Daughters Relinquished baby- when more than one comes forward to take care UK

[E91m76]

Hi,
Very long story short ,
Young daughter has had a baby she has relinquished in UK .
Baby is currently in temporary FC.
We grandparents have stepped forward to SS to be assessed to care for baby, young father has now also stepped forward (we are under the understanding he does not have support of family his mother as ill health etc) we are told he also will be assessed as well as us.
What happens now ?
Will they favour BF even though he is very young doesn't have much support etc?
Our replies from SS are very vague.
I understand these situations don't happen much in the UK so i know answers will be limited however appreciated.

I would imagine social services may take a dim view on the fact you didn’t support your daughter with the baby before now?
Why are you all of a sudden interested?

Perhaps you provide support to the father?

@berksandbeyond sorry I realise I tried to shorten the story down but should have added in she lives with her mum and stays with us weekends and holidays ,we have supported her throughout .
We believed adoption was the right decision but upon her having the baby seeing how she was in the hospital with baby ect believe she doesn't want to totally lose her she has said "she cant ask it of us (she isn't) but she also knows she cant fully care for her". There is a lot more to this but ive just tried to give a brief really for the questions asked.

@Timeforchangeithink We would support him best we could if he where to care for baby but there is only so much support we could give? he couldn't move in with us and as he is young and in education and his mother cant support? I'm not sure how much we could support him from afar .

hi @E91m76

these situations are emotionally charged, complex and difficult, so I wouldnt worry too much about Social services taking a ‘dim view’
I dont think they will necessarily favour the father - they will act in what they asess as the best interest of the baby.
that includes housing, financial stability, for him in particular they will look at support network. If he is young and in education and lacks family support I think he might struggle.
For you, they will probably also consider your willingness to support contact with dad.

@Ted27
Thankyou, its very complex and difficult for all involved. we just seem to get very little and vague replies from social services and feel very in limbo - we understand they are very busy and there is probably a lot going on behind the scenes.
We have made it very clearly from our side if we where to care for baby , all family contact will be supported unless SS advise a reason not too, but it also wont be forced if its not something anyone wants.
We just want the best for baby and all parties.

I have come across similar circumstances in my area of work. In my experience, social care will carry out very detailed and searching assessments of all members of the family who have shown an interest in taking on responsibility for the child. They will look at the ability of these individuals to provide a stable home for the child into adulthood.

They won't therefore automatically favour the father just because he is the father.

I was just looking for some resources that I could recommend and found these:

compass.kinship.org.uk/advice-and-information/adoption/

Part of the assessment would be the impact on your daughter of having you raise her baby that she relinquished. I’d have thought that if you were willing to raise the child you’d have had those discussions with her and come to a private arrangement rather than the baby going into care - early discussions with social services would have included exploring possible kinship arrangements and I’d want to know what had changed that you were now considering it.

The baby’s biological father would have parental rights either by being named on the birth certificate or through proof of paternity. His parental rights legally give him the right to raise his child regardless of his circumstances - it’s not the same as an adoption/guardianship process because he would already have those rights in law.

It would be legally no different than placing a child for adoption because the mother was young and unsupported. In that situation services would be put in place to support her parenting role, I’d expect the same to be in place for him unless he was considered a risk to the child.

They won't therefore automatically favour the father just because he is the father.

The father legally has the right to decide how his child is raised. I imagine the non-committal responses from social work will be because they are trying to establish who has parental rights because no decision can be made about the baby’s future until those rights are determined. It’s not a matter of favouring the father, it’s about establishing the legal status of child and parent. Grandparents have no automatic rights in relation to grandchildren, biological parents do.

@Jellycatspyjamas the back ground is a lot more complicated and not as straight forward for those early talks unfortunately we have had very little time.

She did not know she was pregnant until 29weeks her mum did not inform us until a further 2weeks, We also did not think we where in a position too. care for baby but upon speaking and looking into all factors in depth have agreed we could.
Discussions have been had with daughter about us caring for baby both with us and SS she is not against this.
Father was also in agreement with adoption until after we came forward (the day after baby was born) a week or so later he also "came forward".
I understand what you are saying regarding fathers legal rights and we don't have any -we are thinking as BF he would automatically take care of baby of us, I ask there is very little info on google , but as SS are saying he will be assessed as well as ourselves we aren't really sure but they also said if BM stepped forward she would also be assessed and it wouldn't be a straight baby is returned to her .

No it wouldn’t be a straightforward case of her baby being returned to her - they’d need to understand what was driving her change of mind to where she now thought she could offer care to her child. It’s not an easy process to relinquish a baby and she’ll have had to express a strong desire to have her child initially placed in care and then adopted, basically saying she couldn’t safely care for her child even with support.

Given this they won’t simply hand the baby back without understanding what has changed that she now thought she could in fact parent safely. In saying that, unless there were real concerns for the baby safety they’d struggle to get a permanence order without putting supports in place first to let her prove she could parent successfully.

Simply put, no one was in a position to care for the baby at birth, the child was placed in local authority care. Now there are several people saying they could possibly do it - including birth parents. Social workers will need to unpick all of that very carefully but unless there are real safety issues, birth parents will generally be the first port of call with support services to help and to monitor the baby’s wellbeing. It’s a complex, emotive issue but legally people with parental rights will usually be expected to take on parental responsibility unless there are very good reasons why they can’t, and can’t be supported to do so.

It would be worthwhile sitting down with both parents and exploring how they see things moving forward, what both their wants and wishes are because they will both need to agree to whatever course of action is decided on.

We have been asked to attend a looked after child review does anyone have any insights please ? We’ve been sent a form to fill in prior to attending but honestly we can’t really answer any of them as they are worded as though we already have the child/baby in our care which we don’t

The LAC review is the process of reviewing the child’s current care placement. I’m not entirely sure why you’ll have been invited but the form is really about gathering information from all of the people attending so if you can’t comment, because you don’t know, then leave it blank. It’s a way of making sure everyone with relevant information is able to share that.

In terms of the review, it would be worth asking them why you’ve been asked to attend, as grandparents wouldn’t usually be invited - it’s possible your daughter has asked that you’re invited but I’d want to know why so I could prepare properly.