The Fault Line

A follow-up to my earlier exposé, ‘The Alienation Trap’, focused on one specific mechanism that can push protective parents into danger: the gap between urgent safeguarding advice and clear, written, joined-up pathways.

In ‘The Alienation Trap’ I wrote about a courtroom dynamic, how false ‘alienation’ allegations can flip a domestic abuse survivor into the one being treated as the abuser, and how protective parenting can be recast as wrongdoing. This follow-up sits earlier in the pipeline. It is about the moment an arrest happens, or a disclosure is made, or a referral lands on a social worker’s desk, and a parent asks a simple question, “what do I do about contact now?” The answer can be decisive, and it can also be dangerously ambiguous.

In my case, after my ex-husband was arrested, children’s services were referred in and asked about his contact with my children. I told them contact was still regular, albeit through a third party, because I did not believe I had the right to unilaterally stop it without direction.

Their response was blunt. Safeguarding the children had to be my priority. Contact had to end immediately. I was told that if I allowed contact again, my children could be removed from my care. I asked for that instruction in writing. They refused. I also received no practical guidance on what to say to my children, how to explain the sudden change, or how to manage the predictable escalation from a man who demanded “proof” that I was not simply blocking him.

Children’s services then closed my case on the proviso that I did not allow contact. Around the same time, my case went to MARAC and I was assessed as “very high risk”. That MARAC outcome was the first clear piece of written evidence I received showing where my case sat within the wider agency forum. Without it, I was largely blind to what was being discussed behind closed doors, aside from fragments relayed through police liaisons. It matters that this was a criminal justice context, not family court.

MARACs exist because high-risk domestic abuse cases need coordination across agencies, not siloed decision-making. They are multi-agency meetings intended to share information and agree a plan to increase safety (Home Office, 2011). In many areas, the DASH risk checklist is used to structure identification of high-risk cases and inform referrals and safety planning (SafeLives, 2015). When a system is willing to place you in a “very high risk” category, the parent should not be left guessing what that means in practice, or trying to improvise a safety plan alone.

Years later, I passed that warning on to other survivors. It felt like essential safeguarding information. If you are told, “end contact now or risk losing your children”, you assume that advice is not only urgent, but consistent across the system. I did not appreciate how dangerous that assumption could be.

Because other victims can experience a complete reversal. The same outward protective action, ending contact, insisting on safeguards, refusing unsafe handovers, can later be reframed as “alienation”. A parent who acted in fear, or on professional warning, can find themselves treated as the threat to the child. The Family Justice Council’s guidance is explicit that professionals must distinguish protective behaviours from alienating behaviours, and must not treat a child’s reluctance, resistance or refusal as proof of manipulation without disciplined analysis (Family Justice Council, 2024). Yet survivors’ lived experience is that discipline can collapse in practice, especially when the parent has no written record of why contact ceased and no joined-up rationale travels with the case.

This is where the fault line sits. It is not only a question of whether domestic abuse is believed, or whether alienation allegations are misused. It is a process question: what exactly is a parent meant to do with a high-stakes verbal warning? How do you demonstrate you are following professional safeguarding advice if that advice will not be written down? How do you explain it to children without “coaching” them, while also not leaving them frightened and confused? How do you communicate it to a perpetrator who demands proof, without provoking escalation? A warning that cannot be quoted is not guidance, it is a burden handed to a traumatised parent.

The reason “removal” warnings carry such force is that children’s services operate under real statutory duties and powers. Local authorities have duties to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in need, and to make enquiries where they have reasonable cause to suspect significant harm (Children Act 1989, s.17 and s.47). If they believe thresholds are met, they can apply to court for orders, including care or supervision orders (Children Act 1989, s.31). In emergencies, urgent protective action can also be taken through lawful routes such as emergency protection or police protection powers (Children Act 1989, s.44 and s.46). So when a parent hears, “your child could be removed”, that is not an idle phrase. But if the stakes are that serious, then safeguarding practice must be correspondingly robust, recorded, and coherent.

That is where the advice gap becomes dangerous. Working Together to Safeguard Children emphasises coordinated multi-agency safeguarding practice and clear arrangements for information sharing and decision-making (Department for Education, 2023). In a high-risk domestic abuse context, “stop contact” may be a reasonable short-term safety response, but it is not a complete pathway. A pathway would include a written safety plan, a review point, clarity about the legal basis, clarity about who will communicate what to whom, and child-appropriate guidance for the protective parent about language and support.

Without that pathway, parents are pushed into a no-win bind. One professional voice tells you, “prove you are protective, end contact now.” Another voice later asks, “why did you stop contact?” If the protective parent cannot evidence the warning, the decision can be reframed as personal hostility. And if the perpetrator uses litigation as a continuation of control, the fog becomes a weapon. The Ministry of Justice’s ‘Assessing Risk of Harm’ report and the Domestic Abuse Commissioner’s ‘Everyday Business’ review both describe systemic problems that make these cases vulnerable to contradiction, including minimisation of abuse, silo working, and inconsistent responses (Ministry of Justice, 2020; Domestic Abuse Commissioner for England and Wales, 2025).

I saw the gulf between systems again when I returned to family court, before magistrates, three years after my ex-husband’s conviction, seeking custody of our daughter. I was shocked by what I experienced as misinformed assumptions around contact and a tone that treated safeguarding boundaries as something to be justified, rather than understood. It took my barrister setting out why the police had imposed stringent licence restrictions, including mapped exclusion zones, no contact conditions alongside the restraining order, and bans on attending the girls’ schools, to convince the court of the seriousness of my case. Whatever the legal framework on paper, the lived message was clear: even after a conviction, a survivor can be treated as if they are exploiting or overreaching, simply for trying to make safeguarding stick.

This is not only retraumatising, it is structurally unsafe. The Domestic Abuse Commissioner’s pilot review found domestic abuse present in the overwhelming majority of sampled private law case files, yet it was treated as a live issue in fewer than half of observed hearings (Domestic Abuse Commissioner for England and Wales, 2025). A system can be saturated with abuse, and still behave as if abuse is peripheral. In that environment, ambiguity in early safeguarding advice is not a minor administrative problem, it becomes a fault line that abusers can exploit and children can fall through.

A safer system would treat urgent safeguarding advice as something that must be survivable. That means, at minimum, written rationale when contact is being halted due to safeguarding risk, time-limited plans with review points, clarity about lawful routes and thresholds, and clear guidance for parents on safe communication with children. It means agencies joining the dots across criminal justice, children’s services, MARAC and family court, so a protective parent is not forced to re-prove danger in each new room. It also means consistent application of PD12J so domestic abuse and harm are central to child arrangements decisions, not treated as background noise (Ministry of Justice, n.d.).

Because the fault line is not theoretical. When one arm of the system tells a protective parent, “if you do not cease contact your children could be removed from your care”, and another arena later frames the same protective action as “alienation”, the message to victims is not safeguarding, it is instability. It teaches that the system can bare its teeth at any movement, that any decision can be retrospectively reframed as proof of being an “unsafe parent”. Without evidence, paperwork, clear pathways, written rationale and coordinated decision-making, agencies are creating a maze that traumatised parents must navigate safely to avoid losing their children, all while vulnerable, isolated, and suddenly in uncharted waters where clarity and mental health are under strain. Retraumatisation is real. The use of child “risk” as collateral by abusers is real.

Trust is not something survivors owe the system on demand. It is a safety condition the system owes survivors. Survivors need support, yet they are being made completely dependent on something ambiguous, vague, fragile and complex, a structure that can change shape mid-crisis, punish the very acts it previously required, and leave a traumatised parent gambling their child’s safety on interpretation rather than evidence. If the safeguarding and family justice world wants victims to cooperate, disclose and protect, then it must become coherent enough to be trusted. It must earn that trust through written rationale, transparent pathways, and accountability that makes protection safer, not riskier.

 

References

Children Act 1989 (1989) Section 17: Provision of services for children in need, their families and others. Legislation.gov.uk. Available at: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1989/41/section/17 (Accessed 5 January 2026).

Children Act 1989 (1989) Section 31: Care and supervision. Legislation.gov.uk. Available at: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1989/41/section/31 (Accessed 5 January 2026).

Children Act 1989 (1989) Section 44: Orders for emergency protection of children. Legislation.gov.uk. Available at: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1989/41/section/44 (Accessed 5 January 2026).

Children Act 1989 (1989) Section 46: Removal and accommodation of children by police in cases of emergency. Legislation.gov.uk. Available at: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1989/41/section/46 (Accessed 5 January 2026).

Children Act 1989 (1989) Section 47: Local authority’s duty to investigate. Legislation.gov.uk. Available at: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1989/41/section/47 (Accessed 5 January 2026).

Department for Education (2023) Working together to safeguard children 2023: statutory guidance. GOV.UK. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/working-together-to-safeguard-children--2 (Accessed 5 January 2026).

Domestic Abuse Commissioner for England and Wales (2025) Everyday Business: Addressing domestic abuse and continuing harm through a family court review and reporting mechanism. Office of the Domestic Abuse Commissioner. Available at: https://domesticabusecommissioner.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Everyday-Business-full-report-web.pdf (Accessed 5 January 2026).

Family Justice Council (2024) Guidance on responding to a child’s unexplained reluctance, resistance or refusal to spend time with a parent and allegations of alienating behaviour. Courts and Tribunals Judiciary. Available at: https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Family-Justice-Council-Guidance-on-responding-to-allegations-of-alienating-behaviour-2024-1-1.pdf (Accessed 5 January 2026).

Home Office (2011) Supporting high-risk victims of domestic violence: a review of Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Conferences (MARACs) (Home Office Research Report 55). GOV.UK. Available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/116536/horr55-summary.pdf (Accessed 5 January 2026).

Ministry of Justice (2020) Assessing Risk of Harm to Children and Parents in Private Law Children Cases. GOV.UK. Available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/895173/assessing-risk-harm-children-parents-pl-childrens-cases-report_.pdf (Accessed 5 January 2026).

Ministry of Justice (n.d.) Practice Direction 12J: Child Arrangements and Contact Orders: Domestic Abuse and Harm. Justice.gov.uk. Available at: https://www.justice.gov.uk/courts/procedure-rules/family/practice_directions/pd_part_12j (Accessed 5 January 2026).

SafeLives (2015) SafeLives DASH risk checklist (without guidance). SafeLives. Available at: https://safelives.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Dash-without-guidance.pdf (Accessed 5 January 2026).