Wife wants step children back.

Contact social services now before she gets the house so when they do their assessment they see the real situation. If you wait they will only visit the new house and the history will be your word against hers.

Apply to court for PR and contact. I think you need to accept you will almost certainly loose resistance of them. However if you stay in these girls life- and you need a court order to be able to maintain contact- if mother continues to act as she has historically you can take it back to court and get residency back.

You have run afoul of the law on homeschooling. You have to have PR and it's a parents responsibility to ensure a child is getting an appropriate and full time education. The situation you describe with the tutor is an unlicensed school and she's going yo be in BIG trouble. You can use tutors as a person with PR with the responsibility to oversee it but many hours group tutoring like this is not accepted. We have ofsted for a reason! HOWEVER you can't sign a child up for school without PR. The mother has PR took the decision to home school and then not supervised it so she's the one at fault. The kids will get into the education officer system and be ordered to attend school most likely. The fact you didn't take action to get PR/get them I to school will just show a court judge how irrisponsible you have been and those kids have been let down. (Even if the education they are getting is great society is set up against home education-I home Ed so I'm not anti this approach).

You don't need a solicitor or a lawyer to go to court. You can be a litigant in person- which means you self represent. I would advise you pay a solicitor for a couple hours of their time to talk you through what you need to do to get PR and contact that needs to be your priority right now. Ask how to expitide the court date there is a type of application you can do to get heard urgently rather than the normal months waiting- you must do this before she gets her house!!

Op. The mum here abandoned them and this should have been reported to authorities immediately

Good progress

But as every single poster (virtually) has pointed out, you do also need to contact SS.

Agree with the idea of alerting local police to the 12th handover date if you think it might get ugly.

Wishing you all the best of luck.

Get more than one. Really. As many as possible. They only have opinions rarely facts so get some ballance.

This sounds like a very sensible step forward.

What's important here is the welfare of the children and there is absolutely no way you should be handing them over to someone who has a history of being unsafe. Any access should be arranged at an access centre so the girls can get to know her again and SS can investigate whether her being in the girls life is safe for them.

As well as making SS aware, I would also go as far as contact the police for advice as come the 12th September, it is likely that she could turn up at your door screaming and shouting. If the police are aware that there is likely to be a disturbance then they can support you.

Be prepared for a battle. Some kids I know had a very similar situation where the mother was mentally unstable and passed away suddenly. The step father (no parental responsibility) looked after them but their biological dad (violence issues and not a nice person) then started talking about custody. The kids had to temporarily go into foster care whilst authorities gathered information. They then returned to live with the step dad and still do.

Wow. Helpful.not

This is what people aren't understanding. In large scale child abuse DC are often 'tutored' in these situations be someone involved in the abuse. People prey on vulnerable women for access to their DC. I'm not saying OP, that this is what has happened here. But noone on here can be sure that it isn't either.

If the tutor is providing a full-time education to your 3 DSDs and 3 other (presumably CSA?) children how are they getting around the unregistered school rules?

You need to make an urgent application to the court for an Interim Child Arrangements Order, and a Prohibited Steps Order to stop her removing them from your care whilst assessments are undertaken. You will need permission from the court to apply as you do not have PR. Cafcass will then be directed to complete a S7 report.
There are no welfare concerns for SS to consider, and step-parents are considered close relatives, it will be seen as a family arrangement with no role for a social worker, its not private fostering either.
Ther is no obligation on OP to tell SS - 'If the local council didn’t ask you to look after the child you don’t have to tell them the child has come to stay with you.'

Looking after someone else's child - GOV.UK

Good luck op.
Ignore the nasty pp’s on here.

'The school'.

OP has said approximately 12 times that the children have always been homeschooled.

Threads like this me worry so much! The OP was a woman responses would be so different, surely the gender of the parent in this situation should not cloud people’s judgement to this extent.

i am a qualified social worker and situations like this are more common than we may like to think (think grandchild living with grandparent full time).

OP well done for stepping up and doing more than what many would be able to. You need contact social services and access a lawyer asap, it’s important to highlight the concerns re the children living with their mum and evidence that you are consider a safety factor for them. They can assist with a special guardianship Ore or you may have to do it private One way is to apply to the court for a Child Arrangements Order that allows the child to live with the step-parent either on their own or with another person, although these are not common. The court can also issue a Parental Responsibility Order as a result of an application by the step-parent.

@Mumofteenandtween this isn't an activity though, this is full-time tutor who is essentially running a small unregulated private school, and so should be aware, like teachers in state and regulated private schools, of safeguarding and the legal status of the children in her care.

I wish you the best op, having had experience with family court I think you've got your work cut out to keep the girls, unfortunately she's well within her rights to take the girls whenever she wants.

Paperwork for dropping off etc would just been 'Individuals permitted to pick up child' Mum, Stepfather, Grandma, Auntie Fanny, wouldn't it?

SS need to be involved immediately.

Obviously you are going to paint yourself great and say they love you etc... (not saying you are lying) but you MUST she how incredibly dodgy it is that you took 3 off grid children you have no guardianship over and have hid them from services designed to protect children for years in absence of the parents when the mother sounds like she is suffering MH issues.

That is factually unfortunately a very common tactic of abusers to the point your story is a MASSIVE red flag.

Why on earth didn't you report it and get you wife help? (even if she refused you would have tried and there would be record)

An independent non bias person needs to get to the bottom of whats best for the kids.

Health services and school should have been telling you you need a guardianship order. The school shouldn’t have let you deregister as you don’t have parental rights. If I read that you homeschool correctly. You need to contact social services immediately and tell them the situation. They will speak to the previous school and the children. If she is an unfit parent other family members may have stepped in. But social services need to decide. It’s a really hard situation for you to be in but you should have seemed guardianship.

Especially if the kids call him dad. My husband (who is the kids dad emotionally, biologically and legally) has taken the kids to all sorts of activities and never once has anyone checked their birth certificates or their DNA. They just handed them over to the man they call “daddy”.

https://kinship.org.uk/support-and-advice/advice-and-information/how-do-i-obtain-parental-responsibility-for-the-child-i-am-caring-for/

have a look at this website. Social services are supposed to be informed if you’re looking after children that you don’t have PR for. I think it’s once they are with you for more than a month.

This is your best plan.

I wish the children and you the best result.

Good luck OP. I think it's positive that you have a number of third parties to verify how you're doing as a parent.

Also, the girls sound like they don't want this to change.

@pinkpjamas1 because she should have asked for some paperwork? That's what policies are for.

I find it very odd that you have no official responsibility for the girls and didn't see fit to seek this out

OP I think some people are seriously missing the point. You were in a relationship with their mum from them being tiny, you assumed the Dad role, their mum left and you continued your life with them on the course that had been set (including home schooling). An oversight in hindsight not to sort the legalities, but essentially you / they view you as their Dad and they have a stable and loving home with you. You’ve done nothing wrong here and I’m not sure why people are having a dig. Hoping you get sound legal advice and can sort this so you can continue your lives together.