If Children’s Services become involved with your child or grandchild we understand you are likely to be worried and need someone independent to talk to and give you specialist advice. Our solicitors can help.
Children’s Services can become involved with families for a lot of different reasons; we often speak to parents whose families have been a subject of an anonymous tip off, a referral from the police after they’ve been called out following an incident where children were present, concerns raised at school by a health visitor or nurse. It is really important that you get specialist legal advice as soon as social services become involved with your family.
Our solicitors will listen to what you are going through and provide you with advice about what children services can, and cannot do, in relation to your children.
What do Children Services do?
One of the things we are frequently asked by worried parents is whether Children Services can take away their children.
It is important that you realise that social workers do not have this power and it is only a judge sitting in the family court that can make a court order to remove children. The police also have the power to protect children in certain situations and can remove them under police protection.
A social worker cannot take your children unless they have a court order or you agree.
Children Services are one of the departments at the local authority. They were set up to support families and safeguard the children that live within the local authority area. An example of this would be children that live in Bolton would come under the local authority area of Bolton Council, children who live in Manchester would come under the local authority area of Manchester City Council
The way that a children’s service department might support families and safeguard children will depend on the different families that children services work with and the individual problems they are facing. Children’s Services will start working with a family with the intention of supporting them so that children can remain at home, it is for this reason that we will always encourage parents to try and work openly and honestly with social services.
It is also why it is so important to get legal advice as soon as possible so that if difficulties arise you already have a solicitor who knows about your circumstances in place to provide you with quick, individual advice
The local authority has a number of different duties to children who live within their area; one of the main duties is to provide services for children in need, their families and others. This includes making sure that children are safe in their family home and also promoting the welfare of children in need. The local authority supports families to bring up their own children unless they consider that this might be damaging to a child’s welfare or safety.
There are different ways in which the local authority might be involved with children depending on what they are concerned about:
- Child in Need
- Child protection
- Pre proceedings process
- Applying to court for acareor supervision order
Our specialist care team are only a call away, if you are worried about social workers becoming involved with your family contact us for a confidential chat.
