# STRATEGY GUIDE — Scenario 15: "The Protective Parent" (Hard)

*Game documentation for a fictional simulation. This guide describes strategy inside the scenario only. It contains no graphic detail, mirroring the scenario itself. It is general information about how the simulated system works — not legal advice for any real case, and not safety advice; anyone in danger should contact local emergency services or a domestic-violence hotline.*

**Path check:** The route below was verified by walking `scenario-15.json` programmatically — every choice named here exists at the named node, and the sequence reaches the named ending. End cash on this route: $122 of $190.

## 1. The win

**"Ending — Two Files, Not One."** This is a record win, stated honestly: Sam is still placed with his aunt at the end. What changes is who the file says you are. The court addresses the parents in separate sentences; your protective chronology — protection order predating the petition, the center's dated letter, the corrected screening entry, your services credited as yours — answers the "failure to protect" allegation on the record, and your time with Sam expands on the strength of *your* record. In a system that plans children's futures from files, that identity is the ground the next review stands on. It is not reunification, and this guide will not call it that.

## 2. The route

1. **What She Had Already Done** — Choose *"Start the folder today — order, center dates, lock receipt, in date order."* Changes: sets **folderStarted**; assembles the pre-petition protective record (order, center intake dates, lock change) while it is still findable. The folder's first claim is chronological: she acted before the system did.
2. **The Visit** — Choose *"Say it now, plainly, and ask that it be noted: joint sessions are not safe for you, and you are asking for separate services."* Changes: sets **safetyRaised**; your objection to joint services enters the file in near-verbatim words — a fact of the record, not a mood of a meeting.
3. **Two Names, One File** — Choose *"Sign the written request for the full record."* Changes: sets **recordsRequested**; exposes the false plurals ("parents missed February screening" — you attended; he didn't) that must be corrected one by one.
4. **The Sign-In Sheet** — Request the provider's sign-in sheet. Changes: adds the correction exhibit — your signature in the 9:15 row, his row empty — and the method with it: "Please document us separately."
5. **The Center's Letter** — Choose *"Ask for the letter — engagement documented with dates, on the center's letterhead."* (cash −$4) Changes: sets **dvLetter**; the center's dated chronology of your engagement — beginning *before* the petition — becomes the heaviest paper in the folder.
6. **His Side of the Ledger** — Choose *"Send the written separation request — her record documented separately, with the packet attached."* (cash −$4) Changes: sets **separationFiled**; the agency acknowledges it in writing, and the next summary contains the scenario's pivotal sentence: "Mother's progress is documented separately at her counsel's request."
7. **The Car** — Choose *"Document it the day it happens — police report, glass-shop invoice, and a written note to the agency."* (cash −$60) Changes: the missed session is recorded *with its documented cause* — proof the file has learned to tell you apart.
8. **The Review** — Choose *"Let the separated record speak."* Reaches **Ending — Two Files, Not One**.

## 3. Why this wins — the law as it is supposed to work

- **Counsel, as of right** (42 Pa.C.S. § 6337). The lawyer's work in this scenario is audit: finding every sentence where "parents" averages two unlike records, and filing the correction. That work is impossible without first seeing the file —
- **The record is available on written request** (55 Pa. Code § 3130.44(d)). You cannot correct sentences you have never seen. The request is what turns the file's plurals from a reputation into a list of falsifiable claims, each correctable by a document (a sign-in sheet, a dated letter) that already exists somewhere.
- **Burdens still matter.** Nothing in this scenario's verified set decides a "failure to protect" allegation by itself, and the debriefs say so. What separation does is evidentiary: it ensures that when the agency's case is weighed — under demanding standards, up to clear and convincing evidence at the stages where rights are decided — it is weighed against *your* documented record, not an average of yours and his. An allegation about an individual, answered by an individual, requires an individual record.

## 4. The traps

- **Signing the plan as presented** (*The Visit*, second choice). You agree, on paper, to joint sessions with the man the protection order is about — then must either attend unsafely or miss on paper. The signature is instant; its implications are scheduled weekly.
- **Assuming the center contact covers it** (*The Center's Letter*, second choice → "Some Contact"). The agency "had been some contact" with the center — no dates ever cross into your file, because the center does not mail its records unasked. At the review, your strongest evidence is a fog. This path reaches at best **"Ending — Safe, and Still Counted Together."**
- **Raising separation verbally** (*His Side of the Ledger*, second choice). Ms. Herrera agrees completely — in her notebook. The next summary is written from the file, and the file was never told.
- **Handling the car quietly** (*The Car*, second choice). The miss enters the record in seven words — "no explanation documented" — two lines below his discharge letter, where a fast reader averages them. If the separated record was never built at all, the hearing's third choice reaches **"Ending — One Word: Parents."**

## 5. What no strategy controls

Ms. Herrera's willingness to write your words verbatim, a center advocate who kept meticulous dates, and a judge's readiness to read two columns instead of one average are staffing and temperament — luck, in this game's vocabulary. His conduct also "cooperated" with clarity here; real files tangle more honestly than this composite does. And the deepest unfairness stands: the labor of separation falls to the person with the least slack to perform it. The route controls only whether the record exists to be read. Courts in the published cases behind this scenario repeatedly met survivors' protective histories as undated testimony — "she had spoken with the center." Dating it is the whole difference, and it was, in the end, enough — for the record. Sam's timeline continues past the last page.