Supervised Contact Questions

[heartbrokenfather]

Good day all.

This is a side topic from my main post:
Removed from family home by Police & Children Services

I have a few questions regarding Supervised Contact, as it seems impossible to get a straight answer from anyone at children's services or my solicitors.

At this point in time, The 5 children are having one and a half hours of contact weekly with me at a contact centre.

All of the children enjoy being able to have contact and spend time with me, and I enjoy having the time with them.

The problem I can see is that the children's ages are from 4 to 14, Most of the activities are more aimed for younger children, so the two oldest children have no real activities to engage in, and I am concerned about them getting board or feeling left out.

To date Children's Services have not been very forthcoming or helpful in my eyes at all, so before I suggest anything to Children's Services I run my thoughts past both my family and criminal solicitor to gain there advice.

My suggestion was the possibly of being about to take all the children somewhere more fun, away from the contact centre, even if it was to the local Park, take them all bowling, ice skating, etc, activities that I know that all of the children will enjoy.

All of the children have also viewed there wishes directly to me during contact sessions that they wish to do activities away from the contact centre.

So I sent an email to the children's current social worker explaining my concerns, and that I have spoken to my solicitors and that my solicitors said that it would be ok, as long as it was supervised by the Local Authority.

I am not going to quote the whole email I received back but this is the kind of response I get.

In the first instance you state that both of your solicitors have advised you that this would be ok, however that decision lays with the Local Authority and Solicitors are not qualified Social Workers and therefore they are not able to appropriately risk assess any changes to contact.

With that kind of reply I think the social worker has once again grabbed the dirty end of the stick.

I was not trying to say that the solicitors said it would be ok, and activities outside of the contact centre could go ahead.
Just that the solicitors are saying ok, in the sense that there is nothing stopping having contact outside of the contact centre as long as the Local Authority approves and Supervises the contact.

All I wanted to know if Children's Services / Contact Centre would be able and or willing for any activities to go ahead away from the contact centre.

I just seem to be endlessly banging my head on the wall when it comes to trying to talk to Children's Services.

Please let me know your thoughts.

As always thanks for your time and advice.

[ange301126]

Dear heartbroken, Ask them what they see as the risk;they must have already assessed it themselves.Have you had a contact review meeting yet.They should be held every month for feedback on contacts.Ask Suzie about it.

Does the social worker attend contact or are the contact workers separate?If they are ask them what background they have been given.

[Mama R]

It is usually possible to have contact 'out in the community' as the LA call it but you must have LA agreement & if your with family support workers rather than sw they need to have enough staff at the time too.

[heartbrokenfather]

Thanks for your replies.

I just wanted to make sure that I was not making unreasonable request's to children services regarding possibility of having contact away from the contact centre.

What is this contact review meeting? children's services have never said anything about that to me, and as far as I am aware I have not had one of these meetings at all in the last 6 months since everything started.

In the last 6 months I have been to two child protection conference's, and one core group meeting, and a few quick meeting with social workers. The only time I have had a meeting as such to do directly with contact with the children is when contact was 1st being set-up, and I had to sign a "Contract For Supervised Contact" before they was willing to let the children have contact with me.

Since then I have not had any meeting directly related to contacting. Contact has been brought up in other meeting, but only along the lines of "How has contact been going?"

The contact with the children has always been supervised by two supervisors from the contact centre, The social worker does normally sit in or supervise the contact, but at the last contact session the social worker did sit in and watch for about 15 to 20 mins at the end of the contact session.

I wonder if it has anything to do with the email that I sent to the social worker.

[Mama R]

I'm not sure if it's the same in every area in the country but where I am the contact review is done by the manager of the contact support team. They look at how it's going & whether it can be 'progressed' ie from 2 superiors & you in room to group contact (lower level of supervision & other family's in room) or to out in community. The recommendations are given to sw & if there's no reason to object (positive contact reports) changes go ahead. I don't know how often they are done but I know the court's ordered my ex's (I have no issue with him but sw does) contact reviews to be every 6/8 week's 6 month's in it's been done once! Hope this helps

[ange301126]

Dear heartbrokenfather, just a suggestion; when you next have contact , pass to your elder boy the web address of this parents forum and possibly your username. As all communications through the forum are made on the basis of anonymity, then, technically, you cannot be breaching any bail conditions. Have you been able to find any useful facts out from the elder children at normal contacts or aren't you allowed free speech? Or perhaps you can't talk.

There are so many ifs and buts aren't there and it is so easy for people like me to say do this,do that, take action in court and all that.When i was going through proceedings ,i didn't do any of these things,i just stupidly trusted everything would come right in the end and they would sort it all out and arrive at the right decisions. They deliberately avoided doing so and refused to talk to me throughout! I understand how difficult it is to face the CS out .You need strong intervention from an advocate capable of forcing their hand.

[Barney]

Contact outside of the contact center will probably only be permitted once your criminal case has been tried, until then CS will state they cannot assess the risk you pose.
Contact can be grim in these places but I just made the most of it and would take stuff I knew they enjoyed and made sure we were in the garden rain,hail or shine.

[heartbrokenfather]

Just a small update on this subject, I will leave the rest to my main post.

Regarding what you said above regarding contact review meetings.

Two contact session ago before the children arrived I went into the contact office and asked to speak to the contact manager, but the contact manager was not available. I then asked what is there policy regarding contact review meetings. I was given a very dumb faced look following by quite a long pause. and was told there was no set interval for contact review meetings, it could be every 3 months or 6 months, or when the contact centre thought it would be suitable. I think advised them that I was requesting a contact review meeting, and give them my details.

At the last contact session once again before the children arrived I went into the contact office to find out if there was any updates with my requested contact review meeting, as no one had been in contact with me. I asked was there any updates, and was told they have spoken to my children's social worker, and that the social worker does not want a septate contact review meeting, but would rather have it as part of the core group meeting.

So I am not really sure what to make of all it.

[Suzie, FRG Adviser]

Dear HeartBrokenFather,

I’ve looked back through your previous posts and the last I could see regarding your bail conditions is that it was specified that contact between you and your children has to be supervised and take place in a particular contact centre. Unless your bail conditions have been varied since then, the position remains the same. Neither Children’s Services nor your solicitor has the ability to override the bail conditions. If you want contact to take place outside of the centre, the first thing you must do is speak to your criminal solicitor about applying to vary the bail conditions.

On that note, I have stated this before but I’d like to remind you and all other users how important it is to not only comply with your bail conditions but to not do anything that would appear to be underhand in your dealings with Children’s Services and other professionals. There are two parts to this. Firstly, you would not want to do anything that could lead to a breach of bail, which is criminal offence, but secondly, you need to demonstrate to professionals that irrespective of how you feel about their involvement you will build a of a working relationship with them. That is not to say you must agreeing with everything they say and you should not accept bad practice, but you do need to show your priority is what is best for the children and that professionals can believe you to be honest and truthful in their dealings with you. If the professionals start to question your integrity, it will undermine all the good work you do throughout the proceedings.

Best wishes

Suzie