HOW TO GET YOUR CHILDREN BACK

It is important to know the things you should do and the things you should NOT do if you want any hope of recovering your child or children once social services have snatched them from you. 1. You must start the court proceedings which allow you to oppose the request by the social services to take children into care and sometimes put them out for adoption as a later date. 2. Do NOT fall for their suggestion that you engage a legal aid solicitor with “experience” of dealing with care problems especially those locally. I advise that you represent yourself if possible, but if you do get legal aid use a solicitor who lives well out of the area from which the children were taken, and if possible from a completely different county. Do not bankrupt yourself by paying huge fees to private lawyers who will take you for every penny and leave you with financial worries to add to your family problems. 3. Most of the legal aid solicitors are a bunch of professional LOSERS. They lose nearly every case they take on because they never call the witnesses that can help you and they never challenge anything the social services say because they work closely with these people and want more business from them. These so called lawyers will always advise you to plead guilty if you are accused of abuse or neglect as this saves them a lot of trouble. The less time they take over your court case and the fewer witnesses expenses they have to pay leaves them richer at your expense. 4. Unlike social workers, the Clerks in the court are nearly always very helpful if you file an application to get your children back yourself. Even if you are not used to court proceedings, at least you can call your own witnesses and if you think it will help you, always call the family doctor and the children themselves. 5. The social workers rely on winning their cases on “hearsay”. This means that they tell you what the children have said to them (sometimes on video) and what neighbours and other people have said without ever producing them in court. They say they do this in order to save the court’s time when in fact it is to stop you asking awkward questions which may show up any lies that have been told or pressure that has been put on young children to make them criticise their parents or parent. 6. If you represent yourself, the judge always gives you a lot of help. You also have the right to have a friend to sit by you and help you by suggesting questions that you should ask witnesses and making notes of their replies. This is called a McKenzie friend after the first person who established this right. Mention that you will require such a friend when you make your application to the court naming him or her if possible at the time. 7. If the children are old enough you should try to get them to telephone you reverse charges when no one is watching them so you can keep proper contact with them. Unfortunately most social workers, once the children are in care will do everything they can to break contact with you and will even stop you talking about the case with them during those rare closely supervised visits that they allow. You have the right to say what you like to your own children so do not let them stop you with a lot of bluff. 8. Grand parents and any other relations you can think of should be persuaded to apply for regular contact and to receive them for home visits. Such applications should be made to the court. If lawyers are used they should not come from the same county as the one from which the children were taken. 9. If you are a parent who is denied proper access by the other parent, try and arrange for the right to take your children for half the school holiday periods or at least once a year so that you have exclusive contact for a short but continuous period rather than frequent contact for only a few hours at a time. Keep applying to the court for this, however often and however many applications it takes to succeed. The point is that if you have the right to take them on holiday and you go to fetch them, you are not kidnapping them and they will probably be anxious to go with you. 10. Never shout and get angry with social workers. You can do much more harm to them by making repeated court applications for return of your children from care, refusing to sign adoption papers when this is proposed, and repeatedly asking for more contact for your children by court applications that you make yourself by filling in simple forms with the help of one of the Clerks at the court. Your one advantage over the social services is that you are concerned only with your own children while they have any number of cases to deal with so that if you keep dragging them into court, supported by solicitors and barristers who cost them money, they will give up and return your children as often as not. This is the tactic I employed for mothers who came to me for help when I was at Kent county council years ago and was known for helping parents recover their children from the clutches of social services. Until they changed the law so that only those with parental responsibility could apply to the court, I was able to represent these parents against my own county council and I never lost a case. These tactics worked better than any other so take no notice of lawyers and social workers who tell you to cooperate with “nice social workers because in fact you should make their life as difficult as possible by repeating court applications for return of your children , for more access, and for every other reason you can think of until they just get fed up. They have no right to stop you talking to your children about how much you want them back as the judge never restricts your conversation and only social services do this by bluffing you when they have no right to do so. I can only finish my advice by repeating that you and your relations should file repeated court actions by the dozen, as many and as often as possible. Good luck to all of you Ian Josephs ( Free Legal Advice ) ianjosephs@monaco377.com