My granddaughter has reported to chidren and family ministry…

OK, I understand.

When someone is wrong, you don't convince them that they are wrong by yelling at them that they are being wrong. I think you'll agree.

I'm going to assume that everything you've told me is true. I'm not saying that you're lying, but it strikes me as likely that you don't have the whole truth, and that you may have been lied to by your son about his drug use. Naturally, you support your son unconditionally. But he wouldn't be the first to be self medicating with a serious back problem. Just keep an open mind.

What do you have to contribute to the conference call? I really think you should stay out of it because your son needs to take the reins here, rather than you for him. You've taken the step of contacting a lawyer here and trying to find answers. You say that he's panicked and has his "heart ripped out". He's the one who has to stand up for himself.

I've been doing this work for a long time. Yes, all of this seems unfair. But it has nothing to do with what's fair to either parent. If the social workers believe that the child is at risk of harm, physical or emotional, they will step in. If the mother's parents are there and keeping things safe and better for the child, then the workers will say that the child can stay with mom. They don't move the child from mom to dad as a reward to dad for not being on drugs.

Let's get this support issue out of the way. Access and support are not tied together. If your son is behind on support, that's no reason to deny access. The workers should know this. If mother is telling the child that dad is a deadbeat, she's emotionally abusing the child. The workers know this too. Which is why I suspect you're not getting the whole truth from your son, or that your son doesn't understand himself what is going on.

Legal Aid might not give dad a lawyer if there's no protection application started in court. Usually it spends it's taxpayer dollars on matters which are already in litigation. It shouldn't take 2-4 weeks for a decision on legal aid, that would be the case only if your son has been rejected on grounds that he doesn't qualify financially and he's appealed that decision, or that legal says it doesn't hand out free lawyers until there's court, and he's appealed that decision. Legal Aid's decisions are usually made very quickly once the full financial disclosure is made to it.

You just wrote that your son said he'd do this with his lawyer. That's not how it works. If the child welfare authorities believe that a child is at risk of harm and that a court order is needed to keep the child safe, ie an order placing the child with a parent under terms of supervision, then child services brings the application. A court order in a child protection case trumps a court order made in custody/access court.

So, if your son has access under a court order and the social workers are interfering with that when they haven't got a court order, then he may need to act. But he's putting the cart before the horse, leading me to believe that doesn't understand what's going on. And if he doesn't then he can't explain it to you properly.

If you really want to help him, you have few options:

1) go out there and stay with him to be a support for him, help him get around, stay organized, and stay focused.

2) get him a lawyer of his own.

3) stop assuming that your son is the victim here and acknowledge that he doesn't know what's going on either, so your charging in to defend him is pointless.

The mother is unlikely to let you speak to the child. She'll say correctly that you have no right to and that it'll only disturb and confuse the child because you're upset and trying to advocate for your son. Plus you can't make her.

At age 12, a court will want to know what a child thinks about all of this and what they want, but that's only a piece of evidence for the court to consider. Children don't have the right to decide custody and access matters at age 12. That's a myth. If the court wants the child's input, it will appoint a social worker or lawyer to the child to bring the child's views and preferences, and the strength and independence of those views and preferences, to the court.

In summary, I'm saying that child protection law is a very specialized field of family law with its own legislation and goals. It's not a comparison test between the parents. Complaining about fairness to the workers gets you absolutely nowhere, in fact it gets you worse off because it makes the workers think that the complainer is more concerned about their own "rights" than about the potential risks to the child.

I'm sure that this wasn't what you wanted to hear. But if I tell you "yes, your son has been wronged, go in their you lioness and protect your cubs!" you'd feel better but then I'm doing the opposite of helping you.

If your son has supervised access, that likely means at the agency. Your son should do whatever access is offered. He should make the most of his time with the child, not discuss the litigation or the mother, and view it as an opportunity to generate favourable evidence for himself rather than view it as punishment based solely on the mother's squawking that he's behind on support. There's more going on here than he knows, and more too that he's not telling you I guarantee it.

If court papers are being delivered to him, that's likely what he needs to complete his application to legal aid. He should make sure he's got together everything he needs to apply so that when he's served he can apply right away, perhaps in person at the court house if they take applications there. If he has everything he needs, he might be approved on the spot.

We've gone over a lot. I hope that you'll take what I wrote in the right spirit. I'm trying to help you by getting you to veer off the course you've charted for your involvement because it's not going to help. I'm trying to help you by getting you to support your son rather than fight his battle for him; you can't do it because you're not the parent and you're not in the province. I'm trying to help your son by having you get him to stop worrying about his broken heart and start taking care of business, because what he's told you doesn't make a lot of sense.

I'm sure you'll have follow up questions or want clarification, this can be complicated stuff. I'll wait for your reply. But if you're satisfied that I've answered you fully, I'll ask you for a positive service rating please.

I'm glad that you and your son are seeing it in a more objective light.

You made the right choice to not call the child; nothing productive could have come from it.

If I were your son's lawyer, the first thing I'd do is see if the workers are going to commence an application for a child protection order. If not, then they have no specific right to override the custody/access order, whatever it says as between these parents.

I'd certainly tell the workers that I'm not thrilled with their protection concerns apparently extending to supporting mother in denying access for reasons of child support arrears, which are utterly irrelevant, and that by doing so they are enabling mother's attempts at parental alienation.

Then I'd tell my client to do some supervised access on a "without prejudice" basis, without agreeing that such is necessary, but only to show that his relationship with his daughter is solid and appropriate.

I'm not suggesting at all that you or your son do this yourselves, like I wrote: the lawyer's job is to fight the workers and the parents' job is to be child focussed, do the programming as recommended, and exercise as much access as possible and make sure it goes well.

But that's just my initial thoughts; I'd need a lot more information, to see the opinion letter and court order and have a long talk with my client about the alleged protection concerns and that I'm not his mother so I need the absolute truth with no whining.

I take my clients firmly in hand though, because they usually need it. Often they need to be told to get off the horse of "their rights" and "what's fair" as I wrote earlier.

Thank you for the accept and the bonus too, I appreciate it. Good luck, and if you want to follow up with me here please feel free. But your son's lawyer will be in the best position to help him there of course. I hope he gets one and soon.

Ulysses