looked after child reviews and involvement of a social worker and independent reviewing officer.

You are frustrated that there have been many changes of social worker, and you have had to work with several different people over the last 8 years. You feel that there have been errors in communication and that has affected the perception of your children’s welfare at times.

Recently a social worker has raised concerns about your daughter’s school attendance which fell below 80%. A question was raised about dental appointments being missed – but you have clarified that the appointments were attended and the social worker mistakenly contacted the wrong dental practice. You also mention that police were sent to your home as children’s services were concerned that your 15-year-old son had not been seen and asked for a check on his welfare. You felt that this was unnecessary.

I can’t comment on the different viewpoints that may be held by you and children’s services about these issues. You are receiving the message that there are aspects of the children’s care they wish you to work on, but it does seem that communication about these matters are not going well. Even if you don’t agree with children’s services about some of the details you need to be clear about the core points they are raising and the changes they wish you to make so that you can show that you are doing everything you can to ensure that your children remain living safely at home.

Family Rights Group have a guide to working with social workers which may help you to prepare for your next meeting so that you can listen and have your voice heard. You can link to it here.

You mention a pre-proceedings meeting. I do not understand why children’s services would be starting pre-proceedings (sometimes known as public law outline here). Pre-proceedings refers to a process where care proceedings are being considered by the local authority due to the degree of concern about children’s wellbeing. However, as your children are already on a care order the local authority has parental responsibility so would not need to return to court if they were seeking to place them out of your care.

I think you may have misunderstood and that the meeting you have been invited to is not within the pre-proceedings process. It may be that you are being given notice of a change to the care plan for the children, but I am not sure of this from the details you have given so far.

When children live with their parents and there is a care order in place they can be removed from their parents, but local authorities are ‘advised’ to give the parents no less than 14 days’ notice of their plan and there is usually a looked after children (LAC) meeting before such a ‘plan’ is discussed and an assessment too.

You should speak to the independent reviewing officer and the social worker urgently and ask them to be clear with you about their plans for the children and whether they are considering removing them from your care. Ask for the proposed changes to the care plan and the reasons for it to be put in writing to you.

Permanent placement outside the family is a last resort and all the arguments for and against each option would have to be carefully discussed. I think there is a case for you to have legal representation if the local authority is seeking to remove the children. When you are aware of the nature of the meeting and proposed changes to the care plan, I can advise you better as to how you can argue for legal representation to be made available to you for fairness.

Best wishes,
Suzie

[Suzie, FRG Adviser]

Hi, How do you have a LAC but they live at home? i don't understand that, maybe Suzy can explain that?

Dear Poundedskate7,
Thank you for your question.
As Skysie 98 has explained looked after children subject to a care order can live at home with their parents in certain circumstances under the supervision of children's services.

Best wishes,
Suzie