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Hi all, I am new here and found this site while looking for information on my situation. Any advice would be greatly recieved.
My situation is this, I have a 12 year old daughter who is refusing to go to school, she started high school in September last year and has hardly been in since. My daughter lives with my ex who has failed to get her into school and because of various problems Social services and other agencies have now got involved to try and get her back into school.
I got a letter recently saying that I can be fined for failing to ensure that my daughter attends school and I am not too happy about this.
My situation is that I live with my girlfriend her two children a boy of 9 and a girl of 11. I live a good 30 miles away and work away from home during the week another 180 miles away. There is very little I can do to make the situation better and understandably i am not happy with the prospect of getting fined for something I have little influence over.
My question at the moment is how realistic would it be that I am fined?
The mother is the parent with care and the mother in my case is not able to handle the situation and this has led to the current state of affairs.
Hi.
Do you have parental responsibilty over your child? im not sure on the law side of things but if you have parental responisbility i feel it could be likely you could be fined unfortunately as you are seen to have the same rights and responsibilities over the child?
Hi there
Its a really tough one - is there something that is either putting her off going (bullying or something?) Is there anyone she would talk to about it so that you can try to resolve it. When did she start playing truant and was it as a result of something going on in her life?
It may also be that there is nothing motivating her to go - is there anything that the school can do (clubs etc) to encourage her to attend.
Easy to say but it is probably just a phase she is going through but in the meantime the damage being done is hard to repair. Stick with it but I think you need to get to the root of the cause.
Good luck with it
Hi both, thanks for your replies.
I do have parental responsibility, i got this via the courts years ago.
There are a lot of ongoing issues and many agencies involved in trying to get my daughter back into school but at the moment nothing is working and I have now had a letter informing me that I will be fined.
There are a couple a meetings this week to discuss the issues which I am unable to attend because I work away. But I will get to find out what has been discussed and what decisions have been made, probably on Friday.
I am just wondering if anyone has been in the same situation or heard of anything similar and whether it is likely that I will get a fine given that there is not a lot I can do being the non-residential parent.
I'm not expert on this, but in any normal court case where a sentence is passed, the defendant is given the opportunity to give mitigating circumstances to reduce the sentence (or fine) - I would have said that you certainly have extremely good mitigating circumstances so you fine should be minimal, if any.
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