advice needed

[lijaco]

Hi,
You may remember my story and again I need some advice. I have special guardianship of my gs who is now 4 years old. He has been placed with us since 4 months old. My son is his father. I also have a young son of 8 years. My son and gs attend the same school. Today my son has informed me that my son and his gf (Grandsons mum) was at school gates at play time today asking for their son! Girlfriend is only allowed letterbox contact and has never done that! Luckily my ds didn't get him to speak to them. I will be speaking to Headmaster tomorrow. Is there anything I can do about this?

you need to speak to school and let them know what is happening and to make sure they keep dgs safe in their care and confirm the names of the only people allowed to collect from school. what else needs to be done depends on terms of order. what contact does your son have, is that only letterbox too? are you in contact with your son? they need to be reminded of terms of order, in a letter as a record, and told that turning up at school is not acceptable. if there are further problems you might want to consider legal advice / making an application to the court that made the order for a prohibited steps order....

Do the mother and father still have PR?
My situation is different because I have adopted my GN so birth mum has no legal rights at all.

I think you need to get on to the social work team ASAP and seek their advice. I am not sure how helpful they are, we were lucky and had a team who would pass stuff like this onto Legal.

You will have to talk to the school and make sure every member of staff is aware of the situation and I would agree with going to the police.

I think a lot will depend on the reasons why your gs was removed and what conditions the court put in place when he was.

There is a kinship carers forum on [www.frg.org.uk] and you might get some advice on there. I would think a few of the grandparent carers have had to deal with similar.

Thank you for your replies.
I have informed school and they are going to look out for this. I haven't informed the police as Headmaster said that he has had this before and Police say that it is a public highway and there is nothing they can do, unless they do it more than three times. So it is keeping a record of it. Old queenie I have also contacted my solicitor who has given me a few action points to consider.

Maryz my son is allowed supervised contact but birth mother is not allowed any direct contact. My son I have discussed with you before on the teenager thread very similar to problems that you have been through, only my son had baby at aged 16. I cannot let my son in for any contact at the moment as he is now back with gf.

Mrs devere did you mean that you have adopted your grandson? I would like to do that but unsure if I can? Social services are no longer involved, but I did contact them today and their advice was to inform school.
Gs was removed as volatile relationship with gf and son, due to drug and alcohol abuse. Gf was herself removed by social services from her family as a teenager due to physical / emotional abuse neglect As was her brothers and sisters. Abandoned her baby from foster care placement for her and baby. Too interested in being with my son and doing what he was doing.
Did not turn up to any contacts, court hearings etc.

Hi. I adopted my great nephew.
Sounds like you are having a very stressful time.

Do you have any contact with other kinship/grandparent carers? I know of a few contacts if you think it would help.

MrsDeVere how was the adoption process for adopting your gn? I have been advised against adoption by my solicitor as he felt that it would be frowned upon.

It was pretty straight forward in some ways. SS pushed for adoption right from the off as he was so young. We were a bit taken aback as we thought the plan was to reunite him with birth mother.

We were a perfect match in many - our birth children were older than him, we were same ethnic background (more or less) and we lived out of borough but not miles away.

It still took two years though

I dont know of any gp that have adopted their gc. I suppose that extra degree of connection makes it more difficult?

The SGO didnt exist at the time so it was either a RO or adoption or continue fostering. Fostering wasnt really appropriate because he was so young and he wasnt going to go back to b.mum. When we found out more about the RO we were very wary. We knew that certain family members were likely to be manipulated into applying for their own RO and whilst we knew it wouldnt get anywhere we didnt want the disruption. Sharing PR with his b.mum would have been very problematic as well.

So it was adoption. We had to go through the same assessment process including a matching panel. That was a bit weird. Being asked what sort of child we were prepared to adopt and us saying 'um that one over there please'

Well for us we had contact from birth and parents didn't turn up to contacts so it was just me and my dh. We were visited by ss before baby was born to consider us as permanent carers. We had to go through the full assessment also. We were initially passed as foster carers. My gs sees us as his parents and because I have a young son of 8 years also he tries to call us mum n dad and he can't get his head around him saying grandma / grandad and that he is different in that respect. We would adopt him but don't think we can.

That is difficult lijaco. As far as I know there is not law saying you cannot adopt your gc.

We were lucky in that things became clearer as DS got to the age where he could speak. We were going to be aunty and uncle and then it looked like he was going to stay with us for a while but we didnt know how long. I was worried about how he would feel having to call us aunty and uncle whilst the others called us mum and dad.

Just as he was beginning to babble the final hearing decided to grant a full care order and move for adoption.

How do you feel about him calling you mum and dad? He can call his birth mum and dad 'daddy [first name]' and 'mummy [first name]. That was our plan when we thought DS would have a meaningful relationship with his birth mum. She disappeared and then SS had to stop letterbox contact because her cards and letters were . So now he just knows her by her first name.

Personally I dont see the problem with your little lad calling you mum and dad if thats what you all want. Families have been doing that for generations.

If you can bear it, it might be worth looking into your options for adoption. If the objections are just 'gps dont adopt' rather than anything legal or concrete it doesnt seem right does it?