Allegations.

[happyending]

Need some information. Our 16 year old daughter is in foster care under section 20. Since going into care she has requested that we do not contact her and has exercised her confidentiality to keep us in the dark as to what is going on in her life. We decided to put her into care as she was no longer willing to abide by family rules and we feared she would put herself in dangerous situations.We adopted her age 6 and she came from a very difficult background which has been challenging for us as parents, but she had seemed to settle with us and we had weathered a lot of storms together.

The social worker on her case is a student who is being supervised. We have received copies of the initial and core assessments which have many inaccuracies as we were not interviewed about our daughters time in care prior to coming to us or her life with us. Daughter did not let us attend the first LAC review , no one from school was there and an allegation was made.

We know the allegation has been forwarded to the police but the social worker will not tell us if it is against myself, husband, one of our other children or family member or another individual. We do not know the nature of the allegation.So far the police have not knocked on the door so we hope we are in the clear. Daughter had a very bad relationship with her birth mum and I have often born the brunt of passive aggressive behaviour over the years as a result of this. Daughter is also angry that we put her into care so has plenty of motive to want to punish us with an accusation.

My question is do we have a right to know what the allegation is and whom it is against? We assume we will know all details if police pursue it. If it is recorded as unsubstantiated do we have a right to know what it is? I would hope that daughter and I can have a relationship in the future as I love her despite the difficulties we have.However, I could not relax in a relationship with her if I was left uncertain as to what she may have accused us of.What if she were to make another allegation? How would we protect ourselves? Her social worker feels that if it is not pursues by police we should just let it go. The social worker says we would have no rights to know what the allegation was. She reasons that knowing about it would make resuming a relationship with daughter more difficult whereas I feel it would be foolish on our side to resume a relationship without this issue being faced up to.

It is awful having this worry hanging over us. Really need some advice.

[Suzie, FRG Adviser]

Dear happyendings,

Welcome to the parents board.
I can see what a difficult predicament you are in-it must also be very distressing to know that there is an allegation against you or your husband on police and children’s services (social services) file- and you don’t know what the allegation is.

I can see that your daughter is currently accommodated-as she is 16 years old-the law says that only she can consent to accommodation or not. You as parents cannot exercise your parental responsibility to keep her in accommodation or remove her.

I think the social worker is right about disclosure of details of the allegations. If the police prosecute then you will know what the allegations are-in order to be able to answer them. If they decide against prosecution –because there is insufficient evidence or because your daughter withdraws the allegations, then you may never know what was said.

In relation to children’s services file-the Data Protection Act 1998-will prevent disclosure due to children services not having consent from your daughter. This will be 3rd party information-and her consent will be needed.
Please see out advice sheet about access to records
I wonder whether the social worker can offer more support around your relationship with your daughter. You could contact After Adoption
If you have any more questions please post back. I am sorry that I cannot offer more positive advice. I also hope things can improve in time between you and your daughter.

Best wishes,
Suzie