Kids in care

[Marie299]

My daughter is 9 and does not want to see me I don’t know what reason is but I have been told that it’s due to different reasons. It’s been two years since I’ve proper seen her and she’s on a SGO with grand parents and theys a court order stating my contact with her should be every 6 weeks which has not been happening.

When I have been on the phone to her she’s been asking when she can see me and then a few weeks down the line she does not want to speak to me or see me. Just finding things very strange I have spoken to her grand parent about this and they not really saying much other then my daughter is doing therapy play but how can my bond with her even build when I am not invited to these things either.

I don’t know what to do I’m in the middle on going to court or just waiting it out but it’s been two years and worried that if I do nothing then my bond with her will never be fixed.

need advice

@constantgarden find it hard to write to her sometimes like on what I should write and stuff

Then you may have to look at mediation/court to get visitation.

Put aside your own needs though and think, is it really in your daughter's best interests to be uprooted from her home of many years, where she is settled and established?

@windchimeheaven I ain’t removing her from where she’s living

You've not seen your daughter at all in 2 years after only seeing her once every 6 weeks for the previous 5 years but you have fortnightly contact with your son who lives in the same house. Is that correct @Marie299 ? If this is the level of contact you have with her, it really does sound like she is trying to people please when she talks to you but the reality is you are basically a stranger to her and she doesn't want to see you.

A harsh reality but if she genuinely doesn't want to see you, it isn't in her best interests to force her. She will see the imbalance in how much contact you have with her brother and that could also mean to her that you prefer him.

Stop placing blame. Stop explaning. If you want a relationship with your daughter look to the present and the future. A 9 year old is not interested in the details of your life or in having her life changed significantly. You have to accept that you have to make a very big effort to gain your daughter's trust. There is only today and tomorrow. No yesterday.

Respekt your daughter's choices and needs and she migt one day want a closer relationship with you.

@ImmortalSnowman it was every 6 weeks for both but then soical changes it to every 2 weeks for my son to get a better bond with him but my daughter gets asked when my son comes on the phone and she says no so it’s not be favouriting my son it’s the way soical did it for my son at the moment but my daughter has the option there which I don’t know if the option is being said to her with proper prompting

If they're supporting your son to interact with you regularly, it seems unlikely that they wouldn't do the same for your daughter?

There will be reasons why DD doesnt want to see you. You need to be truthful with yourself. Have you let her down before? Been inconsistent with contact? She will have spoken to people about why she was removed. At 9 they start to have loads of questions.
Listen i don't want to have a go as it seems you're getting it tough but SS cant just remove kids. I know you're saying they can but I work in this area and its the last resort. Please work on yourself because that is the key to your daughter wanting to see more of you. Being defensive about your past I understand but it is relevant for today and you need to accept it and get help for things.
Do you see your son that was removed?

@windchimeheaven SW can’t do much for my daughter as she’s on a SGO and my son is on a care order it’s done to the grand parents to sort contact out between me and my daughter and promote it and it’s down to SW for me and my son

Because she has been removed under a care order. You don’t lose PR if your child is taken into care.

She shouldn't be prompted to talk to you. She would join the call with your son if she wanted to talk to you. The best advice you can follow is to send her letters every couple of weeks and let her decide when she wants to talk to you again. You are very much a stranger to her.

@Crimble123 I have already had the help with things and contact with my daughter has always been good she’s always enjoyed it but they were load of times when she wanted more contact and social and her grand parent never gave it her and it was me trying to fight it to let it happen my daughter wanted more hours too but never got it even though I also tried doing that too for her I had 2 hours every 6 weeks and my daughter voiced she wanted more and then she stopped contact

@ImmortalSnowmanin foster care promoting contact with children and parents is a most as it’s important for the children’s well being

I also grew up in care and had a very rough childhood. However, neither me or my siblings (except one) have ever had social services involvement as adults. Midwives and the health visitor did not bat an eyelid and in fact said it explained why I am highly resilient so this just doesn't ring true.

What they will care about is issues that are likely to affect your ability to parent and stability e.g. domestic abuse, substance abuse, mental health, lifestyle factors etc

Only one of my siblings has had social services involvement and had a child removed after being given significant support. Like you she blames this on her childhood but in truth she was a dreadful parent due to alcohol abuse and choosing unsavoury men over her child. She was allowed to keep her second child and was an awful parent to her too but was no longer abusing alcohol at that point so deemed ok.

Your child might have memories of difficult times with you which may be making her hesitant. Two years is a long time in a child's life and she may be fearful of unsupervised access. I think you need to start small, send meaningful small gifts to show your daughter that you are thinking of her and speak to the grandparents about supervised access so you can build up to unsupervised access and build a bond with your daughter.

Continue to go through the courts to get the contact enforced, but if dd doesn’t want to meet you please respect her decision.

It sounds like she feels rejected by you even though you didn’t clearly choose for her to be removed. She may feel abandoned or unsafe with meetings at the moment.

She will get older and will understand more fully your situation in time. You can build a relationship with her by sending gifts, with short letters of love. Phone calls. Texting and other ways so that she gradually starts to trust you again.

This may take time, but soon she will be older and more able to decide for herself how much contact she has with you.

It is importabt to tell her how much you loved her, acknowledge the pain she been through in her early life, keep listening snd loving her.

I’m sorry this has happened to you and your children. It is very common to find parenting too hard when you have a child very young, or if you haven’t been parented yourself because you are in the care system. Without support, it is very hard.

If your son is with the same family as your daughter, and is regularly coming every two weeks, then I think that the grandparents are probably trying to encourage a relationship from their end, but that it isn’t working for your daughter.

It sounds like you have done a great job of getting set up with an adult life with a house and a job. That’s brilliant.

I think that it has probably been a very difficult thing for your daughter being removed from you and growing up with her grandparents. She probably loves you a lot but has complex feelings about you not having been able to keep her. It is good that she is doing therapy.

In your position I would try to consistently have some sort of contact with her every two weeks, on the same days you have her brother, so that she can see some consistency in what you’re doing. And like pp have said, if she doesn’t want to see you I would make that contact in a form she is happy with.

Examples of things which you could do are text her, write her a postcard, write her a letter, call her (these seem to be going well), if you buy a food treat for her brother get her one too, if you buy a little gift for her brother get her something too, give her a book you liked when you were 9, say hi when you drop off or pick up if this is allowed. You don’t have to do the same thing each time.

The other thing which I would do is, if you’re on the phone with her, I would take all of the pressure about seeing you away. I’d say something like “grandma says you don’t want to see me and I want to let you know that’s ok. I’ll always want to see you, but I’ll never force you to see me. And if you change your mind in future we can see each other however you want, wherever you’re comfortable with”. Sometimes removing the pressure let’s a child make a different decision.

i get what you saying but foster care and special guardianship are completely different…..a foster carer doesn’t have PR…..but when an SGO is granted it gives the carer PR …..so of course the carer is going to have more input and decision making freedom and the judges will respect that as they are the ones who have ordered the guardianship…..just let your DD know that you’ll always be there and bide your time …..don’t push it….go at your DDs pace…..take the pressure off her to see you ….make the most of the phone contact….I wish you well

OP you say you've changed and that's amazing. However, your daughter has had 9 years of trauma before you've changed that will likely remain with her for life. She's had to endure the trauma of being removed from her mum and whether you want to admit it or not she's probably had to experience things no child should have to in the process. Somebody else has fed her, washed her, taken her to school, looked after her when she's poorly. Somebody else had managed her tears and tantrums and her deep emotions that have come from being removed from her parents.

Nobody is trying to put you down but the pragmatic truth about it is that social services don't just remove children from their primal bond because their parent had a traumatic childhood. They remove them when the parenting is going to have adverse effects on the child and there's no other choice. Yes it's shit and nobody is saying it's easy or that you haven't had a rough time of it yourself but part of maturing enough to have a meaningful relationship with your children will be acknowledging that the decisions that were made were made to protect your children and minimise that cycle of trauma not perpetuate it. Part of this is also acknowledging that your 9 year old now has trauma of her own to process and that you can't just expect her to heal from that trauma and come running to you and hail you mother of the year just because you feel that you've now sorted your life out. She's at the age where she's probably starting to process everything that's happened to her in an (almost) adult way. She is for sure going to be hurt and confused and angry. You need to give her the space to make peace with it all. She is the defenseless child here.

Your posts are all about you. If this is the language you use and the way you defend yourself to your kids then they will likely see straight through it and it will do nothing to build a bond. Start by keeping the door open and letting them come to you. When they do come to you don't guilt trip them or hold them responsible if they haven't wanted contact with you for a while. Just be open and loving and make it clear how much you enjoy the contact. Most of all admit your own failures and don't hold them responsible for your happiness. It's a marathon not a sprint. Just be open to contact whenever it's offered and try and think about what is best for your children. They're human beings with big feelings of their own. They need to be respected as such.

Absolutely this. There is something amiss here. I work in social work and children being removed from their care is an absolute last resort.

Social workers don't just wake up one day and decide to remove childen. They need to have a the approval of a judge before removing a child and no judge would simply approve of a child been taken away from their mother due to them having a bad childhood.

Is your son older or younger than your daughter? As they both live with your daughter’s dad’s parents- where is he (your daughter’s dad) in all this? Does he have a relationship with her? How old was he when you were 16 and pregnant?

There’s been some good supportive advice on this thread OP, so hope you can keep sight of that and not get too bogged down in some of the harsher comments. You can’t change the past now, all you can do is keep moving forward.

This thread is so sad.

I would consider myself an excellent parent but at 17 with no family support I don’t think I would have managed. I suspect most peoole would have struggled.

But OP you need to be honest with yourself about the situation. SS can’t take anyone into care. The only people who can take children into care are the police for max of 48 hours and a judge. Taking children into care it damaging for them and expensive so it isn’t done lightly. Occassionally judges make the wrong decision but it doesn’t sound like you’re arguing that you were a good enough parent at the time. You were still a child yourself.

You child WILL have attatchment issues. Please read up on it. It is caused by her going into care. You likely have atatchment issues yourself, you may need more support around it. It will have a huge negative impact on her life. It maybe part of the reason she doesn’t want to see you. I have a 9 year old, your 9 year old will be questioning why you aren’t in her life and why you don’t even right to her. The lack of letters in on you. You’re the adult here, you need to be consistent for her. As a child witj attatchment issues she needs this. Even if it’s difficult for you in terms of parenting it isn’t a big ask.

You still seem very immature as your post is all about what it is like for you with not much thought about what your child is going through. Even if her Dad and grandparents are doing an amazing job she will have suffered emotional damage from the seperatiom from you and every time you fail to send her a letter you are adding to have damage and pushing her away.

You said you were 18 when your son was removed beacuse he wasnt supervised. You are 27 now and your daughter is 9. So did you have both children at 18? As a professional working in the field, I can assure you no court will sanction the separation from a parent just because you were in care. Like other people have said you need to start being honest with yourself about why she was removed as your lack of acceptance will be far more damaging to your daughter when she is older. Especially with the views you hold around her grandparents. They have given up their lives to raise your child as you couldn't at that time, without them putting themselves forward, she would most likely have been adopted.

You say your daughter is telling you she misses you and wants to see you. However, this may not be how she truly feels, she might tell you this to prevent upsetting you or stop you asking. I know you won't want to believe she might do it but I can assure you, children do it all the time.

You have 3 options

Speak to the SGO support team within the local authority where your child lives and ask them for some support (they might have a joint team with the post adoption team)

Go to court for a child arrangement order for contact.

Wait until she is ready to see you but accept she might never be ready.

@Bluffingwithmymuffin no soical got involved organically coz I was in care as a child and they stuck with me until I my kids went in to care the whole point of them being involved was because my age and because of my past and losing my mum as a young age and due to having little support from family I had no where to go too when things got too much and social saw that and used it against me they made me feel like very little mistake was something so massively to the point where I couldn’t even let my daughter cry even for a second they was in to me like a rash and you wouldn’t understand that because your not in my life and I wouldn’t never say something if it wasn’t true I ain’t one of these mums that post shit on soical and make up lies as to why my kids aren’t with me at the end of the day the way they treated me was scum and they drained every little happiness I ever had they made me develop anxiety due to the constant looking over and judging my own soical worker even had my back in meeting explaining how much I am trying but these negatives are obvious going to break a young teen mum to no self worth! I DO NOT DRINK AND I DO NOT TAKE ANY DRUGS the only thing they had on me was because I was in care I lost my mum so young and I was abused as a kid even going through therapy all the way through primary never made soical think I could be a good mum to my kids they pulled every card out so I failed and I had no fight left in me to the point I was extremely mentally exhausted it effect my mental health more and the way I looked after my kids so I think before looking in to your one experiences with your own family who clearly had issues with alcohol I think you may need to read the other messages above and actually having that faith in that one I aren’t that got bullied in to failing on her kids as it got too much

You mentioned you Have a partner, are they the problem?

@Nestingbirds thank you for this support and I know deep down she’s hurting but it’s so hard as a parent not seeing your child and wondering what can I do I would never want mine and her bond to ever be broken