Today’s main task - attempting to get some interest from a Mental Health Assessment Team. Definition: two approved social workers and a psychiatrist. There is a disturbed, violent and suicidal teenager. Her mother is a decent, caring and completely broken woman.
The hard eyes of the social-workers barely disguise a laziness and lack of compassion that is bordering on the criminal. They trot out all the usual territorial reasons why they can’t help. The checklist of circumstances which prevent them from dealing with the case is comprehensive.
1. She has consumed alcohol 2. She has committed a criminal offence 3. She has taken some illegal drugs.
(naturally she has done all three, bewildered and vulnerable as she is)
They want us to keep this poor, sick child in our cells all night. I have the utter cheek to suggest that for many reasons, a police cell might not be the best place for someone who is mentally ill. They look at me with scorn. Like I haven’t been doing this for years, like I don’t know what is going on. But I have the moral advantage because, of all the people present who are being paid to be here, I’m the only one who actually cares.
Thank God for a complete hero of an Asian doctor who is present. He agrees immediately to help, incurring visual wrath and contempt from his less well educated team-mates. He doesn’t care about their targets.
I’m so angry that I’m actually having trouble writing this.
A secure residential place is found for her. New medication is dispensed. Mother and daughter are reasonably happy and restored.
Sort of.
I grab the Asian doctor’s hand and pump it up and down, thanking to him profusely. He smiles sadly back at me. He provides a basic level of service that we should all expect and I act as if he has done me a massive favour. His slightly nervous smile is saying “how have we come to this?”
Later, when I’m on my own, I feel sick with it all. I have to walk around in the rain and suck in the air. I want to rush out into the High Street, jump into a taxi and demand “follow that car”.
When the cabbie objects, I will shout “shut up and drive”.
“I don’t know where I’m going, but I’ll know when I get there”.
(this post is dedicated to Mr Man’s Wife and to Mr Man himself)
For once, the IPCC might be on our side with what they are proposing. I always use the same over emotive stuff and it generally works. “you say this person is very very sick, and you want me to put them in a cage ?? OK, I will do so at your request, but doesnt the Disability Discrimination Act make that illegal ? But you must know that better than I do. Anyway, what was your name please so I can record you decision ?”
We recently had a couple of similar cases where the staff at the MH ward of the hospital wanted a Section 3 patient arrested for Section 47 assault on a member of staff. They honestly thought that the best place for a mentally ill person was a police cell, rather than a hospital’s mental health unit. Then again, as with so many other things, people don’t seem to think beyond the “police-have-taken-care-of-it-we-can-wash-our-hands-of-things” emotion.
I’ve been there – I know what you mean.
Is it an offense to punch a shit SW in the face?
(Having had to use the ‘When he stabs someone it’ll be your face on the front page of the Sun’ gambit before).
Mental health care in the UK is truly dire.
got to say ive seen this from both sides really…prior to joining the job i was a psychi nurse. not a job for the faint hearted ! (i actually joined the police as i wanted a safer job)
i take great delight now when a ASW (social worker) makes comments about my obvious lack of knowledge regarding mentally ill people…in informing them that for 9 years i worked with the very people they had spent 15 minutes assesing ! they normally ask to speak to another officer then.
in my force there is a constant battle with s/services…when someones arrested sec 136 it normally goes like this:
person arrested 136 as mad as a box of frogs found wandering streets with cuts etc saying hes had enough and going to kill someone and then himself….arrested and taken to local hospital….s/services contacted plus doc…
sometime in the next 6 hours they attend and spend 15 mins with person (who by this time is so mentally exhausted due to being so off there rocker) that they are deemed not sectionable…regardless of how the officers found them!
so not sectioned and hey presto released…guess what happens the next night?….yep same scenario all over again.
seems to me we fail on all parts here…poor mad person gets no help and society has mr mad from mad town wandering streets each night.
ok rant over…sorry subject close to my heart
actually not over….
on the flip side how many officers can relate to the job that comes in…
any mobile to attend 1 letsby ave…social worker at loc needs to section occupant and think he may get violent…s/worker there now wants officer straight away.
hmm how i long to be able to say…” yep be there in 6 hours ! “
Welcome to my world…….
Community mental health services truly suck
SD
Yesterday I went for a day out in Plymouth, shopping with my missis. As we came down from the car park, we saw a girl, probably late teens, sitting on the steps. She was plump – tubby, chavvish in appearance and seemed distressed about something, although no obvious signs of a fall or physical injury.
It went through my mind to stop and ask if she was OK . . . but then I realised that the risk was too high, so I kept moving. I’m ashamed of that now. Maybe her boyfriend had just dumped her. Perhaps her pimp had threatened her. Maybe she was in pain. Maybe she was mentally ill. Whatever, my decision was driven by fear that the local cop shop was not populated by the likes of Inspector Gadget. I didn’t want to find myself being fingerprinted, DNA tested and put on a charge of assault or rape or whatever else could be trumped up to meet the day’s target.
What do we have to do to staff the public sector in general with people like Gadget? We should appoint individuals with a sense of integrity, duty, social conscience etc. & leave them to get on with it. Whether as policemen, social workers, teachers or anything else, society needs to be ‘represented’ by such types, yet they seem to be in a dwindling minority. How to fix it? It isn’t “more money” – that just generates hordes of clipboard wielding jobsworths riding the gravy train. Ideas on a postcard please . . .
I hope she’s OK.
Not so long ago we took a woman to our local and extremely unhelpful mental health hospital after she broke down quite spectacularly in court whilst giving evidence. She wasn’t mental, she had just reached her own limit and unfortunatley got to the point where she couldn’t take any more and reacted as most people do when they get there.
The DI of the job was trying to get us to nick her under 136 under the impression that we could just turn up and drop her off and everything would be peachy – needless to say the last time he nicked someone under 136 it probably was that easy.
After talking to her and calming her down I managed to get her agreement to go to the hospital as a voluntary attendance which she was fine with as a couple of friends were going to go with her. As we took them down in the marked up van I briefed her very carefully on what to say to actually ensure that she would get at least seen, with a view to get some help. She was quite clearly a broken woman who needed help from the NHS that she had paid for her wntire working life. One of the most important things I told her was to not mention in any way shape or form that she had been taken there by Police, or even to mention that uniformed officers had turned up who were nothing to do with the job that she was at court with.
As experience showed, if the staff knew that we were involved they would refuse to take her as a voluntary, they would insist that we took her to a police station where the only place we have is a cell where they would make her wait at least 9 hours for the next duty team to attend and then assess, they would then take another 5-6 hours arranging a bed. Not at all the kind of help that this woman needed.
When we arrived we had to park up round the corner, I asked one of her friends to make sure that the staff didn’t know we had dropped them off and that we weren’t waiting round the corner for the nod from him that she was being accepted so we could shoot off.
The whole job took around 45 mins from us first turning up to leaving, compared to the last job we did by the numbers that was still ongoing when we had left from a 12 hour shift where he got picked up at 0730 that morning.
I’ve said it too many times, the care for mental health in this country is absolutely disgusting.
In response to IG,
Despair , sadness but most of all anger.
On the bright side, it was a ‘week day,’ am I right in assuming you wouldn’t have been able to get social services to the meeting at the weekend? So she would have been in the cells till Monday at the earliest?
Welcome to the caring sharing NHS.
Mental health services have some cracking staff who try hard to help people.
But unfortunately…its the lazy, weary, slack, cant be arsed, could,nt give a toss mental health workers, social workers, crisis teams that we seem to run into.
I think mental health services need to get their act together. We in the Ambulance Service are forever changing and trying to make things better, same in the Police. So why arnt the mental health services getting better?
Because it is staffed with people who dont give a flying f##k about others!!!
uphilldowndale,
People don’t get sick at night or at the weekends……. apparently.
Just found out our local PCT has no mechanism for reporting patients who are a ’cause for concern’ to either the SS or CMHT. Probably why we see so many of them, they don’t exist to some.
SD
I actually had a pretty good experience with the Mental Health Services in Bedfordshire, insofar as that’s actually possible when you’re the patient. It probably helps that I was interested only in taking my OWN life, had the sense to drop the pocketknife the minute it was clear they weren’t going to call it in as ‘Area Search No Trace’ even if I’d been serious about stabbing anyone (this on the day PC John Henry was buried and a five-minute walk from where he was stabbed; I was quite impressed actually), so wasn’t sectioned and was taken to the A&E of Luton and Dunstable Hospital. Saw a doctor inside of an hour, was admitted to the local psychiatric unit for a month and am now -allegedly- on the road to recovery.
I’m still wondering if that incident’s going to pop up on a blog somewhere.
The phrase “shit social worker” used by Tom is unnecessary ; IME (extensive) it is easier to point out the non-shit ones. There are a few, honest !
The problem James is the long term ones who are unlikely to recover (possibly) at all – they are expensive to do so they are just dumped out “in the community”.
There have (round here anyway) been a succession of murders and nasty assaults which have been dealt with by the Police and which really aren’t “crimes” per se – it’s not people getting in a fight and stabbing someone or stealing stuff because they want the money – they are just extremely mad and dangerous people behaving in a predictable manner. There’s no “deterrent” that will work – other than putting them somewhere they can’t hurt people.
The people who should be locked up are those who decided to abandon them to the community and those who manage/fund such.
In my experience Mental Health workers will do almost anything to avoid taking on a difficult case. My dear daughter suffered a complete breakdown…she reached her limits, crossed over and started disintegrating…it wasn’t a sudden thing…it just crept up on her (and us) catching us almost unaware…sadly, we didn’t catch on in time, she became abusive, self-harming, and almost as an afterthought as it were, she hit the bottle.
She wanted help…she was desperate…but all the agencies and social workers we visited refused to help, (usually without any type of formak assesment) on the basis that she was “border-line alcoholic rather than mentally ill”…what a cop out this bloody beancounting and “labelling”really is…yes she was developing an alcohol problem, but this was rather obviously a symptom rather than the cause of her problems.
She did eventually get sorted…but it all took a long time…far too long both for her and the family around her…in my opinion the average uninformed and life-inexperienced social worker needs to be sacked (if not strung up to the nearest tree to prevent them breeding)
It mightnt be a bad idea to replace them all with ferocious nosy old ladies who’ve been there, done it and come out the other side…then we might start going somewhere…but at the moment the system stinks, and the only good part of it sees to be the developing mental health advocacy service, which in my part of the world (the south east) can be reached here:-
http://www.w34u.com/userqnews/direct/annie.html
I cannot remember the last time I has any dealings with the SWD and/or people with mental health issues that left me walking away saying ‘ that turned out alright didn’t it.’
Normally, I will finish shift late after having to lock up someone with obvious mental health problems who I knew was not going to get the treatment that they really needed.
It is so sh*te and all so wrong.
Yes, I am sure there are good social workers out there, but why oh why do I meet all the crap ones ?
Without trying to upset the applecart of opinions on here but having just escaped from the last 3 years as custody Sgt I must say we must have more than our fair share of decent ASW’s and associated assessors. Our force doctors are spot on and are able to get the ASW’s out asap.
My only gripe with our force is that someone much higher than me decided that all S.136’s MUST come into custody to be assessed and not taken to the hospital in our own town! I think we were dictated to be staff at the hospital. This goes against guidance issued by the medical council and the wishes (common sense) of our doctors.
This state of affairs has lasted at least 19 years (my service) and the last place on Earth anyone with mental health issues needs to be is locked inside a police cell.
When we learn to say “NO…..WE REFUSE TO DO THAT!”
I had all of this on Sunday. Received a call “Any unit attend a social worker, sectioned a patient and he’s gone beserk”.
Myself and two colleagues turned up to an ‘independent living’ complex. It turns out the support staff wanted the chap sectioned and spoke with him about this and he wans’t best happy. No crisis teams, no social workers and no doctors.
The response I got was “Can you take him down the hospital for the crisis team?” “No” was the resounding reply “He’s in the care of social services, in a place of safety, call the crisis team and you sort it out.”
A few phone calls and a lot of cheek puffing later and the message came back to us as “The crisis team are refusing to come out because the Police are there, you MUST take him down the hospital.”
Anywho, I spoke with the ‘manager’ and advised him of the law and what it allows us to do in these cases. I came away with more promises and a bag full of frustration.
The patient all this time is quite happily chatting to my colleagues and informing them that today he is god, the devil has been telling him to kill people.
To cut a long story short…. it was only when I told the crisis team that we were leaving if they weren’t coming out, as the gentleman was already in the care of SS there was no real need for the Police to be here. Low and behold within half an hour they were there.
I think we need to start placing the emphasis and responsibility back on SS, force their hand & make them take on the work they’re being paid for.
In twelve years I have not met a social worker that I like. Useless bunch of touchy feely, work shy w@nkers. They make me mad.
I think the main problem is a lock of training/knowledge on our part, resulting in us being dictated to by social services and us not telling them what’s going to happen, as in Stinkys example above.
Stinky; am I right in thinking that the ‘independent living complex’ isn’t a public place?
Knowledge is power…
Yup, read the page and near enough every word rings authentically, genuinely, bone deep true. It won’t get better but it is good to let off steam.
Don’t know if anyone else gets Private Eye, last issue, the social worker talking over a desk to ASBO Jnr in his council stripes trackie “THEY DON’T CALL US CHILDREN’S SOCIAL WORKERS ANY MORE. THEY’VE RE-NAMED US SCUM WHISPERERS.” It made me laugh but maybe you had to be there.
Nightjack’s 3rd law of policing and i say it often enough to risk being identified by this is as follows
“THERE IS NO SITUATION SO BAD, MESSED UP, UGLY, TRAGIC, WRONG OR DANGEROUS THAT IT CANNOT BE MADE WORSE BY ADDING A SOCIAL WORKER TO THE MIX”
Wish I could say I have ever been proved wrong but I get the impression that they are mostly dispirited and disinterested. I do believe that disillusionment sets in round about first contact with the underclass when they realise they whilst they believed that they signed up to change the world, the truth is that they now have a career of being used and abused and lied to by every single client.
It can’t help that the same dead eyed waster clients are also keeping a main eye to any chance for more free money.
In my county A&E at a hospital is not deemed ‘ a safe place ‘ by the Hospitals trust as it is accessible by the public so we have to take S.136 to cells. What a joke that is!
On the control room side, we just love calling EDT out of hours.
You can almost guarentee there is some reason why they cannot help. I have found the only way to get anywhere is to use the line
“Can I have your name to add to the incident log so if it does go wrong and the person commits suicide then at the inquest they will know the name of the person who refused to help”
Almost guarantees that the job will get bumped up the line a bit.
The shame is that most of the time it is their lack of resources that means they cannot help in the way they would like to.
The other one that makes me laugh (cry?) is when they say a person has been assessed and they are not mentally ill, they have a personality disorder. I may be wrong but it seems to me the only difference is that you can treat one but not the other which means they get no help whatsoever.
Why do we bother: The independent living complex is the chaps home. Therefore a place of safety provided by social services. He didn’t want to kill himself and was happy enough in his own world. It amazed me as to how much they didn’t know about the mental health act.
In the end we said we’d stay to secure an assessment under s2 MHA, however if the crisis team weren’t coming out, then we weren’t staying as they obviously weren’t bothered and we’d fulfilled our duty by turning up in the first place.
I think they were a little surprised by a cop saying no to them.
I can understand the lack of resources, most of us can. What really grips my sh!t is that you can call the crisis teamat 1530, they faff around for an hour and half and then go home at 5pm having done absolutely nothing to help.
That’s not a lack of resources, that’s bone idleness. With so many people, not just Police, with a poor experience of these people, we can’t all be wrong.
This sadly seems to be more of a natoinal trend than a local one. Waiting hours for any sort of response from any sort of “social” worker. They usually turn up, tell anyone who cares that there is little that they can do and promptly bugger off back to the office where they can have a cup of coffee and a gossip with their ten other mates who have bigger cricket bats than I’ll ever have.
I’ve lost count of the number of times Social Services have failed in their jobs. From children in completley inappropriate homes who were PPO’d (Police Protection Order) and simply sent back to their home, to mentally ill people held in Police Cells for 3 days because there isn’t anywhere for them.
What I find incredible is that a Police Station, or more specifically, Police Cells, are classed as a place of safety for some of these individuals. They’ve done nothing criminal, they’re simply ill. I’ve now become so disgruntled, I just take anyone mentally ill to the local mental health hospital, where I’m promptly told “this isn’t a place of safety”. “Too late for that” I say as our mentally ill friend is already out of the car and at the desk.
I did hear that there is an issue surronding the sectioning of MH patients. Once sectioned they have to provide a bed……. No bed space = no section.
For all those that agree to attend as voluntry patients there is no obligation on the part of the MH team to provide a bed, therefore when the patient absconds they can simply fill the bed with the next sick person as, after all the previous occupant must have been cured as they no longer wished to be there!!
With the sectioned patient that has weekend leave or who does a runner, the bed is blocked…..
As for the Police cell not being a place of safety I agree but who gets to sit in the place of safety for hours waiting for the assessment…… the Police. The cell block is safer for us.
I believe that it is time for the Government to implement the equivalent of PACE or something similar on the medical profession and social services.
This then might concentrate the minds of an ASW when they realise that they are fully accountable for their actions. Same as Doctors’. How many times is the custody process slowed down when a request for the ‘On call GP’ is made with the response ‘ I’m at my surgery at the moment I’ll be there in 2, 3 or 4 hours’.
Every police officer that I work with knows full well that that social services and the mental health service use the police as a dumping ground for their issues as the , police service, rightly, cannot say no.
It is also well know that a social worker, not all, but it does happen from my experience will tell their client ‘Don’t call us over the weekend’ for example but then add ‘call the police’. I have been told this numerous times over the years’ by people at the weekend who have a social worker.
There are some Government department whose ‘ care in the community’ policy only applies Monday to Friday.
This is my situation, the local community health team have a woory about a female in my area so decide to conduct a sec135 MHA assessment at her home but she doesnt let them inside so they walk away and send us intel that if she comes to light and fits our 136MHA that we should detain and take her to place of safety for assesment.
part two – I find her with a hammer in a public place and she has just damaged two properties in the town centre with the hammer. I arrest for criminal damage and inform the custody sergeant all that has been said and done along with the intel so that we can start with the mental health assessment.
I find out she has been into the two locations previously numerous times and just screams and shouts abuse at them but they had never reported it!!!!
I come back in the next day and our Doc stated she was fit for interview and she was given a caution for £600-00 pounds of damage!!!
part three – I find her walking the street f-ing and blinding and detain her 136 and she starts talking about her husband who she hasnt seen for 5yrs.
I ask her “where was he when you last saw him”
she replied “In a coffin, and he hasnt phoned or written since and he hasnt called me, I go out looking for him everyday”.
She wants to use the toilet and we are not far from her house and my transport is 20mins away so I walk her back find inside the word FUCK written on a post it note on the living room cupboard, I ask her why its there and she states its not a bad word it stands for
Friendship, Charity and Kindness, I cant remember what the U stood for!!
I aslo found paperwork on the side in the open with about thirty number plates written down
So I take her straight to the mental health team and not custody and let them deal with her.
part four – I get a phone call the next day and its the MH team – “We havent kept her in we dont believe she is a danger there is a problem but this will be dealt with by her GP and some medication”.
“WELL DONE!!” I said “When she smashes the staff members head in with a hammer I will quote what you have said to the local paper is that okay?”
I put the phone down and added that to our intel on this lady. Job Done??????
Dear Gadget,
Time and time again I got all that cr@p from ASWs. Used to get all the reasons to avoid doing the job they are paid for while partners/family were imploring me to help. Give CPNs Sectioning powers, at least we understand “Duty of Care”!
Anger is a good sign. When you stop getting angry you just get depressed. Thank goodness for the Asian doctor eh? There are a few rare gems in the Mental Health System, and thankfully I’ve met some of them – otherwise I would have lost my own mind years ago.
Thank you for dedicating this post to us Gadget. I’m very touched.
TOTALLY off blog. Thank you I.G. for posting the comment I Made on Whichendbites’ blog. (Your previous entry) Never visited his site before, but his writing on the loss of his partner touched me to the core.
He still hasn’t posted. I understand why, I really do. Why am I so worried about a bloke I’ve never met? I dunno, but I am.
Someone reading this knows who he is. Is he OK?
I am not a creepy stalker, just an ‘in the job’ working mum juggling with the usual s**t,… job, kids, pets, bills, MOT failure, SMT……
Thanks for writing about the subject of social workers Inspector Gadget, I know they are a regular problem for you but I don’t think the wider public realise yet quite how criminally lazy and incompetent they are as a whole profession yet. Thank goodness for that doctor. Although I should be ‘under the care of’ physical disability social workers I’ve decided that I feel far safer and less vulnerable without a social worker.
Bendy Girl
My attitude is that I’ll be quite happy to accept there are some decent social workers out there when I finally meet one, until then I’ll go by proven experience.
Tom, punching a social worker in the face isn’t a crime, it’s a public service
Not on topic , but the blue link in the post by ex-CPN starts word to cr@p an e-mail account, what is this all about ? apart from telling the person your personal e-mail address ? am I missing something ? thats enough question marks .
its because they used the @ symbol instead of an ‘a’ so the weblink thinks its an email address when it actually isn’t, it doesn’t link to anything.
It has always, well for the last 30 years, amazed me how uncaring social workers actually are. As ever your blog has hit the nail on the head.
Without wishing to rain on anyone’s parade it does sadden me that some of the comments suggest hitting ASW’s, shit or otherwise. Substitute police officer/ paramedic/ staff nurse and it amounts to the same thing, assaulting another person.
There is no excuse for a crap service and the ASW should have looked at alternatives to sectioning, which, given the circumstances of alcohol and drugs consumed would rule out the use of the MH Act. However, the safety of the girl and of her mother may possibly explain why the ASW suggested the police cells overnight. Without knowing the age of the girl (Under 16?) and her history, I am unsure as to why the ASW did not look for alternatives.
The MH Act is there to protect the patient and the public at large and, like most legislation is not perfect. If it was used to assess and detain everyone who is drunk or using drugs the system would fall apart more quickly than it already is. A new act is coming in and CPN’s, amongst others, will take on the powers of ASW’s. However, place that against further bed and ward closures and the govt’s desire for more care in the community . Also against the fact that 24 hour drinking, cheap and accessible alcohol and drugs, ‘my rights not my responsibility’ attitudes from many and it is those services such as the police, A&E, paramedics, etc…who have to intervene.
I work as a CPN in a crisis team and happily I have discovered it is one of the better teams. We do go out 24/7 and we do assess people who are in the midst of a mental health crisis and are incapacitated by drink/ drugs. There have been occasions where someone is drunk and threatening to kill themselves. It doesn’t immediately mean they should be locked up as ‘mad’. We do err on the side of caution and go the extra mile for people and that can mean several hours working with the patient and carers, even at 2 am. But someone who is drunk can sober up in the morning whereas someone with schizophrenia may sober up but they still have the illness. Every area has it’s small core of people who frequently get off their face, self harm or threaten to self harm and require the attention of services. Each time it happens we are involved and attempt to resolve the situation. Sadly, for some of these people we, the police and other agencies are the only ‘friends’ they may have and trust because no one else wants to know.
As for requesting police bring someone to A&E or accompany us to a house…colleagues of mine have been assaulted, held hostage, robbed or threatened. Oddly enough, the person is often drunk or has taken drugs or just doesn’t care and sees us as the representatives of whatever has angered them.
The two ASW’s on my team are excellent and I cannot speak too highly of them. I have worked with crap social workers, nurses, doctors…I have also experienced crap police, paramedics, vicars. Every profession has the workshy and useless but it doesn’t excuse encouragemnet to hit people. Dare I say it…I have also worked with crap patients but I have had to maintain a professional attitude and provide the care they have required at that time.
I’ve written a book so I’ll leave it at that but I will say that experience counts as one of your respondents has commented. With 22 years behind me I do have to look at some of the newbies coming in and sadly watch as enthusiasm bangs heads with reality. Good blog by the way.
[...] you imagine what happens when there are two offenders, or if it’s slightly more complicated than the incident [...]
I have visited your site 299-times
I completely endorse the comments made by Delcatto at 4.12pm. I am a secondary care CPN working in a CMHT. It’s hard for me to add to anything Delcatto has said beyond nail on head has been hit….
I have visited your site 480-times
Had a strange similar experience having to issue a Harrassment Warning to an estranged father of three, whose wife had claimed she was petrified of him. He was middle class mental health social worker, no history of DV and prima facia no intelligence but reports from ex-wife and new husband. She claims unwanted phone calls that cause her distress. She argues children do not want contact with their aggressive father. He turns up at her house once in six months asking to see his children (since separation) – she shuts door in his face – he bangs on it – we send him home in tears. Suggested he contact Social Services about his concerns for children (one picked up drunk at railway station, later broke her leg whilst under influence, and reported for criminal damage trashing new marital home after the remarriage!). He was underwhelmed by the interest and branded according to reports from ex-wife.
She latterly seems to have frustrated all contact, refusing to answer phone calls, letters etc etc. He is stupid not using legal process, but claims it takes too long and he can’t afford it after debt and divorce. Two years on, two of the three children live with him and he is making a new life downunder. He came to my notice again…
He contacted me for informal advice. He was petrified that a formal warning and potential PNC record would prejudice his ‘good character’ assessment, stopping him from following through his plans. makes me wonder who is the ‘harrasser’ here?!
I never gave the Father’s For Justice crowd much credit, but seeing the real experience unfold over a time (and not for the first time), makes me wonder about how crude and blunt we sometimes act in domestic situations. We need something that works and social services is clearly not that. Strangely, also later learn that the complainant had history of demonising her mother albeit in different circumstances.
Social justice; we should lower our expectation and find another agency to rise to the challenge.