Contact and future plans

[Skippy]

Hello Cazza. What is probably important here is who has parental responsibility, and I suspect that would be shared between social services and the mother. I suspect that social services cannot necessarily over-rule the mother's decision to decline you access - it would be for a judge to do that. In our case, our nephew was in foster care and parents insisted that we did not have any access, and we just had to live with that - for nearly four months. However, we became joined to the family court proceedings, at which point we requested access and it was granted (albeit supervised, but that was a good thing for us as it meant that the social worker could see how we functioned as a family unit).

During the court case, our nephew's mother stated that she would rather see him adopted or put in long term foster care than be placed with us. Given our social worker and guardian assessment was so positive, and that our references came from teachers, psychologists and senior figures from the community (one with an MBE!), the judge took a very dim view of this - it showed that the mother was not capable of deciding what was in her son's best interests.

So, I guess what I am saying is just stick with it. It's a long hard road, but keep plugging away, make sure you speak to social services on a very regular basis, and get joined to the court case as soon as you can, and hopefully things will go your way.