Concerns about temporary accommodation for 8 year old

[Meath76]

Trying to get help with 8 year old boy for four years. Clear traits of autism but awaiting 2nd assessment (3 years). Violence and aggression escalation over the years mainly towards his mom and sister. Punching, kicking, pushed mom downstairs, has strangled/suffocated/punched/kicked sister on a sometimes daily basis. Threats to kill including incidents with knives towards myself. Child was expelled from year two after only fours months of term for violence on teachers and pupils and absconding.
Child is on child protection.
Mom not coping and assessments proving it’s not her parenting as the daughter is complete opposite of son.
Recommendations made to remove child from home. Me (Nan) full time work and live alone cannot offer this.
Social worker suggesting child to stay with dad.
He hasn’t seen his dad in 18 months after repeatedly not turning up for weekend visits. Previously has hit child when in his care. Drinks heavily and argues in front of kids with new partner.
Mom has made very clear dad could not manage child and may trigger the behaviour.
Can social services move the child to his dads when mom has serious concerns?

[Winter25]

Hi Meath76,

You and your daughter have held things together under enormous strain, and you’re absolutely right to be deeply concerned about what’s being proposed. Your grandson is in a highly vulnerable situation, and the suggestion to place him with his father needs urgent challenge.

Based on what you’ve shared, social services cannot simply move your grandson to his father’s care when there are clear and serious safeguarding concerns. Let’s go through the key points together:

1. Can Social Services Move Him to His Father’s Care?

Not legally or safely, not without full assessment, and not if your daughter (who has parental responsibility) formally objects.

Your daughter must be fully involved in the decision. The local authority cannot override her parental rights unless they have evidence of serious risk in her care and a court order. They cannot ignore her concerns and simply move the child to someone known to be unsafe.

2. Why This Decision Is Dangerous

Your grandson is already on a Child Protection Plan due to escalating violence, suspected ASD, and high-risk behaviour. That means the local authority acknowledges there is risk.

To then move him to his father’s home, a parent who:

Has not seen his son for 18 months

Previously used physical discipline

Has a drinking problem and is volatile in front of children

Has already been unsafe around the child before

…would be an unacceptable transfer of harm, not a protection measure. It is not in line with safeguarding duties, especially where there is no evidence of change in the father’s circumstances.

3. What You and Your Daughter Should Do Now

It is essential that your daughter sends a formal, written objection, not verbally, but by email or letter, to the social worker and their team manager. The objection needs to be factual, short, and laser-focused on risk.

Here’s a ready-to-use template for your daughter:
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Subject: Urgent – Formal Objection to Proposed Placement for [Child’s Name]
Child’s DOB: [Insert]

Dear [Social Worker’s Name] and [Team Manager’s Name],

I am writing to formally object to the proposal to place my son, [Child’s Name], in the care of his father, [Father’s Name].

There are significant, known risks in his care, including:

Physical harm previously caused to [Child’s Name]

Heavy alcohol use and unstable behaviour

Exposure to emotional abuse and conflict

No parental involvement for over 18 months

As a parent with full Parental Responsibility, I do not consent to this placement, and I believe it would increase the risk of harm to my son.

I am requesting written responses to the following:

Has a recent safeguarding and risk assessment of the father been completed?

If so, please provide the outcome, and if not, on what basis has he been considered safe?

What specialist or therapeutic placements are currently being explored, as recommended in past assessments?

I am fully committed to protecting my son, and I will cooperate with a safe and appropriate support plan. I cannot, however, agree to a placement that poses increased risk.

Yours sincerely,
[Mother’s Name]
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4. Keep the Focus on Specialist Support

The issue isn’t that your daughter is failing as a parent, the assessments show the opposite. Your grandson’s needs are beyond what a single parent can safely manage without specialist support.

The next lawful and compassionate step is for the local authority to consider:

A short-term therapeutic placement

Or a specialist behavioural setting (not rushed placement with an unsuitable parent)

5. You’re Doing the Right Thing

If you’d like help drafting the objection email or preparing for the next Child Protection Review, post again anytime please Private Message me
======================
For transparency: I’m not an official adviser. I’m a parent who has successfully challenged a local authority and now shares rights-based guidance and strategy. It’s always up to each family to decide what action to take. I am restricted ( due to helping to many people) to how many times I can post on the forum page. Please DM me using the speech bubble next to my name if you need more help

[Meath76]

Thank you so much. This has given me some reassurance

[Suzie, FRG Adviser]

Trying to get help with 8 year old boy for four years. Clear traits of autism but awaiting 2nd assessment (3 years). Violence and aggression escalation over the years mainly towards his mom and sister. Punching, kicking, pushed mom downstairs, has strangled/suffocated/punched/kicked sister on a sometimes daily basis. Threats to kill including incidents with knives towards myself. Child was expelled from year two after only fours months of term for violence on teachers and pupils and absconding.
Child is on child protection.
Mom not coping and assessments proving it’s not her parenting as the daughter is complete opposite of son.
Recommendations made to remove child from home. Me (Nan) full time work and live alone cannot offer this.
Social worker suggesting child to stay with dad.
He hasn’t seen his dad in 18 months after repeatedly not turning up for weekend visits. Previously has hit child when in his care. Drinks heavily and argues in front of kids with new partner.
Mom has made very clear dad could not manage child and may trigger the behaviour.
Can social services move the child to his dads when mom has serious concerns?

Dear Meath,

Thank you for your post and welcome to the parents’ forum. I am Suzie an online adviser for Family Rights Group responding to you today.

I am sorry to hear about your grandson’s difficulties and the impact of his behaviour on the rest of the family.

You write that there are ‘recommendations to be removed from home’ for your grandson. It sounds like children’s services may have been exploring whether there are family members or friends who could offer support or alternative care on a temporary or longer-term basis. You explain that you cannot offer this due to your work commitments and home circumstances. It sounds like you are supporting your daughter and her family in many other ways.

One of the ways that children’s services could look into family and friends’ support is via a family group conference. This is a way for the informal network around a child to talk together about different ways they could help. A professional chair (not the allocated social worker) facilitates the meeting. You can read more about family group conference here.

If your daughter does not agree for her son to be cared for by his father – children’s services have no authority to place him there against her wishes. Children’s services would only be able to insist on this arrangement if they obtained a court order such as an emergency protection order or interim care order which would give the local authority temporary parental responsibility (shared with parents) and enable them to make decisions about his living arrangements without parental consent.

However, as you explain that assessments have not revealed any concerns about your daughter’s care of her children so it would be hard for the local authority to argue to a court that their application met the threshold for court proceedings.

Your daughter should write to the social worker and the social work team manager detailing the risks she feels a transfer to his father’s care would expose her son to.

If your daughter agrees that her son needs to live elsewhere for now due to the escalating aggression, she could request that the local authority accommodate him under a voluntary agreement under S.20 of the Children Act 1989 and place him in a non-family or specialist placement if a suitable family option cannot be found. You can read more about S.20 here.

Please note that your grandson’s father’s view would have to be sought by children’s services before he could be looked after under S.20. A parent with parental responsibility does have the legal right to object to S.20 accommodation – but only if they are willing and able to provide the child with somewhere to live or can arrange for somewhere for him to live. You can read more about this here.

Under the child protection plan the core group of professionals have a duty to consider specialist interventions that could help your grandson’s behaviour and distress. I appreciate that this may have been explored already but wanted to point you to some information in case there are options that have not been thought about. Family Rights Group have a web page that details how children’s services should work with children with mental ill-health and/or behavioural challenges. You can link to it here.

The charity Respect have a respect young peoples’ programme (RYPP) This is a 3 month intensive programme. The following is from their website

'The Respect Young People’s Programme is an intervention for families where children or young people aged between 8 and 18 are abusive or violent towards the people close to them, particularly their parents or carers.
The programme works with young people and their families, encouraging everyone to take a role in stopping the abuse and learning respectful ways of managing conflict, difficulty, and intimacy.’
You can read more about RYPP (RYPPhere.

I hope this information was useful to you. Please feel free to post here again if you have further questions.
There are also many alternative ways to contact Family Rights Group if you seek further advice in the future:

• A free telephone advice line open Monday to Friday between 9.30am and 3pm (excluding Bank Holidays) on 0808 801 0366
• Easy-to-follow online information. Features include an A-Z, FAQs, films, ‘top tips’ and legal advice sheets;
• A webchat service where you can message an adviser online, who will help you find information and advice to support you.
• Complete the advice enquiry form to request an email response within 5 working days

Best wishes,
Suzie

[Meath76]

I followed your advice and we sent an email with all the information you advised, the option of my grandson going to his dads has not been mentioned again.
However, it’s been nearly 6 months since my daughter signed a section 20 agreeing for temporary foster care, my daughter and grandson have been working with IPS and she has completed a therapeutic parenting course and has changed how she manages him. My grandson continues to be verbally and physically abusive to my granddaughter mainly but also my daughter and I am having to remove him from his home to keep them safe, taking emergency leave from work. The social worker goes on annual leave without letting her know and advised if there’s an incident to call the duty team. When we have called the duty team they said we don’t need details we will just log inappropriate behaviour and that’s all they do.
Has something serious got to happen before they do something? It’s like they just expect us to manage and my poor granddaughter to just put up with the constant verbal and physical abuse

[Winter25]

Hi Meath76,

I am glad that the placement with the father is off the table, but what you are describing now is a classic and dangerous case of service drift. Your daughter has done everything asked of her, she signed the Section 20, completed the courses, and changed her parentin, yet the Local Authority is leaving her in a house that has become a war zone. You asked if something serious has to happen before they act, and the terrifying truth is that Social Services often wait for a "trigger event" because they are struggling to find a specialist bed. But you cannot wait for your granddaughter to be seriously injured before they do their job.

The Local Authority is currently in breach of their duty of care. By getting your daughter to sign a Section 20 agreement six months ago, they officially admitted that your grandson is a "Looked After Child" who requires accommodation because it is not safe for him to be at home. By not providing that bed, they are leaving a vulnerable child, his sister, at direct risk of significant harm. The fact that the duty team is logging life-threatening violence like strangulation and knife threats as "inappropriate behaviour" is a massive red flag; they are minimizing serious violence to avoid the cost and effort of finding a specialist placement.

Your daughter needs to stop calling the duty team to log incidents and start escalating this as a formal safeguarding failure. She needs to send an urgent email to the Head of Children’s Services, the Service Manager, and the Independent Reviewing Officer (IRO) today.

Since your grandson is under Section 20, he must have an assigned IRO whose job it is to challenge the local authority when a plan is failing. She should state clearly that the Local Authority has accepted the need for accommodation but has failed to provide it, and as a result, they are failing to protect her daughter from documented physical violence.

She should use a template like this for the email
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Subject: Urgent review requested – section 20 plan is not keeping family safe

Dear [Social Worker] and [Team Manager],

I am writing because the current arrangements are not keeping my family safe. My son has now been accommodated under section 20 for nearly six months. During that time I have engaged with all support offered, but the serious verbal and physical abuse towards me and my daughter is continuing. My daughter remains at ongoing risk of harm, and family members are repeatedly having to intervene in emergency situations to keep everyone safe. When incidents are reported to duty, they are simply being logged without any meaningful action being taken.

Please can the Local Authority urgently confirm in writing:

When the next looked after child / section 20 review is taking place.

What the current care plan is, including the plan for keeping me and my daughter safe.

What additional specialist intervention or alternative placement options are now being considered.

What immediate action will be taken in response to the continuing violence.

Who the child’s Independent Reviewing Officer is, and how I can raise concerns with them directly.

This situation is not sustainable and cannot continue to be managed by the family alone.

Kind regards,
[Name]
---------------
The second thing is that if there is another serious incident involving strangling, knives, or a genuine fear for safety, you must call the police. Your granddaughter is not supposed to be the shock absorber while social care moves too slowly. You could also consider contacting your MP. An MP cannot direct children’s services, but a letter from them can sometimes help push a drifting case up to senior management level much faster. I would use that as an added pressure point alongside your formal written complaint or escalation, not instead of it.


And the third thing is: if the social worker goes on leave without proper handover and there is no functioning response, that needs to be challenged too. A child looked after under section 20 is still a local authority responsibility. They do not get to vanish into annual leave while the family manages the risk for them.

==========

For full transparency, I am not an official adviser. I am a parent with lived experience of the family court and safeguarding systems, offering strategic guidance. Always consult with a solicitor regarding Section 20 agreements and safeguarding duties.

[Suzie, FRG Adviser]

Dear Meath76

Welcome back to the parents’ forum. I am Suzie, FRG’s online adviser. Thank you for your post. As a grandmother, you could use our tailored kinship carers’ forum here if you need any further advice and information as you may be offered useful support from other relatives too.

I am very sorry to hear that your family are still having difficulties. You have provided a very helpful update.

Children’s services did not follow up on their plan to ask your grandson's father to care for him. You were worried that would not have been right for your grandson, so I am glad to hear that did not happen.

I will address the points raised in your post below and provide clarification about your grandson’s legal status as another parent’s response contains inaccurate information.

Although your daughter agreed to a section 20 voluntary arrangement for her son six months ago, the information in your post indicates that he remained at home in his mother’s care. This means that he was not/ is not accommodated under section 20. He could still be placed with a kinship foster carer/unrelated foster carer under section 20 in the future, if his parent/s and children's services agree. So, this is an option your daughter can pursue.

However, your grandson is not currently a Looked After Child(LAC) and LAC duties do not apply to him. Children don't live with a parent under section 20; your grandson lives at home with his mother who has parental responsibility.

When you last posted, there was a child protection plan so it is likely there still is. This means that there's an independent chairperson who oversees the conferences and is responsible for decision-making. In some areas they are known as an IRO, but their role is different from an IRO for Looked After Children.

It sounds as if your daughter has worked very hard to care for her children and to try to keep them both safe. She has worked with a specialist IPS service (I understand this to be Intensive Prevention Service – for children on the ‘edge’ of care ) to support her to safely care for her son at home, she successfully completed a therapeutic parenting course and adapted her parenting to help her manage her son’s behaviour and how she cares for him. It is good to hear how committed she has been to try to improve the home situation for her family.

Despite this, you grandson’s behaviour is still challenging and he continues to abuse his sister and mother verbally and physically. You play a very important role by stepping in to take him out of his family home, to safeguard family members. This affects your work as you have had to take unplanned leave.

You are unhappy with the social worker’s lack of communication with your daughter and the contingency plans when she is on leave. You are worried that children’s services will only act if a serious incident takes place.

As a family you are doing your best to manage a very difficult situation. Despite the child protection plan and IPS involvement it seems that there is not a clear timescale or decision about what happens next, especially if your daughter reaches a point where she is no longer able to manage or if it is not safe for your grandchildren to continue to live together at home.

In an emergency if the child’s allocated social worker was on leave, then the duty social worker would need to respond. If an emergency happened out of office hours (e.g. in the evening or weekends) then the Emergency Duty Team (Out of Hours) should assess and manage the situation if it could not wait until the social worker’s return. But otherwise it is usually best for the allocated social worker, who knows the family and their circumstances best, to respond. It is important though that your family has a clear safety plan agreed with their social worker setting out what to do in critical or worsening situations. It might include calling the police where necessary. The safety of everyone in the family comes first.

I would recommend that your daughter emails her social worker (copying in the team manager, if she wishes) to update them about the current situation, how this impacts on her and her children and to make sure she knows:

• When the work with IPS will be completed, how/when this will be reviewed – and what their recommendation are.
• When the next core group and child protection conference are and what task (if any) are still outstanding i.e. is there anything else that she has been asked to do as well as actions that the social worker or other professionals should do.
• Section 20 accommodation is still open to her – she can ask children’s services to proceed to find a safe and suitable placement for her son (with kinship or unrelated foster carers) if she is prevented from caring for him– please see here for fuller information about section 20.
• What help or support is being offered to her daughter to keep her physically safe but also to promote her emotional wellbeing.

If your daughter wants to challenge then she can make a complaint. Please see here for how to do so. If you/your daughter want to contact your MP, you can find their contact details via this link.

Your daughter could use our template letter (1) here to ask children's services to provide her with an advocate to help her participate in meetings with them, if she is vulnerable or has a disability. We have a guide here.

There are links to useful services below:

• Family Line
• Sibs
• Respect young people’s directory.

I hope this helps. Please get in touch again or encourage your daughter to contact the advice line or to post a query, if she wishes.

Best wishes

Suzie

[Meath76]

Thank you for this
It all feels like everyone at this point is being failed
I will take your advice and hopefully get some support for them
You’ve been so very helpful

[Suzie, FRG Adviser]

Thank you for this
It all feels like everyone at this point is being failed
I will take your advice and hopefully get some support for them
You’ve been so very helpful

Dear Meath76,

Thank you for your kind feedback. Please do post again if you have further questions as things progress.

Wishing you all the best,
Suzie