"After waiting a year and after great difficulty, I managed to get legal aid to go to Court to try and get my daughter back.
I was granted a new parenting assessment and really had my hopes up that my daughter would be able to return home.
My assessment was going well and I was given lots of positive feedback from the independent social worker.
However, after they read my previous psychological assessment, they recommended that I do more work with PACE, which I was willing to do.
But at the same time my daughter’s father was assessed by the social worker and they decided that our daughter should go and live with him.
I was upset about this because he had not been there for our daughter growing up and lived far away so I would need to travel to have contact with her.
I could have challenged the decision in Court, but I didn’t want to disrupt things for my daughter any further.
“Although it’s not the outcome I hoped for, I now have unsupervised contact with my daughter and can see her for several hours during the school holidays.”
In some ways things are more challenging. Contact was easier when it happened through social services, and it happened monthly. Now it is during the school holidays, and it has to go through my daughter’s father, so I have to communicate with him which can be difficult.
But the time I have with my daughter feels much better now it’s not supervised. It feels like a weight has been lifted and it is more relaxed.
She seems to be happy where she is, and I know that I parented my daughter for nearly 11 years. She is doing really well in school, she is clever and good at art, and I can take some credit for that.
I know I am more confident, and I like to keep myself busy, so I don’t think too much, obviously I’d like things to be different.
I’m proud that I have been pro-active and done things on my own back, I’ve sorted things out for myself, my referral to Hurdle and completing all the courses I have done. It’s made a difference. I have more knowledge which gives me confidence, I am stronger and I know I am in a good position to provide a home for my daughter if things change in the future.
““I welcome my daughter with everything I have and am here if she says she wants to be with me when she’s older.”
