CARE PROCEDINGS

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If social services are taking an unwanted look at your family life in particular your children, please click on the file link above "parents pack", this is a guide to help you understand the what why and when of the local authority's actions against you and your child. Below are extracts from the publication and our simple no - fee advice to those parents at the very beginning of local authority intervention.

"Your local authority is very worried that your child is not

being looked after properly or is out of control. So they are

thinking about whether to ask a court if your child should

be taken into care.

In the next few days, you will get a “letter before

proceedings” from your local authority. You may have

already got one. This letter explains why they think your child

is not being looked after properly. It also tells you to come to

a meeting to talk about the way you look after your child.

If you do not follow the instructions in this letter, you

may have to go to court and your child could be taken

into care.

What you need to do

If you want to have a say in how your child is looked

after, it’s up to you to work with your local authority to deal

with their concerns.

You must show them that you understand why they

are worried and that you will do something about it".

Diy Law Shop Limited has much experience in local authority public law actions to take children into care of the local authority, it is our experience and our guidance to all our clients that in any circumstances you must not place any trust in a social worker at all. None of them, they simply want to take your children, not sort your family issues out - if they tell you that they are most likely lying.

Allegations that are of a minor incident, such as a family argument that a nasty neighbour has referred you to social services, or some other vexatious referral:

Your first step should the local authority contact you is to decide straight away whether you are going to become involved with their request for you to partake or not. Our advice is clear to all parents: unless there is a court proceeding and a judge has ordered you attend, the local authority are powerless to make you do anything, therefore our advice to all parents is to take no part at all, do not reply to letters, do not attend meetings and do not speak to the social workers even if they attend your home unannounced.

Allegations of a serious matter such as beating your child, neglect, physical or sexual abuse, serious harm (not to be mixed up with significant harm), referrals by the police following domestic violence that you have gave evidence of being beaten to the police:

"under these circumstances it is in your interests to attend the meeting and co-operate fully with the local authority, if you do not your absence will be used to provide the court with 'proof' of your guilt. The court are nine times out of ten likely to remove your children from you if any of the above are the factors for the local authority going to court".

If you have beat your child (e.g a one off slap on the backside or wrist and a person has referred you to social services) you must be honest and admit to it at the very first point, you need help to stop you slapping or hitting and the local authority have a duty to try to help before removing any child.

If you have beaten your child over and over we don not help those parents accused of badly beating (Bone Breaking) or sexually abusing their children. We never will. That does not mean we believe you are guilty, it is simple fact that should you face allegations of that sort of nature your children will be taken and your will most likely never see them again due to the Baby Peter Connelly case and other high profile cases having a detrimental effect on the balance of justice tipping the scales against parents such as these. If you are accused of the most serious kind of abuse as above you need to find a very good barrister, forget solicitors they are a complete waste of time in these types of cases and will simply flinch you of your money while selling you down the river. However if you are accused of the above though there is absolutely no evidence against you, we mean no evidence at all - no statements, reports, police involvement, childs words to professionals being reported, if there is no evidence we will take your case on, we do not believe allegations that are unfounded and neither should a court. (but courts do get it wrong now and then)

For cases of
Domestic Violence

if you have made allegations to the police or there is a history of domestic violence the social workers will attempt to split up your family, even if your children do not see or hear any domestic rows, or minor physical pushing or tugging or any other minor violence the Local Authority will come after your children, should you have a baby the baby will be targeted by the local authority for adoption before they have even met you. If you have money our advice is you leave the country and live outside of the EU. If you do not have money you need to get your house in order, there is in all cases a victim and perpetrator in DV cases, both of you will be blamed by the local authority for the DV. You must fight the social workers vigorously and demand to them that your home is safe for your child and that no DV takes place, if there is history of DV or you cannot deny DV you must offer to work with the local authority, you must say you will co-operate by all means, and say that you will do whatever it takes to change. if you abuse drugs or alcohol you can forget trying to work with the social workers your cards are marked in reality. in those circumstances you must come off drugs and o alcohol and seek a counselor to help you stay off, tests must be done monthly at your expense or through your G.P so that you can show the court 6 months down the line you have made the changes. This will help but does not guarantee you will save your family.

serious risk of significant harm

when social workers have nothing else to go on, but simply have to come after your family (usually due to the local authority, the police, a person of high importance in your community or other agency/organisation causing trouble for you) they will accuse you of being a 'future risk of significant harm' this term covers just about everything that you haven't done yet but they think you may do later when the child is older. Unfortunately the courts are very happy to accept this allegation without any real evidence at all. It is a fact that 'future risk' must be based on 'past evidence' however the courts and judges in particular do not work like that. Instead the Judges perceive the law in their own way and do not really care for the wording of the law. So that you are aware the level of evidence needed in family courts falls way too low to prove any issue, the judges literally believe who they want to believe, therefore if you are a normal every day person with maybe a little bit of a drink problem, or you are known to argue with the authorities etc they judge is more likely not to believe you over the professionals in the case working against you.

There are now at least some cases out there (only after long drawn out appeal processes) where the balance is redressed, some parents have had there children returned to them, but not out of adoption. The UK does not allow children to be removed from their adopters even if parents win their appeal against adoption. There are many cases of wrongdoing by social workers and other professionals, but the parents still lose their children. Forced adoption is where the parents right to agree to adoption is taken away by the court, the UK is the only country in Europe that forces adoption. In other parts of the world our country is seen as barbaric for the practice even 3rd world countries do not practice.

so if you are at the beginning of this kind of intervention, you need a legal assistance second to none, that's us, so call us on 01455 233058

Letter before proceedings

Local authorities send a letter before court proceedings

when they are worried about how a child is being looked

after. It is often sent after the local authority has drawn

up a plan for your child to be kept safe and well cared for

but they are still concerned. The letter is a inal notice for

parents. If you don’t follow its instructions, you may have

to go to court and your child could be taken into care.

Pre-proceedings meeting

The letter asks you to come to a pre-proceedings

meeting with your local authority to talk about the

situation. At the meeting, you will talk about how to

change the way you look after your child and how the local

authority can support you to do this. If you agree some

changes, these will be written down in a formal agreement

that you and the local authority have to follow. If you don’t

agree, your local authority will probably ask the court to

take your child into care.

Keeping to the agreement

You must keep to any agreement you make at the

pre-proceedings meeting and the local authority should

keep to any agreements they make too. You will probably

be asked to go to review meetings to check you are keeping

to the agreement.

Going to court

If you don’t keep to the agreement or there are still serious

or new concerns, your local authority will apply to a court

to start care proceedings. You will have to go to court –

possibly several times until the court makes its decision

about your child’s future.

If your local authority thinks your child’s situation is urgent, they may ask the court

to make a decision about your child sooner, without going through all the steps above.

At the end of this process, one of these things

will happen.

Your child stays with you under a new agreement

about how you will look after them. If you keep to the

agreement, your child should stay with you. If you don’t

keep to it, you may have to go back to court and your

child could be taken into care.

Your child moves in with a friend or family member.

This can be for a short time to help you make changes

to your life so that you can look after your child better:

or it can be permanent.

Your child goes into care. If you can’t agree how you will

change the way you look after your child and there’s no

suitable friend or family member, the court will tell your

local authority to ind a place for your child to live. This

will be either with a foster family or in a children’s home.

This could be for a long time, possibly many months, until

the court decides whether your child can live with you or

needs to live with someone else.

If your child goes into care, the local authority will

continue to work with you so that your child can

return home, but a time will come when decisions have

to be made about the future of your child. If your child

cannot return home to you the other options are that

they stay in long term fostering; go to live with a friend or

another family member under a residence order or special

guardianship order, go to live in a children’s home or be

adopted.

Letter before proceedings

– Essentials

What you need to know

• The letter before proceedings is a formal

letter. It asks you to come to a meeting with

your local authority to talk about the care

of your child because they are worried that

your child is not being looked after properly

or is out of control.

• The letter explains why your local authority

thinks this. If you don’t agree with the local

authority, the meeting is your opportunity to

say why you disagree.

• The local authority has already tried other

ways to make sure your child isn’t at risk of

harm – like through your child’s social worker.

• If you don’t come to the meeting, your local

authority is very likely to go to court about

your child. This could mean he or she is

taken into care. Remember, you are entitled

to free legal help.

What you need to do

• Read the letter carefully to make sure you

understand what the local authority has said

it is worried about and what they want you

to do to make things better.

should you be facing social services intervention in your family life there are some simple rules you may wish to follow:

never trust a social worker, they are trained to lie to you to place you in a false sense of security. they will have you believe they are a friend and they want to help you, if your not that easily 'taken in' they will try the opposite effect and threaten you with taking your child from you over and over, if none of that works they will revert to making a case against you on pure lies. (see the following report) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/7728931/Britains-child-snatchers-are-a-scandal.html?temp-new-window-replacement=true
never agree to a psychiatric assessment either by the court or the social services, provide your own report that either you paid for or get referred by your own G.P (the local authorities are known to have employed psychiatrists that will say what ever the local authority want them to say. (just take a look at this) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2237637/Why-doctor-George-Hibbert-GMC-probe-STILL-allowed-break-families.html?temp-new-window-replacement=true
Never trust a cafcass officer, thousands of parents across the country are heartbroken because of the disgraceful and cruel work of these so called professionals. The problem with CAFCASS officers is they take sides against one parent over the other. The parent who loses out rarely gets a look in with these professionals, while the other parties can count them as a friend, do not trust them but try to work with them, you dont want to upset them they have their own power share of the system.
Unfortunately you must not rely on magistrates even knowing the law, let alone making fair and professionally thought out orders, magistrates rely on their clerk for almost every move they make, it is a national embarrassment and scandal that these non - professionals are given so much power with family life. If you are in the magistrates court you must appeal to a higher court asap and have the case dealt with by a Circuit Judge if possible. District Judges have a terrible reputation within the family law society of simply being power crazed to the point the case for the local authority will almost every time be accepted, meaning you stand no chance.
The courts can be fair and the fact is some Judges struggle against the authorities for fairness and reasonable outcomes, but too many times they get it very wrong. You only need to see the amount of appeals overturning Judges orders to realise there is something very wrong in the family courts.
Remember family courts need see NO evidence at all, in essence the court is equivalent to a kangaroo court.
The fact is if you are still reading this your nightmare has probably just began, there are a few other rules that will help you, always get a transcript of your hearing if you can. Always take notes of what everyone in the court says. Always check the order that you receive from the court word for word that it is a true account of what the judge ordered. Always appeal any order you feel is unreasonable, wrong, unfair, not in the interest of the child, where the judge is plainly wrong. Do not be afraid to disagree or argue. Do not wait for others to do what you need to do. Every time you feel like giving up - start again.
Remember - solicitors are good and bad. Some of the solicitors that are supposed to work for the parent (you) will actually work against you with the other side, they do not care about you or your childs future they only care about the money. Do not use solicitors. If you have a lot of money use a barrister or Q.C to do the work - if you do not have money you have a choice of a legal aid solicitor and companies like ours. We charge about 1/50th of a solicitor.
If you need free help you can try some McKenzie Friends on Facebook groups like https://www.facebook.com/groups/217565588358675/?temp-new-window-replacement=true

You may want to read the following stories re Social Services and family courts, these are from national newspapers:

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Saturday 2 November 2013

CARE PROCEDINGS

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