Case No. EWFC-93

78.The central issue which I have to decide in in relation to A’s future is whether he should spend time with his father directly including face to face contact and Facetime/Phone calls etc. In determining that issue I bear firmly in mind that A’s welfare is my paramount concern. I have considered the provisions of the welfare checklist at section 1(3) of the Children Act and I have also weighed up the possible “pros and cons” or positives and negatives” of not allowing direct contact to take place, as has the guardian. The development and progress of contact is almost always an unknown. Children’s needs change as they grow older. Flexibility is usually the best approach, with both parents working together. Sadly, that cannot occur in this matter at this stage79.Like the guardian and expert, the court does not discount how much progress the father has made with both drug addiction, his mental health and his stabilisation of his lifestyle. However, he continues to use illicit substances, specifically ketamine. There is a serious risk of relapse. His ongoing need to use to “self-medicate” is apparent in his use, his comments to the guardian and within his own oral evidence. (E140). By his own admission, his use of ketamine increases when he stops drinking and using cannabis – it “keeps him on a level”, soon as he stops he gravitates to use other substances – self medicating. The father absolutely believes that he is correct and that there is no problem with his drug use. He does not see his use of ketamine to be in any way harmful to A nor impact upon his own mental health. 80.Sadly, he has no insight into how and why such self-medication through illicit substance misuse would be a risk to A nor to his own well-being. In his evidence the father believed that by Dr Nadeem advising him to stop taking drugs, Dr Nadeem was breaching the father’s human rights, being his right to choose to take drugs. That is quite a startling indictment of father’s addiction or reliance on drugs (or however he chooses to term it, he not being able to become abstinent) and his unwavering belief in his own liberal views being correctly held. 81.On questioning Dr Nadeem, several of the questions prepared by father suggested that Dr Nadeem’s report was unfair, false, biased against him and that he had been “profiled in a negative way”. At no stage did the father seem to even consider that the report was accurate or a true opinion and representation of the father in the eyes of the expert or others. It is clear he sees himself in very different ways and with much more positivity than other people involved in this matter. 82.Sadly, in my judgment, the risk of harm to A is present and unmanageable at this stage.X