A Child Protection Case Study

How Our Care Proceedings Solicitors Were Able To Help

The mother contacted our Care Proceedings Solicitors to discuss the social workers’ involvement with her family. We advised her to try to find ways of addressing social workers’ concerns and we offered her some practical advice about the support she could receive to help her stay separate from her partner.

We also highlighted how she could access support, such as parenting classes, and help with her depression. We then advised her on the possible steps the social workers may take if they felt that the circumstances for the children hadn’t improved.

The mother listened to and acted on our advice and stopped allowing the father to live in the property. She accepted that the father had anger management problems and encouraged him to get help but didn’t end the relationship as she didn’t believe it was in the children’s best interests for their parents to be estranged. Further to this, she enrolled in parenting classes.

However, unfortunately the social workers didn’t believe that this was sufficient and suspected that the father was still visiting the property as they could see that the curtains were drawn during the day. The mother said that this was because the children were either napping or because they couldn’t see the television when it was too sunny.

Social workers concluded that not enough improvements had been made and invited the mother to a Public Law Outline meeting to discuss what steps would be necessary to prevent them applying to Court to remove the children.

Care Proceedings Solicitors attended the PLO meeting with the mother and helped her to highlight the areas where support was required. We also asked the social workers to help with identifying nursery places for the youngest children and securing after school activities for the older children to ease the burden on the mother. In addition, we advised her to offer to take a drug test if social workers believed she was using drugs.

The mother signed a written agreement promising to only allow the children to see their father if he was supervised by social workers. A date was set for a review meeting several weeks later, but in the meantime, the father claimed that the mother was letting him see the children without social workers present.

At the review meeting, the social workers said they would be taking the matter to Court on the grounds that the mother couldn’t prioritise the safety of the children over her relationship with the father. They also argued that her home conditions were still unacceptable and made an application for an Interim Care Order  and sought removal of the children.

What Was the Outcome of This Case?

At the first hearing, our Care Proceedings Solicitors contested the application for the mother and persuaded the Court that the father had not been honest about having unsupervised contact. We submitted the argument that he had said this because he was angry with the mother for not letting him live in the home any longer.

We also argued that the mother had been open about how she had been struggling to cope and that social workers just hadn’t put enough support in place to help her manage at a very difficult period of her life.

Ultimately, the Court agreed that the removal of the children wouldn’t be in their best interests and ordered an Interim Supervision Order. This put a duty on the social workers to advise, assist and befriend the family, rather than allow them to share Parental Responsibility.

During the proceedings, the Court also ordered a psychological report on the mother, which helped to highlight how she can be supported to manage the future care of her children successfully.

We can help people who are in this situation, you can contact our specialist care proceedings teams in Manchester, London, Liverpool, Leeds and Bristol. Our friendly team can be contacted on 0808 239 4184 or by requesting a call back here.