Jimmy's Story
Hi my name is *Jimmy. My wife is *Patti and we have 3 daughters. This is our story.
How my children ended up in care
About 10 years ago our youngest daughter was born premature and we had trouble with her thriving after we took her home. Health professionals weren't happy with her progress and got Child Protection involved. My wife and I found ourselves in front of a judge with a Legal Aid lawyer who we only got to spend about 5 minutes with before the hearing.
About a month later we travelled a few hours away to the city to attend a residential parenting centre to have our parenting assessed. During our 10 days there we tried to learn what they wanted us to do, but they assessed me as physically incapable of caring for the girls (due to my weight at the time) and Patti as both mentally and physically incapable. The girls were put in the care of my parents.
After my mother passed away Child Protection made a decision, without consulting us, to move the children from my father's care. They were placed in the care of their godparents. After an extended fight the girls were returned to my father's care and he has since remarried. Our girls remain in the care of their grandfather and step-grandmother.
How things are now
After many years of dealing with the Child Protection department we felt our case had stalled. As the girls are living with my father we always had regular contact but it still had to be supervised. We couldn't take the girls on outings on our own, or have them over at our house. We couldn't have family time together in a more meaningful way.
Then we got involved with a local support group and advocates. Together we worked to get our case unstuck. We didn't let some of the usual obstacles get in our way, such as change of caseworker. When a new caseworker was assigned we didn't let the situation go back to the start again, we made sure the worker knew of the pathway we were on and to keep the momentum going. After effectively representing ourselves at a case review meeting we were immediatly granted unsupervised access. Following this we have started having our girls overnight.
Our relationship with each of the girls has blossomed and we have particularly noticed a big change in our eldest daughter. Her behaviour has improved immensely, particularly at school.
PACT Support Group
Our support group has helped me understand we are not alone and I feel less isolated from the community. I am a better parent and a better adult to other people who are dealing with similar challenges.
*For privacy reasons real names are not used
