Written evidence (CFA0029)
HOUSE OF LORDS CHILDREN AND FAMILIES ACT 2014 SELECT COMMITTEE INQURY
The House of Lords Select Committee on the Children and Families Act 2014 was appointed on 19 January 2022 “to consider the Children and Families Act 2014”.
In my experience the act has caused more misunderstandings and misuse of powers than have ever been seen before in our society. So much injustice and misunderstanding I have observed. It’s criminal. I personally feel that it’s the implementation and misreading of the intention of the law. We can all have good intentions but if we create loop holes and word things poorly, then expect people to have common sense in comprehending these rules.
Funding! It’s the same with everything there is always an issue with funding, however I also think the key is that I learnt that the court and law system are slow to change and adapt and learn from new rules and laws. So any changes you make this year will take a decade or more to be implemented, that’s worrying because children are suffering now.
I’m finding that the adoption process was quicker for a step-parent using parental alienation, than a c100 contact order request. So whilst it may be good for helping to get children into adoption that need it, it’s also having a detrimental effect on people like myself who are seeking contact with their biological child but being excluded from the adoption process by the new step-parent.
○ Does the 26-week limit on care and placement proceedings strike the correct balance between justice and speed? - no comment
○ How well have the limitations on expert evidence served children in the family justice system? - what experts? - In my experience they’ve been grosely bias and not int he best interest of the child or empowering the child’s voice, with no experience or knowledge of parental alienation or how narcissists and abusers use the system. The parents are the experts.
○ What has been the effect of the requirement to consider mediation? - I’ve never satisfied the criteria for mediation.
○ How has the presumption of the involvement of both parents in the life of the child after family separation affected proceedings? - I’ve found that this has had a very detrimental effect in the case of parents with an abusive or controlling partner. I personally feel that it caused a huge miscarrage of justice and caused an imbalance in the best interests of the child. In my case it was court ordered that the father provide healthy meals with a diary sent to me, to use a car seat as per legal requirements, do a hand over at the door and to not provide hot food on the day of return. He objected to these conditions and accused the Cafcass officer of being biassed. We had to explain that these are not benefiting me in any way but benefitting the child. He wasn’t convinced and felt aggrieved so much so that he published his contempt at how family law court was conducted by doing a stand up comedy act and broadcasting it on youtube joking about how he abused me and the children. To date his contact has taken preference and so when he took them from school to save himself from paying CSA payments and back payments alongside some grooming that had been taking place, those children have failed to return to my care decipite Social Services considering me to be an ‘excellent parent’, for 9 years! So the attitude that keeping ‘dad’ in the picture when he would send the children to his mothers, his new girlfriends or anyone who would have them whilst he worked only to claim to be the new primary carer has been a complete cloak and dagger exercise which the court were unwilling to allow me to provide evidence of. Grooming, parental alienation and narcissistic abuse were all very clear and plain to see. With the children ultimately suffering years of neglect and abuse as a result. To say that I am livid that I have seen some real chauvinistic judges, the family law courts favouring the father (and any hearsay he has over evidence), it’s disgusting. I’ve had comments such as ‘this is England and in England the fathers have a right to know the child’s address and school they attend’. I’d like to state that for 9 years as their mother who loved, protected and raised them I have not known their schooling nor their address, what they look like, what they are interested in, how their health is or what they sound like. I was a studious mother, I have qualifications in childcare, and attended all the surestart courses on parenting, parenting with play, sex education and more. I was always keen to show I was a good parent and worked with professionals, my ex partner would deliberately do the opposite to whatever was in the best interests of the child. Yet, on the basis that some contact is better than none, the courts continued to force contact when it was dangerous and harmful, vindictive and destructive. My eldest daughter was pulling her hair out and rolling it into balls to deal with the mental trauma she was going through. The system has caused irrevocable damage. There is no amount of apologies that can fix or repair the damage. My daughters will never know the devotion and love of their mother. They have been robbed by the system that thought it wise to prioritise contact over safeguarding.
Furthermore the removal of legal aid at a crucial time caused a barrier to justice. The fact that it is back again shows how foolhardy that was as it caused issues for the judges having to explain in layman's terms to each respondent without representation, but also in the applicant wanting to complete their own legal forms and present evidence. Self representation causes mental health issues as well as miscarriages of justice, due to misunderstanding.
We are seeing a vast majority of LAs making up their own policy and it should be a policy that national law takes precedent and not local policy, the Local Government Ombudsman has stated that they cannot hold LAs to account on national law as that can only be done with a Judicial Review (not in a family budget to do that), instead the LGO can hold the LA to account on local policy which can be illegal. For example, the LA can make it a policy that for every disabled child they must accept quarterly safeguarding meetings in the families home and this can be traumatising to the child rather than be supportive to the family, in addition to breaching human right to a private family life. I suggest that a feedback loop is created to afford the committee the necessary statistics they need to see how many complaints are being generated from these issues and provide a clearer insight into what needs to be done to improve.
The issue with safeguarding is that it is being conflated with other issues. Blame is frequently passed from one professional to another rather than a named person being a lead on gathering evidence and acting appropriately. We are still seeing needless mistakes being made and children being harassed by social services when there has been no evidence, but instead a policy to ‘report first think later’, parents are the experts in their children and this imbalance needs addressing so that professionals remember that they are civil servants not the parents of these children. There should be partnerships and facilitation rather than judgement and blame. In the UK for over 4 decades now social services have been vilified and it’s not hard to see why when the complaint process is difficult to access or to get justice when wrong has been done. Once a social worker has inappropriately placed blame on a family/parent/child, that comment remains on the child’s file for life! The social services admit they work on guilty till proven innocent and even then still likely guilty. That is not a healthy rule to have is it?
I don’t think they are useful. In fact I think it’s another example of wasting money on extra people and departments rather than simplifying the situation. We have technology, why don’t we use it to get the children to voice their concerns without the need for a third party interpreting the data to their own narrative?
No comment.
April 2022