The FRG advice line gives advice to parents whose children are involved with childrens social care services
‘Social Services do not listen to the father. You literally have to go diving off Big Ben for them to pay some sort of attention’. Sam, a Dad.
‘The social worker actually asked if he had parental responsibility, and once it was established that I had and he wasn’t on the birth certificate she just wasn’t interested in him anymore’. Lia, a Mum.
Are social worker’s involved in your child’s life?
Family Rights Group’s advice line gives advice to parents whose children are involved with children’s social care services. This might be because social workers are worried about their child’s welfare, or because their child is in care and the parent is concerned about contact, or because the family need help to look after their child and are having difficulty accessing this extra support.
We now have a frequently asked questions (FAQ) for Dads section on our website. These FAQ are part of our wider Fathers Matter project, and came about because Dads told us they were needed. The FAQ cover issues such as parental responsibility, inclusion in decision making about a child’s future, contact with looked after children and involvement of paternal relatives
Parents ring our advice line for many reasons, when patterns emerge in the types of calls we receive we always try to look further at the reasons for these calls.
About five years ago we realised that a substantial number of our callers were Dads who were raising similar issues about the way in which they were treated by children’s social care services. Most of the fathers who contacted us didn’t live with their children, and as a result felt overlooked by children’s social care services. Some had heard very late in the day that their children had been taken into care. Conversely we heard from a father who was unaware that he had a son until he was approached by a social worker looking for a family member with whom to place the boy. Common amongst the calls from Dads was the feeling that they were not generally included in decision making about their children’s future, and that there was not adequate information to enable them to effectively engage in the process when there were concerns about the well-being of their children.
We hope that our FAQ will help Dads to better understand their legal responsibilities and rights and the options open to them. For further support contact our advice line and for more information about our Fathers Matter project visit our website.
Contact details are in the DadTalk Useful Links directory.
