Contact with grand children in care.

[Greenchair]

Request for advice please, I looked after my two grand children for over 2 years when my daughter went to prison, shortly after my daughters release from prison the two grand children were taken into care.

The children were placed in foster care with the mother of my daughters ex partner, who was the father of one of the children, during 18 months with the foster carer, I only had telephone contact, where the ex partner and his family had normalized contact. the children were then placed with a non connected foster carer as the ex partner and foster carer had hit the non related child.

With the children in new foster care I had actual contact with the children with stay overs, but the other family members attempted to convince the children not visit me for a holiday.

After a few visits the children suddenly stopped all telephone contact and I reported to social worker I suspected parental alienation, after a further visit I reported inappropriate messages and harassment from a member of the ex partners family as my grand daughter had a new mobile phone and one of the children described the other grandparent was selling cannabis from his house, since that point social service have now singled me out and stopped my contact, initially their reason was that I questioned the children about other family members, which was not true. I have formally written to social services them asking for contact and saying they have a duty to promote contact, there response to that letter was the children age 9 and 11 are saying they do not want to see me again and only a letter can be sent. My daughter has spoken to them and mentioned do they want me to come up and take them out for a meal they said yes and they love me as well, I had a very close relationship with them as there main carer for 2 years and do not believe this to be true feelings.

I feel the social worker is punishing me for raising safe guarding concerns about the other family and compounding the parental alienation, as well as intent to severe my connection with my grand children, I have been told my only option is go to Court and ask for an order of contact, but any advice will be very welcome.
Thank you.

[Suzie, FRG Adviser]

Dear Greenchair

Welcome to the parents’ discussion board. Thank you for your post. My name is Suzie. I am Family Rights Group’s online adviser.

I am sorry to hear about the difficulties you are having. You are not currently able to see your grandchildren who are now in foster care. You previously looked after them for two years.

I can see how distressing this is for you. I will answer your post here today. However, as you are a grandparent, if you have any further queries please post on our dedicated kinship carers’ forum. You may get more advice and support from other relatives there, too.

You describe how you only had telephone contact with the children when they were in foster care with the paternal grandmother of one of the children. Although placed with relatives, decisions around contact would have been made by children’s services, if they had a care order for the children.

I am sorry to hear that the children were physically abused while in kinship foster care.

When they moved to unrelated foster carer, you had regular contact with the children, which included them staying over with you. Again, this must have been agreed as part of their care plan.

Unfortunately, you believe that the children were subsequently manipulated by your daughter’s ex-partner’s family as you had to report concerns about them. Your telephone contact and face to face contact with the children has since stopped; you are currently only having ‘letterbox’ contact. Children’s services’ initially said this was because you were questioning the children. Now the social worker says that the children do not want to see you. You don’t think this is true and say that they have told their mother they would like to see you. You also feel that you are being penalised by children’s services for raising concerns.

I think that you have done the right thing by contacting children’s services to ask that they review and reinstate your contact with the children. You have also correctly highlighted that that they have a duty to promote ‘reasonable’ contact with significant people. This is explained more here . We have research which highlights the benefit for children in care of having contact with family members and that children’s views about contact can change over time. Please see here for more information. This is why contact must be reviewed regularly and specifically at every LAC review.

As children’s services have responded to your request by saying that the children don’t want contact, I think you can follow this up with another email to the social worker, copied to their manager and the children’s independent reviewing officer setting out what your response to this and asking that your request be revisited.

If you are unhappy with their response, you can consider making a complaint.

If you cannot agree a way forward then you are right that your only other option, if you don’t accept the decision around contact, is to make a court application for a section 34 contact order. You would need to ask the court’s permission first before applying for a contact order. Child Law Advice provides a useful summary of how to do this, with links to court forms too. I hope that this will be helpful to you.

I am adding a link here to legal advice services. Support Through Court may be able to help with form-filling and procedures (not legal advice or representation ) if you represent yourself as a litigant in person.

I hope this helps.

If you need any further advice, please:

• Call our freephone advice line on 0808 8010366, Mon to Fri, 9.30 am to 3.00 pm (except bank holidays)
• Post on our kinship carers’ forum
• Use our webchat
• Use our advice enquiry form.

Best wishes

Suzie