Childrens services not understanding me!!!!!

[Suzie, FRG Adviser]

Dear Runnermum16,

Welcome to the Parent’s Forum and thank you for posting.

I can see that you are a mum with 2 children aged 10 and 11. You are in a new relationship with a man who has conviction(s) for a sex offence against a child. He is due to be removed from the sex offenders register shortly. You have contacted the relevant authorities to advise them about your relationship –given his potential risk to your children and you are cooperating with the social worker assessment of you.

At the same time, you have the double stress of court proceedings as well. The father of your children is worried about your situation and has applied for residence of your children. Are you opposing this application?
During the court application, the court is likely to approach children services for a section 7 report. This report is to help the court decide whether the children should live with dad rather than you. So the current assessment of you is very important as it is likely to be used in the court proceedings as well.

The social workers is primarily trying to find out your capacity to protect your children from being sexually abused by your new partner.
This involves detailed enquiries about why you are with someone who has a conviction for a sex offence. She is wondering whether you are being groomed by your new partner –and whether you may give him access to your children in some way.

While she is doing the assessment, she will need to assume the worse of him-that he is still capable of sexually abusing a child in the same way that he was convicted of. But the social worker should also take into account any other assessments about your partners risk to children. if he has been recently risk assessed he could pass the report on to her.

I wonder whether she thinks you are in denial of your partner’s risk-that you cannot see that he is still dangerous to your children.
This is why she asking why you do not leave him. She is trying to understand how protective you will be. You say your children, while they are young, will never come into contact with him so they will be protected. But as you become more involved with each other, which you suggest is likely to happen, there could be occasions when they will. How will these occasions be managed? Do you have anyone in your family or friend network to help supervise your children, for example?

You talk about a separated life. I think she may also be trying to understand whether you could maintain a separated life-long term. Your post does indicate that long term, your children may be in touch with him. “…so long term if we were to continue to have a relationship the children will be much older”. What happens when your children go on to have grandchildren or if you have more children. You may still have to be able to protect children from your partner’s risk long term.

If she thinks your children may come into contact with him, she would need to think about doing self- protection work with them –as an extra protection against being sexually abused.

If the social worker thinks you are in denial about your partner’s dangerousness, she may decide that you would not be able to protect your children. However, she could also offer you expert support such as the NSPCC course-Women as Protectors to educate you further about his risks.

Will your partner always be considered to be dangerous? He could contact the Just stop it now advice line to see what support and courses are available to him that may make him less risky.

At this stage as you are quite early on in a relationship and your partner is not dad, children services may not commission a separate risk assessment of him. But you could ask them whether they will.

For more advice about your situation look at our information about social work assessments . You could also contact the Just stop it now helpline on 0808 1000 900 or Parents Protect have a lot of useful information on their website.

I hope this advice helps. Post again if you need further advice.

Best wishes,

Suzie

[Suzie, FRG Adviser]

Dear Runnermum16

Thank you for the update.

Firstly may I refer you back to our original response where we included a link to Women as Protectors programme run by the NSPCC. If you have not done so already please explore that website. It may assist you when you are speaking with social workers who may want to understand why you plan to engage in a relationship that they suggest may/will put your children at risk of abuse.

You ask whether you should be concerned about Children’s Services involvement, the answer must be a broad ranging one and a ‘yes’. Generally a social worker may be concerned if they think that a parent cannot see that a choice of partner (or an action) could potentially place their child or children at risk of harm – this assertion could cover for example, a new partner who abused alcohol or drugs. One may take it as a given that a parent would not allow such a partner to get into a vehicle and drive children to school whilst under the influence of alcohol. By analogy your partner who has been convicted (or cautioned) regarding downloading indecent images may never commit this crime again but it would be difficult to ‘police’ him and as a parent you cannot with 100% certainty say that ‘he’ would not do it because he’s told me they wouldn’t!’ such a statement is not enough.

You want to know what kind of things a social worker may ask a child and generally speaking a social worker will frame any conversation with a child age appropriately and will explore the child’s thoughts on the subject. I suggest that you ask the social worker for an idea of the type of questions she will ask your children. May I refer you again to Parents Protect as referred to in our earlier post.

Best wishes

Suzie