Preface
For 14 years, I’ve honed my technical skills, supporting clients ranging from small businesses to international enterprise with web infrastructure, cybersecurity, custom software, and safety critical systems. My diverse clientele includes internationally acclaimed music artists and hoteliers, community radio and media personalities, suppliers to high street and luxury brands like H&M, Topshop, Jaguar, Aston Martin and Harrods as well as Political parties and SMEs. Along the way, I've picked up multiple professional certifications and memberships, a Computer Science degree and delivered I.T Skills training to people over-50 looking to re-enter the workplace with digital skills fit for the present day.
I've also gained an Access to HE in Law, and extensive experience representing myself in courts of law - namely the family court. Since 2013, I've represented myself across multiple sets of proceedings, each lasting multiple hearings. Often, these included reports from CAFCASS or Safeguarding authorities.
Unfortunately, due to prohibitions and restrictions within court orders, I'm not able to provide much more context to the circumstances, or I risk breaching those orders which may ultimately lead to criminal punishment. Solicitors I've spoken to over the years tell me this is to "protect the children" and "keep family matters private" which are both perfectly valid reasons, but I do feel we need more transparency about family courts and the way decisions are reached because at present, the rationale varies widely and there is very little consistency from any court or safeguarding agency across the country. This is not aided by the fact that many people simply do not understand the processes which leads to false information and conspiracy theories being spread.
With all that said, it's fair to say that over the years, I became the stereotypical, cliché and often ridiculed "single dad" which has heavily influenced my interests and view of the world whilst allowing me to develop significant knowledge and experience of the British legal and policing systems, domestic abuse and children's safeguarding processes not to mention data protection and child access rights.
All of this knowledge was put to use when I did my BSc (Hons) in Computer Science where I created an application for families in conflict which was a finalist in the "Big Ideas" Competition run by the University of Hull Student Startup / Business Support Service, but was also supported by Refuge founder Erin Pizzey and Pepperell's Solicitors. Parentull, the name of the dissertation project, also resulted in meetings with business titans such as David Kilburn CBE.
There isn't time to discuss all of that here though, so if you want to read more about Parentull, feel free to read my dissertation.
Leaving the meeting with David Kilburn CBE
It is precisely this experience and knowledge which led to me being invited to join the Expert By Experience programme run by North Yorkshire Council by the Head of Safeguarding in turn leading to attending the Stronger Relationships Conference. Through this article, I hope to share the knowledge gained at the conference which brought together social workers, police, domestic abuse workers, health workers, safeguarding managers, solicitors and academics to share knowledge and improve co-ordination efforts around working inclusively with fathers, building better relationships with service users and between family members as well as parental conflict.
Arrival and Initial Thoughts
It was "working more inclusively with fathers" which sold me on attending. This had been a point which raised my blood pressure year on year. A number of things contributed to this including but not limited to:
- Social workers dismissing my views and concerns.
- Social workers treating me as a second class parent and telling me that I had to abide by my ex-partners rules to maintain contact.
- Social workers coming into the case and changing court ordered contact arrangements without fully reading the case files, or having the courtesy to speak to me to obtain my views first; despite speaking to my ex-partner.
- Independent Reviewing Officers banning me from a meeting, because of the actions of another person which the social worker had attributed to me.
These sorts of actions not only escalated conflict, but drove mistrust of social workers and authorities all whilst creating waves of disharmony amongst "X" and I, but also our children. I'd heard down the grapevine that these sorts of actions were happening across the country as well, so if there was a chance that authorities were changing their ways, it was absolutely worth being part of that change.
When I arrived, the only other man in the room was a keynote speaker from Bristol University, Jon Symonds. Jon was delivering the talk on how to work inclusively with fathers.
This meant that there was only two men in attendance - Jon, the speaker, and me. All other professionals attending were female. I don't say that entirely negatively but I do think it demonstrates where some of the issues might be coming from - after all, it stands to reason that if safeguarding, policing, domestic abuse and other such staff are majority female, the masculine will not be properly represented and will perhaps always be seen as a threat.
Despite the gender imbalance, I was warmly welcomed and met a lot of professionals that I'd spoken with previously. After a bit of chat, it was down to business.
Lynda Rushton - Department of Work and Pensions
Lynda was invited to talk after a brief introduction from the chair about the running of events and some updates/news.
Lynda said that "Parental Conflict" is being embedded into government policy including early help but there are issues, such as data systems not being linked up and some areas still working in "silos". She also said that it was important that workers assessed whether parental conflict was relevant because they are potentially missing out on £800 per family if this is the case.
One of the other points she raised was that there was a need to further embed parental conflict into plans/strategies. I noted how that might work with VAWG strategies because it seems like there is a discrepancy between how allegations are treated based on gender, and that does seem to be a particular issues where the Police/CPS are concerned, even when it could just be disgruntled parents having a go at each other.
Incidentally, I have been on the end of decisions by the police and cps which escalated parental conflict instead of de-escalated, as I know lots of other fathers have, simply for sending letters about child matters. I have yet to hear any mother tell me she has been arrested, or charged, for writing to the father of her children pressing her maternal rights. Unfortunately, it does now seem to be quite common advice and practice to make harassment allegations when women don't want to engage. I don't think it's completely women's fault, LASPO opened the floodgates for this sort of nonsense because the government withdrew legal aid for all whilst leaving a pathway open which required having an ex-partner arrested to meet evidential criteria for legal aid and harassment is a very, very easy claim. But the question remains is it harassment or parental conflict?
I don't think this will be helped by the fact that the Met Commissioner has suggested that VAWG should be treated as akin to terrorism.
All that said, I was happy to hear that there was an effort being made to address the underlying problem of parental conflict and that professionals understood the impacts on children which were mentioned briefly in Lynda's talk but expanded on more in Caroline Porters talk.
Caroline Porter - Foxstone Training
Caroline spoke about what exactly parental conflict was, giving definitions and examples. For example, she said that it sits below domestic abuse because it's more of a tit-for-tat and lack of trust and communication rather than where the relationship has an imbalance of power or controlling elements.
Caroline also said that action plans didn't currently include or reference parental conflict, and historically it had been the case for authorities to simply say "speak to solicitors" (If only I had a quid for every time I got a response telling me to do that!). More positively, there's a Stronger Relationships Toolkit which can now be used to help identify conflict and start conversations. It includes tools to encourage reflection and tips for improving communication. What I found particularly good was that it focused parents on how their arguments / conflict was harming the child and getting them caught in the middle. This led to how children might feel using a variety of symbolisation - e.g. Messenger, Spy, Judge and "weather" representations for expressing their emotions. It was shown via anonymised drawings that children had expressed rainy/thundery drawings when parents were arguing and they felt caught in the middle and sunny drawings when parents were happy.
Ultimately, there had been some evaluation of the toolkit and it had led to one example from North Yorkshire where a family had been able to leave the service after the parents resolved their differences and conflict, but there was consensus that more consistent data collection was needed, alongside specialist training for separated parents and input from managers.
Roopen Kalirai - Irwin Mitchell
Roopen is a junior solicitor and gave a run down of all the legal routes and some updates on the law. The most notable being that there are changes coming to mediation in April which means that instead of being a tick box, mediation will now be more meaningful and if a parent refuses to mediate without a good reason (e.g. DA/DV), it could negatively impact them later at court. This might be, for example, being sent for community service for wasting court time. There has been a consensus for some years now that courts want parents to work together instead of consistently coming back to court and fighting.
Roopen also mentioned that Local Authorities can be requested to complete section 7 reports, which I wasn't aware of previously but apparently when applying to court you can ask for the local authority to complete a report instead of cafcass. Helpful knowledge.
Cam - RPC
Cam spoke about the "Parenting Apart Programme" which helps parents understand the impact of their conflict on their child/ren, and how to reduce it. She spoke about the neurological damage and stress to children and long term impacts, and how reducing childhood trauma leads to better outcomes in education, relationships, behaviour etc.
There was an example given about the child/ren becoming trapped by parental conflict, e.g. Parent A and Parent B are triangulating onto the child - "If I'm with Mum, Dad won't be happy", "If I'm with Dad, Mum won't be happy". "If I tell Mum x, y or z about Dad, she will get angry." "If I tell Dad x, y or z about Mum, he will get angry". This is referred to as "No mans land" by workers and some examples of how to reduce this anxiety in children were given as being nice about your ex and your childs contact with them so they don't feel caught in the middle, and proactively offering to help get sorted for contact, and just being pleasant with your ex-partner for the few minutes it takes to handover.
There's a website Reducingparentalconflict.ef.org.uk for the programme.
Jon Symonds
Jon went through how workers could improve their communication with fathers using "opening gambits". He also gave three possible outcomes as to how that might end up - mutual distrust and no communication, passive communication or mutual trust and lots of communication. Whilst Jon was explaining that, I was sat at the back of the conference where I'd plonked myself supressing a giggle because I've experienced each of these scenarios with a social worker who started out on very hostile terms and ultimately, ended up becoming a pen-pal/adhoc counsellor for 2~ years after the case closed.
It might sound daft, but Jon's talk really was just asking for professionals to include men and consider whether their communication is actually hostile, or combative/abusive or if there's a wider reason behind what's happening - as happens with women already. Effectively, asking for equality.
Lunch
After the talks, we had lunch and I managed to speak to Jon for a little bit about the work I'd done on my dissertation and agreed to share my dissertation work with him. I'm not sure where it'll lead, but who knows!
After lunch, we started the workshop phase of the conference. This was interesting as I was placed in a group with the principle social worker for North Yorkshire, a lady from Health and three coppers - a retired detective who had spent most of her career working in DA cases and two ladies who currently work on DA cases.
Workshop 1: Working Inclusively with Fathers
The first workshop was with Jon and he went through examples of audio recordings where fathers had handed off calls from workers to their partners or not had very good engagement from authorities. There was some good reflection from the group about how the calls could be improved and what feedback could be given to police, social workers and health workers on how to include dads. I also shared an example of why early on, I hadn't participated with social services and it wasn't necessarily because the worker was bad or I didn't feel comfortable, but because I'd been lied to by ex, so when I was eventually contacted by a social worker and heard what she had to say, I needed space and time to calm down and collect my thoughts before we continued the conversation.
I didn't really contribute much else, but I was impressed with how on the ball the ladies were in picking out the details of the conversations - even things I wouldn't have considered, such as lengths of pauses and the lack of response from a professional.
Workshop 2: Parental Conflict
The second workshop was with Caroline Porter who fielded some questions from the DA Officers about the definition of Parental Conflict. Their concern was that it might lead to confusion and cases being written off as "just parental conflict". That was a fair point which I thought was well put across with valid examples, but Caroline had some helpful graphics on her power point showing where the definition changes from Parental Conflict to Domestic Abuse. There is a grey area in the middle but it's possible to distinguish based on the relationship dynamics and power imbalances. She said it basically boils down to if the couple are "equal" in the relationship - if they are, it's conflict. If not, it's abuse.
What I found most interesting about this workshop was the open discussion about the fact that police know more often than not when a DA complaint is false, but they feel compelled to follow it through because they get penalised for raising it as false even in the face of evidence. As the only bloke sat in the room at the time, that was extremely powerful to hear given the rhetoric around toxic masculinity, VAWG and so on. I think it also shows that the data and stats being banded about re: domestic abuse is flawed because it's being inflated by women who make false allegations and these are subsequently recorded by professionals for fear of reprisals.
Harkening back to LASPO, I noticed myself when I did my dissertation that applications for non-molestation orders rose dramatically after its introduction despite DA/DV being on a downward trend overall because, as the police said during the workshop - "they want legal aid".
Towards the end of the workshop, all three police said they wanted to hear more personal experiences because it helps inform their strategies and policies but it's also how they learn themselves. Concluding that workshop, the retired detective and I agreed that it would be good to have a chat about potential collaboration.
Conclusion
All that was left was for the conference to conclude, so a short speech was given in the main hall and then everyone was off. I ended up taking a walk back into the centre of Harrogate and heading straight for the coffee shop.
Would I recommend attending any future conferences or getting involved as an EBE? Absolutely! They're very informative and give pause for thought and reflection on how your children might be feeling, but also give insight into how professionals and the system actually work which is always a good thing. I also think it's useful to be able to share insights to professionals, and that doesn't always have to be negative - for example, I absolutely praise certain professionals for their efforts over the years because just by listening and acknowledging, it led to reflection and change on my behalf. That's extremely powerful and positive. I also think it's positive that we're headed away from the "Seek legal advice" culture because that was soul crushing, every. single. time
I'm also extremely glad to see that authorities are looking to build bridges with Men and Fathers and this is being received positively by professionals and taken forward for implementation across all levels. That doesn't mean however that men should be complacent. I think that more men should get involved in the social sectors - become mentors, teachers, social workers, community leaders and so on.
Who knows where this will lead, but for now, I'm enjoying learning and using my Expertise gained by Experience for social good.