Advice needed ASAP on contact

[anon0381]

Im posting for a friend who is concerned about current situation regarding contact with his daughter...
He shares parental responsibilitie of his 2year old daughter with the maternal grandmother who has been granted special guardianship, he has been able to have unsupervised contact for 8 hours a week and he would collect her from the grandmothers amd take her to his home for the 8 hours...the mother of the child lives locally and must have supervised contact via the great maternal grandmother with her daughter...recently he was outside playing with his daughter when the childs mother passed and seen them both and chatted for around 10mins with them, she has biopolar illness and last thing he wanted to do was drag his daughter inside as it would have caused a stir and from past experience a family member previously had she would have caused a scene and upset the little girl which he wanted to avoid...when CS got wind of this before he had a chance to say himself they now stopped contact and have decided he must have supervised contact in the centre for 1 hour a week which is clearly affecting the little girl. He feels like this is a no win situation and if he had handled the situation by removing the child indoors it would have made a situation nasty. CS have now asked that he go over to the offices and sign a written agreement, he feels this is unfair as it should have been put into place before hand due to the mam living two streets away that it was inevitable this would happen at some point...he also thinks that its unfair that he should have contact in a small room with somebody writing down all they say to eachother which the little girl is clearly confused...can somebody advice if this is nesessary under circumstances? Also just to add there have never been a written agreement put in place even before special guardianship was granted...thamks in advance

[Suzie, FRG Adviser]

Dear anon0381,

I think you have set out very succinctly all the dilemmas that arose in this situation. That mum lives a few streets away-so this situation was likely to have arisen because mum lives so close and that there is history around mums behaviour upsetting his daughter.

It would help your friend if he explained why he took the decision not to remove his daughter from this potentially dangerous situation. That it was a no win situation and that he was going to tell children services what had happened.

He should then ask that support be put in place to help manage contact in the future-so that it will not happen again. So a contract of expectations would help him and mother to understand what to do if it should arise again.

What other support could be helpful? He could ask for an assessment for support around contact.

If the child was “looked after” before the special guardianship order was in place, children services must carry out an assessment.

Have a look at our advice sheet about special guardianship orders which sets out support on page 13 to 14 and 16 onwards.
He should ask that with support, contact should move back to the level it was before this incident took place. He should give examples of all the good quality contact his daughter has had with him. If he has kept a diary of this or photos –it would be helpful. Can he get anyone to back him up? Grandma? Health visitor? Say that the level of contact was set high because it was of good quality, to help the special guardian?

Here is some research that Family Rights Group was involved in-
http://www.frg.org.uk/involving-familie ... rers. [/b]

If children services do not agree-he should challenge the decision through children services complaints .

Best wishes,

Suzie