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I have been married to my current partner for 3 years now, at the time we got together her two oldest children by her ex werent having any contact with their biological father. Her oldest daughter who was then 8 had made allegations of a sexual nature against her biological father when she was just 3yrs old.
He had fought my wife for contact for 5 years in court and after many different attempts by CAFCASS and the court to force some form of contact and even a physocioligal evaluation of my wife (cos she was accused of brainwashing) the court eventially ruled no direct contact at this time (jan 2007) however the judge apparently did say that if my wifes oldest eventually decided she wanted contact with her father or if he wished to return to court in a yrs to come and seek contact it could be re assesed.
There was no prosectuion of my wifes ex husband, no caution, no convictions.
In April 2007 my wife had to have emergency surgery - and her ex found out and sent a family member to the door to ask if we needed any shopping doing etc.
At which point the oldest child (the one who made the allegations) was aware that her biological father was in the car outside and asked if she could see him. Me and my wife discussed this request and agreed to allow contact on the understanding that we supervise.
contact was then established on a monthly basis at 1st for about 6mths then fortnightly for about 18mths then weekly. he has now been having contact for the last 3 years with no problems arrising at all. With both my wife and myself present each time.
Social services have been sent a refereal about this contact as a result of an investigation into wether her oldest son (same dad ) has autism (they enquired as to situation with his father and my wife told them the truth).
social services are now saying no contact at all until a core assesment and other evaluations/assesments have took place on both my past/present and understanding of parenting etc and also that of my wife.
Their father has to undergo a seperate series of assesments.
They will not explain to the children or to my wifes ex this was left to my wife to do.
The children have become distressed knowing they may not be able to see him for at least a period of 7 weeks or so.
My wife has had to sign an agreement between herself and the local authority saying she will not let any contact take place and if she breaches this they will look at child protection issues and relevant court orders to safe guard the children in question.
ANY ADVICE ?
I have to say that this is an unusual situation on here, in that you and your wife are trying to encourage contact, and it's being prevented. I understand that social services have your step-daughters safety as their main concern, which is there prime responsibility after all, but I'm surprised that they aren't allowing contact. This does make me wonder whether they have concerns about his behaviour currently, and not just what has gone on in the past. I would suggest that you have a word with social services to see if they would be amenable to supervised contact (local contact centre) where the supervision is by someone independant from the whole situation - I would have thought that they may want this anyway so that contact can be assessed, so perhaps they could be persuaded to do this now.
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