Social services asking me to have son and girlfriend and baby living with me

It would be a no from me. If they stay with you, socially services will wash their hands of them. Social services will have to support and accommodate them. Shit for council taxpayers in your area of course but it is what it is.

It really depends what you and they understand to mean support. Long term support with the needs of the child - no, probably not, unless the child has SEN too and any SEN parent knows the limits of that support. Long term support for the DS to parent the DC? again, no. Short term support to apply for any grants, adult social care assessment, letters of support written to housing, negotiation and advocacy with adult social care, yes a good social worker will do all that, but there's no guarantee of the outcomes anyone wants and once the case is closed the social work support will be zero. Children's social work family support services aren't set up to provide long term support to parents.

My long experience with Social Services is that once you agree with their suggestion you will be left to cope on your own. Keep them at arm's length and keeprefusing. It may take them a little longer to find another solution, but they will.

Just Say No.
And mean it. Stick to it.
SS should help find them somewhere they can be together as a family or for the mother and baby.
Perhaps in a supported living situation.
You cannot be responsible for your adult son and all the life choices he might make.
Where does it end?
You are entitled to live your life in your own home.

That seems the fairest solution if you want your grandchildren to be brought up within your family. I don't see why the burden should only fall on her family.

Absolutely not.

I know it's very easy for me to say that from a place of total impartiality and no emotional involvement, but absolutely not.

You work. You care for your mother. Now you're expected to parent not one but two teenagers with additional needs and their baby who will all be living in one room in your house?

Don't do it OP.

What happens when that baby is a child and they no longer fit in one room? What happens if they cannot parent at all? What happens if other grandparents kick them out?

I guarantee you there will be absolutely no help, SS will wash their hands of the whole sorry affair.

If this was my 19 year old I’d be asking her to consider an abortion. Even without additional needs the vast majority of 19 year olds would need a huge amount of support.

Girlfriend and baby need to live at her parents’ house. Your son continues to live with you and sees the child when he can. Both teen parents have SEN so the child will likely have SEN too, maybe significant SEN. Do you work? If not you could babysit during the day if both teens are at work/in education. The girl also needs to have an iud or depo. You need to tell your son to never have sex without a condom. They might have more kids.

SS will do nothing and they and baby need to be somewhere permently, if baby is removed by SS they will ask you to have baby, also is she just going to get pregnant again, also if they both have special needs then highly likely baby will,.does your son work,.i.would not have them at yours, why is the girl not living with her family and why didnt her family sort out contraception for her, poor wee baby

This is going to sound heartless but it would be a definite no from me. I feel for you.

Thank you for answering. I think my issue is that SS are suggesting to the OP that help and support will be forthcoming and other posters are telling her not to believe this.

I was wondering whether you could refute this and reassure the OP that support will be in place or whether the truth is, that SS are indeed just saying this because it’s the best financial and workload outcome for them? I say this because we all know how ridiculously overworked social workers are ATM. We know you don’t have enough time to give due diligence to the cases you have and yet are often expected to take on more and more.

I have every sympathy for social workers in this scenario. However, I don’t think it helps for them to paint as picture to the OP of being there on the end of the phone ready to help when the reality is likely very different. Better to say, if you can’t, we fully understand and this is the likely outcome. I know I couldn’t do it over again even if that meant adoption. Even if I knew the baby was NT, I couldn’t face sleepless nights, nappies and toddlers tantrums in my late 50s and primary school runs in my 60s and up into my 70s. I’m still shattered from the first time around and I’m still parenting two NT teens at the moment. I simply couldn’t do it either physically or mentally regardless of the alternative. I’m sorry if that’s unpalatable to some.

They won't get supported accommodation to look after the baby. The baby will be taken into care.

My neighbour has this situation, albeit without a baby (a married couple with SEN). Meanwhile her DC is getting older and the council are offering no support going forward. Neighbour is older than me (and I'm not young) and worries about what will happen when she dies.

They need supported accommodation. Particularly with a baby or the risk is that the baby could be taken into care.

If they're old enough to have a baby, they're old enough to live away from their parents.

You COULD tell SS and your DS that the best you can do is that HE stays. But that you can't have his whole family living there.

This.

You have nothing to blame yourself for.

By all means support from a distance, moving in with you will never work.

when I have worked with clients with a baby (they were all removed within a few months of birth) one of the things that were made clear to support staff was we weren’t allowed to in any way shape or form touch the baby/child. Even if they left the baby to roll on the floor, sleeping facedown or anything dangerous we simply weren’t insured to touch the child. There were occasions when babies had overflowing nappies and support workers just had to call social workers and had to leave them filthy because the parents would be refusing to change the baby. There were lots of rules due to insurances. I wonder if there is too much red tape for the places you suggest to take in families? On paper it sounds ideal, almost like family supported living? I suppose everything comes down to money really. I hope your mum is doing well!

I too believe this. Neither or you should do this. Social services will try and keep the family together eg parents and baby and grandparents do not need to support with day to day living social services need to.

I have a good knowledge of the care system, ie those cases the local authorities take to court. You have had good advice on this thread. They will give you very little help. Either you, or the maternal grandma, will end up as primary carer for the baby. And if it is you, you will lose any chances of your son living anywhere other than in your home. Basically you will be having another baby.

I have adult sons. I'd say no to this

I wonder @TheOchreEagle if the girl's DM felt much as you do, that she couldn't cope with full time but felt under pressure to agree so said she'd do half,hence the SS looking to you for the rest.
In reality you don't seem to want to do this either and you'll get no argument from me, you're between a rock and a hard place just at the point where you'd hoped life was getting easier. I'd speak to the girl's DM and see how she really feels about this because half with you and half with her isn't going to work for anyone

You will be the scapegoat for everything that goes wrong with this, whether you do or you don't.

No-one will appreciate what you do if you take them in-certainly not the feckless pair who decided "intentionally" to have a baby-and nor will the social services.

So, let them go ahead and make you the scapegoat but don't ruin your own life into the bargain.

Say no.

Those set ups are for adults with LDs, not for adults who need help to parent their children.

I would do everything I could to ensure a grandchild of mine didn't end up in foster care, and I say that as a foster carer. Most foster families do their best with extremely limited resources and a lot of stress, and there are not nearly enough of us at the moment. We are not infrequently begged to take infants on 20 minutes notice, with the social worker driving the baby around while their colleagues make frantic phone calls trying to find a placement, while we already have tricky older foster children, eg with trauma responses causing them to be violent, or to scream all night every night. DH and I rarely feel we're the best option for the baby in this kind of situation, and generally have to sit down and try to work out whether we are the least-worst option.

Having said that, this half the week plan is not necessarily the least-worst option, as lots of people with autism find transitions especially disruptive. It might be setting things up for these young parents to fail. If I were you, I'd be pointing this (or any other factors based on knowledge of your son and his girlfiriend) out to social services and working with them on better solutions. These vary in different parts of the country, but in ours there are mother and baby placements within family environments, as well as a local charity who have lovely mother and baby homes with resident care support. (A former foster daughter of ours who has SEN lived in both with her baby, and thankfully has ultimately kept her child thanks to the early intervention.) There can be long waiting lists so getting on lists for these as soon as possible is advised.

I'd also, OP, focus on what you can offer. For example, if her mum takes them FT, could you offer regular respite support, where mum and baby come to you some weekends for a 'holiday'? It might make all the difference to her mum in being able to commit to taking them full time. I would also recommend that you make sure social services document repeatedly that you want to be actively involved in your grandchild's life, and make sure you see the mum and baby really regularly, so that if the worst happens and it all falls apart nothing happens without you being informed, and considered for care even if only short term or respite if you want to be.

I have all the sympathy for any grandparent who wouldn't want to take this on. But realistically there is little support available in the long term, no. And so if the parents can't do it, it's likely that adoption would be the outcome.

Have you spoken to the mother? I wouldn’t believe this until I’d heard it myself. I wouldn’t put it past SS to have told the mother that you’d agreed to have them half the week, so she felt she had to say she’d have them the other half.

Anyway, it would be very disruptive for baby and the two parents, moving around like that. It would be better for the baby’s young mum to stay with her parents with the baby and for your son to visit. Or, if they’re able, they should move out somewhere with support. You say you spoke to your son and he’s gone ahead anyway. Don’t shield him from the consequences of that.

Importantly, it sounds like you have more than enough on your plate anyway. I think you should refuse. You matter too.

Absolutely not, OP. It would be ridiculously disruptive to keep shunting this baby between houses. The girlfriend's mum has probably only agreed because she thinks she'll be stuck with the baby full-time otherwise.

As others say, SS will dump this problem on you if you can. Don't let them. Your son stays with you and the baby stays with his/her mother unless they move in together into supported housing or whatever. Don't be bullied into agreeing to anything because otherwise you'll be stuck with another baby to look after and financially support, probably forever.

I'm so sorry you're going through this, what an awful dilemma for you and your partner. Why can't she live with her parents, how is your son going to step up and provide for his new family. Do they both realize how serious the situation is and they have the future of a child to now consider. Was a termination discussed at any stage or was it too late when you found out.