The most difficult part of any contact with the Social Services is the initial contact. Nothing can prepare you for this, however the following advice and suggestions may help overcome what I call the first wave.

1) If your first contact is at home, make sure you have someone there with you, not a close relative but a friend. Make the Social Services aware you are going to take notes down of all that is said and you require their signature on the bottom of every page.

2) If Social Services accuse you of being obstructive, ask who their manager is and suggest you are going to put in an official complaint, regarding harassment. You are within your rights to ask for the verification of all that is said. I cannot stress this point enough, if you let the Social Services take any assessments of you or your family without getting signatures, it will be twisted and distorted to fit in with their perceived wisdom and not the facts. Ask about tape-recorded interviews and Social Services run a mile, why?

3) Do not believe in Social Services use of the word "confidential", they would not know it, if it jumped up and bit them. They should be made to say the same as the police on interviews, that is, anything you say may be taken down…

4) Make sure you understand that if you treat Social Services with an open house and in a friendly manner, they will be only too glad to keep coming back! Making up all manners of reasons to their superiors, as to why you have to be looked at as a threat, yet treating you as a friend.

5) Only when the first Case Conference takes place will you know how serious the situation is. Never expect any help from Social Services, you must realise, if they can split the family they will save themselves monies all down the line. They hate this approach, insisting that money is not in question, however I have done enough research to know that is a lie.

6) Should your first contact take place in Social Services office, insist on taking your solicitor or a friend with you, again notes taken by you or your friend needs to be countersigned by the social worker. If you can get your solicitor to be at your meetings, notes they take will not require a signature, this is of course very annoying to the Social Serviceswho will have come to realise you do not intend to play their little games.