It maybe however that decisions made are not not always sound or necessarily in the best interest of the child.
If the Local Authority (LA) has a full care order then they have parental responsibility and must make decisions regarding contact,
but must act in the best interest of the child. In practice greater importance is often placed on contact with parents, and
former carers are often not given due consideration and therefore marginalized. The loss to the child can be considerable
as knowledge gained through time spent living with the child day by day and the attachment formed during that time are not valued
or respected.
These are some of the arguments that we are aware of which are put forward by social services:
- The child needs time to settle in their new placement.
- Seeing you will unsettle/disturb the child.
- the issue of contact had been passed to the CAMHS team (effectively passing the buck and delaying decisions!)
- When contact happened it disturbed the child so contact has been stopped.
- It will disrupt the placement or
- The blanket and non-specific statement that it is not in the child’s best interest.
Notice that the child's wishes do not figure in any of these arguments and there are known cases where the child's wish to have contact has been overuled or ignored.
Of course one cannot generalise and say that none of these arguments are ever justified, but where
foster cares are involved there does appear to discrimination and contact is often refused on questionable grounds.
