Family Rights Group | Kinship carers’ Forum

Hi, my 2 year old grandson is in foster care, we have a negative kinship assessment but been allowed a addendum which we are still waiting for, please try not to make judgments to harshly we know as a family we messed up, I will explain. Before he was born we were in PLO, due to dad being classed as a high sexual risk, he was accused of molesting his siblings when he was 12, and had some accusations from ex partners, everything was NFA, at 1st we listened to the advice given and when L was born he didn’t have any contact. A few months went by PLO closed no more issues. Myself and daughter were contacted by the dads family, they expressed how devastating this all this because he was a innocent child being abused and coerced into horrible acts by the abuser, his bio mum coerced the other kids into accusing him only of the abuse etc and he was a innocent victim, after being told this repeatedly and the fact he was never charged/convicted we started to believe. So we made the stupid decision to allow supervised contact every so often, always supervised.

2 years later he was still having supervised contact every other weekend and things were going well, until he had a mental health appointment and mentioned he was having contact with his son, it got reported to social services who arrived with police and took my grandson away. We panicked at 1st and lied, we said he only just started having contact, and tried to keep up the lie to try and get L home quicker, this was a mistake. We have since been honest and told the truth but it had to be done via solicitor statement because the social worker isn’t interested, we are liars and that means we failed the kinship and my daughter isn’t able to keep him safe so he will not be returning to her care, 2 more people are going for the assessment, but the social worker has been difficult from the start, she’s so harsh and scary that she made us not want to come forward with the truth, and would cut us off, call us liars, tell us the damage is done it’s too late, you only want to be honest cause you got caught.

What are the chances that the judge will agree with her, she’s not noted how we have now been honest, done assessments, done child protection courses, has never discussed reunification with daughter as a option only kinship or adoption. Yes we lied but we were so scared because we knew how they felt about the dad and thought we would make things worse. Do we still have a chance to persuade the judge? L was never hurt in any way or neglected, he was always supervised. Her reasoning for not allowing him home is we are liars, we do have contact weekly with L but we are just so lost and don’t know what to do.

Dear SW1666

Welcome to the kinship carers’ forum and thank you for posting.

My name is Suzie, online adviser at Family Rights Group and will respond to your post today.

From you post, I see the very difficult situation in which you find yourself with children’s services regarding your 2-year-old grandson who has since been removed from your care.

Unfortunately, you failed to act protectively for your grandson, and you now acknowledge this but believe the social worker’s view is that you cannot care for grandson because of the way you sought to circumvent children’s services position relating to the father’s contact. As the contact offered to father followed children’s services decision to let you care for your grandson and it seems no longer involved.

It is this, I believe, that causes the social worker to be concerned about trust and how your grandson would be safeguarded in your care. Obviously, we learn from our mistakes, but the safety of a child is taken seriously in situations like this. The father and the paternal family could have made the same arguments to children’s services regarding contact.

Luckily, an addendum report has been directed by the court. You asked whether the judge would have the same view as the social worker. The fact that an addendum it to be done means, I think, that the judge is mindful that additional information is need for the court’s decision making. Without knowing the full case it would be difficult to suggest the likely outcome. I can say however, that the judge will consider all the evidence including what you have done to improve your understanding.

However, the concern remains that you broke the trust by allowing contact although fully aware of the issues related to the father. So, there is likely to be concerns that if your grandson were in your care the same would be possible the moment children’s service no longer actively involved.

It is important that you are open and honest with the person doing the assessment for the addendum report to the court. A lot will depend on the recommendation in their report as well as the children’s guardian views for your grandson’s welfare going forward.

Although with hindsight you would do things differently, the fact remains you did not inform children’s services when the paternal family approached you and your daughter. You allowed contact although you say it was supervised to continue for 2 years and this is the concern. If a referral was not made to children's services this would have continued.

It is good that you continue to have contact with your grandson with whom you must have a close bond and no final decision made about his long-term care until the final hearing. All you can do now is continue to show remorse and think or ask how you can make things better to have a working relationship based on honesty and trust with professionals.

Your daughter’s ability to safely parent and protect her son may be questioned since she was complicit in allowing contact with the father when this was not recommended or approved by children’s services.

I suggest that you speak with your solicitor about your concerns as they will have all information to the case if you are now a party to the care proceedings. Here is information from our website about care (and related) proceedings which explains the court process in more detail.

I hope this is helpful but should you wish to speak with one of our experienced advisers do telephone our advice line on 0808 801 0366. The advice line is open from 9.30am to 3.00pm Monday to Friday (excluding Bank Holidays)

Best wishes

Suzie