Safety Plan after NFA

[greenfairy]

Hi Suzie,

my husband was arrested in July 2022 for distributing indecent images on KIK messenger.

He admitted in his police interview that he saw a handful of images in a group on KIK, but that he deleted them straight away. He said he never distributed them.

Social Services closed our case in August 2022. They allowed my husband to continue to live at home as long as I supervise him around the kids and sleep with the kids in one room at night.
It was never a S47 enquiry and the children have never been on a child in need plan or child protection plan.
Social Services never told me what would happen with the different possible legal outcomes or how long this safety plan was going to last.

When he was arrested we had two young children, who are now 4 years old and 2 1/2 years old.

In March 2023 I found out I was pregnant again and I gave birth to our 3rd child in December 2023.

I disclosed previous social services involvement to the booking midwife and she said she would contact social services. Despite this, I've never heard from social services during my pregnancy. I definitely knew the hospital was aware of the previous ss involvement , as I saw on a midwife's computer during an appointment: risk factors social: previous ss involvement
My midwife also never addressed it with me and my husband was allowed to be at the birth and was allowed to go anywhere in the hospital unsupervised. Nobody ever brought it up.

After birth, I expected social services to definitely contact me to do a new risk assessment for the 3rd child. But they never got in touch.

Almost 2 weeks ago the police got in touch with my husband's solicitor. They said it would be NFA because they couldn't find any indecent images on his devices. I thought that social services would contact me to discuss how we're going to proceed from this.

Social Services haven't been in touch though.

So my question is: Am I expected to follow that safety plan for all eternity? I want to continue to sleep with my kids in one room at night, but I thought it would be good if my husband could take the older 2 on small outings, like going to the supermarket together.

Thanks for your advice

[Suzie, FRG Adviser]

Dear greenfairy

Thank you for posting again and updating your circumstances.

Since closing your case in August 2022, it appears that children’s services have had little or no contact with you even during your pregnancy and birth of another child. It appears that no referral was made to children’s services from the midwife or any other professional which seems unusual since children’s services had previous involvement with your family.

Now that the police have decided to take no further action as no indecent images were found on your husband’s devices, you want to know if the written agreement must be followed indefinitely.

Children’s services may have questions regarding the fact that you did not inform them of your pregnancy but from your post you had an expectation that professionals would be in touch with children’s services.

I suggest that you ask children’s services to review the written agreement so both you and your husband know what is expected going forward. No indecent images were found by the police which may go some way to alleviate children’s services concerns, but they may still want supervision as the children are still very young, but agreement could be changed to make family life easier especially with a young baby.

Should you wish to have more advice do post again or, if you want to speak with an adviser telephone our advice line on 0808 801 0366. The advice line is open from 9.30am to 3.00pm Monday to Friday (excluding Bank Holidays)

Best wishes

Suzie

[greenfairy]

Hi Suzie,

thank you for your input. The booking midwife said she would make a referral to social services. She didn't say that I had to report my pregnancy to social services.
I can only imagine that she did indeed refer me to social services as my hospital files said: previous ss involvement