Contact supervisors transporting children

[heartbrokenfather]

Hi All.

I am once again looking for help and advice with matters.

As I type this post I am livid with the contact supervisors, this is regarding transporting the children to and from the contact centre.

My understanding of the UK Law regarding child seats is that all children under 12 years old and under 135cm in height must use an appropriate child restraint when travelling in any car.

With anyone following my other posts would know that my wife and I have 5 children in total.

The original arrangement set up by the social worker(s) the contact centre, and the contact supervisors is that the contact supervisors would collect the children from there schools and transport them to the contact centre, and once contact had finished to transport all of the children back to the family home.

It has been brought to my attention on a number of occasions that the children's may not all be using suitable booster seats / restraints.
But as I have not seen this for my self I have not had any proof and as such have been unable to act on it.

But shortly after contact being started again the contact supervisors carried on collecting the children from school and transporting them to the contact centre. But returning the children to the family home has changed where one of the contact supervisors would transport some of the children, and my wife would transport the rest of the children home.

My wife and I had no problems with this change of the arrangements.

At the contact session just gone my wife was unable to transport any of the children due to problems with the car. So it was arranged that both of the contact supervisors would transport all of the children back to the family home. This I had no problems with.

Up to the point of when the contact supervisors where putting the younger children into the back of there car. The youngest child was placed on a combination seat but they was only going to use the standard seat belt, and not the multipoint harness. The other two children where just put in the back of the car without any kind of booster seats.

As said above my understanding of the UK Law regarding child seats is that all children under 12 years old and under 135cm in height must use an appropriate child restraint when travelling in any car.

The 3 youngest children are all under 12 years of ages, and under 135cm in height. so as the UK Law states they should use appropriate child restraint.

Some of you may think that this matter is only trivial, but the point is that the contact supervisors have a duty of care, and in my eyes are putting the children at unnecessary risk, and are also breaking the law.

I am going to be informing my solicitors on this matter.

Thanks for your time.

Best Regards.

[ange301126]

Dear Heartbrokenfather, From the tone of your message, I sense you are letting matters get on top of you.
Until this point you appear to have been calm and focused. Appearances count!

The issue of child car seats is peritheral and while it gives you good reason for consternation and an opportunity to vent your overall feelings you should put it into perspective.

I suggest if you ring the care centre manager and have a quick word in her ear (without losing it) that next time you have contact it will have been corrected.

As far as your case is concerned, the issue is relatively minor.However, you should keep careful records of the times and dates and if possible get your concerns acknowledged by the key social worker who may well agree with you on such matters of safety.

As regards the grand scheme of things, you can cite the issue to the parenting assessor as a clear indication that you have an awareness of child-safety precautions; the only other relevance I can see is that if, after everything is sorted and your family reunited, you decide to take legal action for failure in 'duty of care' you will be able to bring out all your records and cite it as an one example amongst all the rest.

Meanwhile,calm down. I suspect you already have.

[ange301126]

Dear Heartbrokenfather, I apologise if I gave you the impression I thought it was trivial.It is a very,very important safety issue and against the law ,just as you say.Perhaps I was wrong,as always I was only trying to help thats all and I was trying to give a perspective to the issue as seen from someone on the outside looking in.
Now you have slept on it and amended your post I can see you have kept your hat firmly on your head after all.

What I will say is that I have no doubt at all that had you had arrived for an unsupervised contact, then attempted to take them in your car without safety seats , they would have been onto it like a flash, cancelled the contact immediately and probably reinstated supervision.Likewise,if your wife transported the children without the right seats , they would have expressed serious concerns about her parenting skills.

I complained to my solicitor about several issues and she wrote them letters but they were ignored. Good luck with your protests.

[ange301126]

Dear heartbrokenfather,It might be helpful if I add that solicitors letters cost over fifty pounds each plus vat thus every complaint you make through solicitors diminishes your overall legal funding so you should consider this before firing off an e-mail.
I would complain directly to the contact supervisor myself if I were you.Your sol will probably be ignored anyway as mine was.

[heartbrokenfather]

The emails to my solicitors had already been sent before I had finished my post.

And more formal complaints have been submitted by the solicitors to children's services.

I have been into the Contact Centre, I requested to see the manager, but the manager was not available to see me. I am getting sick to death of hearing that line from social all the time.

I gave the contact my details yet again, so that they could not say they did not have my number to contact me. I was then told that the manager will phone me tomorrow to arrange a time and date to come and see them.

I am not going to hold my breath too long other wise I will end up passing out, But I will give this contact centre manager the benefit of the doubt, as I have not had any direct dealings with this person yet. So only time will tell.

[Suzie, FRG Adviser]

Dear Heartbrokenfather

You have raised some very important issues in your post that should clearly be addressed by the Local Authority. Hopefully your solicitor has been able to advise you further about the best way forward at this point.

Best Wishes

Suzie

[heartbrokenfather]

Well the contact centre manager never phoned me on Friday, and Never phoned me today.
So I will be on the phone to them in the morning.
I am not going or willing to let them try and sweep this under the carpet.

As always I report back with any more details in due time.

Thanks again for your time.

Best Regards.