Parental alienation and/or alienating behaviours in children's social care

I am writing to request information concerning parental alienation and/or alienating behaviours in children's social care and public law proceedings. For the purposes of this request, please use the 24-month period immediately preceding the date on which you receive this request.

1. Policies, procedures and guidance

Please provide copies of, or electronic links to, any current written policy, procedure, practice guidance, protocol, pathway, training material or other written guidance used by Children's Services which refers to or considers: 'parental alienation'; 'alienating behaviour' or 'alienating behaviours'; or circumstances in which a child's rejection of, resistance towards, or reluctance to have contact with a parent may have been caused or materially influenced by the behaviour of another parent or carer. If no such written policy or guidance is held, please confirm this.

2. Public law threshold During the relevant 24-month period, how many:

a. children; and

b. families were the subject of public law proceedings, or a decision that the threshold for public law intervention under section 31 of the Children Act 1989 was met, where parental alienation or alienating behaviour formed any part of: the Local Authority's threshold case; a social work assessment or evidence relied upon in deciding to commence proceedings; or the Local Authority's case or evidence within the proceedings?

Please provide the number of children and families separately, where this information is held.

3. Removal or change of placement Of the children identified in Question 2, how many were removed from the care of, or ceased to live with, one or both parents where concerns relating to parental alienation or alienating behaviour formed all or part of the reason for that decision or outcome? Where the information is held, please provide the numbers separately for children who:

a. were removed from / ceased living with their mother;

b. were removed from / ceased living with their father;

c. were removed from / ceased living with both parents;

d. moved from the care of one parent to the other parent;

e. were placed with relatives or connected persons; and

f. were placed in foster care, residential care or another Local Authority-arranged placement.

4. Recording of parental alienation / alienating behaviours

I recognise that 'parental alienation' or 'alienating behaviour' may not constitute a discrete or searchable field within your electronic case-management system. If that is the case, please:

a. confirm that the information is not recorded as a separately searchable category;

b. provide any figures requested above that can be obtained from centrally held or readily searchable information without manually reviewing individual case files; and

c. briefly explain how concerns about parental alienation or alienating behaviours would ordinarily be recorded ' for example, within assessments, threshold documents, legal planning records, court statements, case notes or another category.

I am requesting aggregate and anonymised information only. I am not requesting the identity of, or any information capable of identifying, any individual child, parent or family.

1. No policy or guidance is held.

2-4. To find and collate this information would involve a manual trawl of the case records for every child subject to public law proceedings and this would take longer than the 18 hours allowed under section 12(1) of the FOI Act 2000