What is a supervision order....

[Nanny G]

And when does the final court paperwork come through...?

At the final hearing where my son was granted residence of his daughter it was decided that CS should have a supervision order until they were happy things were running smoothly.
This was not asked for by them, they were happy to write the case off and leave the parents to manage life and contact themselves, this was asked for by my sons solicitor who said he thought they needed a helping hand to oversee contact and to help and advise where needed.

As we know there is a previous history of the parents bickering and getting at each other which has now, as far as my son is concerned stopped.Mum is obviously not happy that she has lost out to my son, and will be feeling hard done by...

As the case is now not under the in care team and not subject to court proceedings they are in the process of changing SW's.The new one seems quite threatening and has told my son the supervision order means that one slight mistake and everything goes back to court to take the child away for adoption...
Contact with mum takes place every Wednesday morning, last night mum rang dad and said she and baby were ill so she would have to cancel contact. She made a drama out of it, how she didn't want to cancel, but was going to have to , but didn't want to miss out on seeing daughter ect etc. Son told her, out of fairness, that last weeks contact had been the happiest he had sen daughter afterwards and wanted tot ell mum it had been a good one. He had also told the 'old' Sw this at the time too.
Son had phone call from 'new ' sw this morning asking him what had been said on the phone last night. He told him that mum had cancelled contact, that he had told her last week was a good one, and also gave her the heads up that he had seen her ex (father of baby) walking away from her direction towards his brothers car parked nearby. This is an ex deemed a danger to children by CS, and one of the causes of problems before. Apparently mum took offence to this, and rang SW telling him dad had upset her so SW is now saying the bickering and communication between two parents stops now or it goes back to court and child is adopted...!

This seems a bit heavy handed and i wonder on what grounds would they take it back to court in the circumstances? I understand what they are saying about the bickering as no one wants it to go back to that again, but what does a supervision order entail?
Just after the final hearing son had a letter from his solicitor giving the basic outline of the order saying as soon as he had the full order through he would send a copy to Son, and close the case. Case has now been closed but no copy of final order yet received. The letter said that CS were to help the parents with mediation, which SW says they don't have to.

Obviously i am only hearing one side of it, but i also know my son will now do anything not to loose his daughter and to toe the line and wont intentionally do anything to jeopardise things. I also know he is still quite gullible to mums manipulation and may have been worried that the ex was in contact with his daughter.

Can anyone give an outsider view on this for me?

Nanny

[Skippy]

We've got an SGO. During the hearing, the judge considered a contact order and a supervision order at our request. The contact order would ensure that we only had to organise contact on set dates (as our relationship with the other family members involved is very poor) and a supervision order so that social services could not wash their hands of the case - we wanted to know that we would not be alone in dealing with any challenges with birth parents that we faced.

The judge refused a contact order - whilst he recognised that this would enable us to plan better for contact, he was concerned that it would be too rigid a format if contact didn't work out. As it happened, he was right - the first contact went exceedingly badly with our dear nephew giving a non-verbal cue to end the session early, and hysterics afterwards saying that he didn't want to see his parents again. That was the one and only contact he's had since the SGO was granted.

Where the supervision order helped with this is that we could document, and have validated by the social worker, what we were experiencing. The acrimony towards us from birth parents was so severe that all communications were channelled through social services. At the end of the year with the supervision order, recognising that contact was unlikely to happen again, the Supervision Order was allowed to lapse - and by this time, we'd established a cordial correspondence relationship with birth parents to provide updates by email.

Effectively, the supervision order gives social services the right to take the case back to court to amend the ruling - without it, they are no longer party to the case. My understanding is that either parent can request for social services to assist with mediation, and they should be obliged to support and/or provide this (including funding it) during the duration of the supervision order.

Our situation sounds rather different to yours as we had a very good relationship with the social working and the guardian in the case. The advice that I would give to your son is to document everything - time and date of phone calls, and whilst it is still fresh in his mind, write down the words used by both side. I'd been meticulous about keeping records in our case, and this meant that we had a detailed record for the judge to review, which gave us far more credibility.

Hope that helps!

[Nanny G]

HI Skippy,
Thank you, yes it does sound like a slightly different situation, my Granddaughter is with my son, but my partner and i did put in for an SGO should she not be able to return to either parent. As It happened we were refused, but my son pulled his arse out of the fire at the 11th hour to get his daughter back. However as he works full time i care for her during the time he is at work, and so have a lot of involvement with her but not legal responsibility.

However you have good advice on documenting everything, i have told him he should keep a diary of how contat has gone with mum and how his daughter is following contact, which isn't always good or happy. As you say, keep a note of any conversations on the phone. Again the Sw's keep telling them not to communicate over the phone, to keep it to the contact book or via the SW's themselves, however mum is the one making phone calls, and my Son will get sucked into conversation with her, which it seems she then turns round against him (although that's nothing new).
It is interesting too as to what the supervision order entails, and as for mediation i don't know why sw wont do it. It is in court order as far as we know, however she says it is not in hers, it must be a different one so they 'will have to wait'. After all the problems they have had, mediation would be good. They had one meeting with the SW with both of them together just before the final hearing, where the Sw told them both how she stood and what she was putting into court ie fro my son to have the child. After that nothing.
So does the supervision order mean the case is still open? My son has had case closure form his solicitor and as far as i know the guardian is no longer involved.