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Sue James, Legal Services.
Hi, Sue, it's Dave Lee.
Thanks for making the time to talk to me.
I wanted to talk to you about the Evans family.
I've been meaning to catch up with you about these for some time now
because I think we've come to a point
where we want to consider taking some slightly more serious action
and have a look at potential legal intervention.
Okay, tell me about the case.
Well, we've known them for about five years
and over that time there's been a number of safeguarding plans
on and off, really, over that time.
There's only two children in the household at the moment.
There's Shireen who I think is 12 and her brother, Lewis, is 10.
There was an older brother, Liam, but he's left home now.
He's out of the property.
And I think probably our feeling as a team is that with hindsight
we should really have approached you and Legal Services
for some advice on this sooner.
So why didn't you?
Well, in our view the children have been suffering from neglect for years
but I think every time we escalate things,
then things seem to improve for a while,
particularly when they're made subject to safeguarding plans.
Things get better but only really until they've improved enough
for de-registration.
Then after that things deteriorate again quite quickly.
You say neglect. What do you mean?
The parents, Claire and Darren,
they've got quite a volatile relationship
and we've had some concerns about substance and alcohol misuse.
And also the children have missed quite a lot of school.
There seems to be very poor boundaries
and also a very poor general day-to-day routine with them.
The school will often report
that they don't appear to have regular meal times
and they're often quite hungry and quite unkempt,
quite dirty when they're in school.
And sometimes the school have described the children
as quite miserable.
Alongside that there's also some kind of medical concerns.
We've had head lice on a regular basis, scabies,
and the parents really haven't responded to that
or treated those as quickly as we would have liked them to do.
So that's been a concern.
People are also concerned about the lack of peer involvement
that the children have.
They're not generally involved in after-school activities,
they're not very well socially integrated
and I think that's caused people concern, as well.
Before we can make a decision whether or not to instigate proceedings
we need to be clear whether the children are suffering
or likely to suffer significant harm.
This is the threshold that we're working with.
Yeah, I think that they are suffering significant harm.
Okay, but we also need to be mindful of the presumption of no order.
You would need to satisfy the court that only a care order
will secure the children's welfare,
and be prepared to show how this fits with your future care plans
for Shireen and Lewis.
I understand that and having tried all of those other approaches
I do think that we're coming to the conclusion
that probably a care order is the only way forward here.
Well, then, we will need to evidence this to the court.
Has a social worker kept a chronology detailing the concerns?
So, for example, could we evidence to the court
how much school has been missed?
How many times the children have presented at the school as hungry?
Yeah, I think that we could.
The social worker in this case
has obviously kept very comprehensive records.
So I would say that we'd be able
to pull that kind of chronology together quite easily.
And I think that would demonstrate that clear pattern of improvement
and then regression.
And aside from the factual evidence, time, dates, and so on,
do you think that we could show
the impact of all this on the children?
How this affects them.
Do we have Cahms reports, school reports?
Information from other agencies?
Yeah, I'm sure we've got that type of information.
That won't be a problem.
If the social worker isn't already doing this,
she needs to record discussions with Shireen and Lewis
and make sure that she captures their perspective on this.
That's really helpful.
We've got a meeting with all of the other agencies in the case
that's coming up soon
so obviously I want to get their views on that, as well
and make sure that we're all in agreement.
It's also important to think about the type of evidence
we might want to present to the court
to demonstrate how Social Services and other agencies
have tried to support the family.
Types of intervention, different approaches, for example.
And the parents' responses to them
and the cycle of improvement and regression.
Yeah, we'd have all of that information in the case files.
I suppose we'd be looking for some kind of help and advice from you
about the best way to present that.
I suggest that you have your multi-agency meeting
to get the views of other agencies, too.
I would also suggest that you share your concerns with Claire
and Darren, too,
explaining that you are considering instigating care proceedings.
So they appreciate how serious the situation for their children
this has become.
Well, it probably would result in an improvement for a while.
Yes, it might, but if the improvement isn't sustained
we need clear evidence to show what the problems are.
The patterns, what we've attempted to do to improve things
and the unacceptable impact on the children.
Okay, we understand that. That's fine.
I would suggest that we need to set up a legal planning meeting for you,
me and the social worker to discuss this case in more detail.
We can talk through the legal options
but I will also talk you through how the information in your case file
can be used as evidence,
and the type of information that we will need
if we decide to instigate proceedings.
Okay, thanks, yeah. That will be really useful. Thank you, Sue.