Council Acts to Protect Disabled Teen

AN ESSEX couple can no longer have total parental responsibility for their disabled teenage daughter because of concerns about their attitude to social services staff, a family court judge has ruled.

Judge Lynn Roberts has made a care order which means the couple must share parental responsibility with Essex County Council to ensure the youngster's welfare needs are met.

The judge said the couple had an entrenched mistrust and a lack of respect and appeared to assume no non-medical professional involved with their daughter was to be trusted.

She has not identified the family but said the local authority involved was Essex County Council, which had asked for the making of a care order.

Judge Roberts said the girl had complex medical, physical and psychological difficulties and concluded a care order was necessary.

She said: "Her father is very protective of his daughter for understandable reasons.

"He considers he has had to fight hard to get her the services she requires.

"However, he is now unable to allow those services to do their work fully to meet his daughter's interests.

“His wife chooses not to or is unable to bring him to a different position.

"What is likely to have started out as helpful to the girl has now become an entrenched mistrust of the services and lack of respect for the professionals involved and therefore a loss of focus of what is really important for the girl."