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

Seeing you will remind her that she’s different, that her life is different. It opens up her own trauma around not being able to live with her Mum. You have to understand that from her point of view, there is an emotional and psychological level at which you must feel dangerous to her- it opens her up to big feelings and a harsh world. All you can do for her is respect that.

Call and write to her as often as you’re allowed to. Tell her about you day to day life, talk about pets or hair or food. Send little gifts- hair scrunchies, a book, a packet of sweets, a craft kit. Don’t make it expensive but do it consistently- do not miss a month.

Be a force for good in her little life.

@IamtheDevilsAvocado unfortunately for young people in care this isn't true at all. I've read the case notes of a young woman who gave her baby a room temperature milk while on a 1 hour supervised outdoor trip. This was reported as unable to meet basic needs and along with perceived risk due to childhood trauma was enough for her to fail an otherwise positive assessment.

One of my own young people failed as her baby cried while she was showering and it took her 110 seconds to get out and back to her baby who was safely in his cot. Emotional neglect? I don't think so.

And I'm not sure your example has any relevance to this?

I have experience of this from a professional standpoint. Children being removed from birth family is not done without good reason and is often as a last resort. One of the reasons being that the cost of a child in care is very, very expensive.

Really sorry to hear this OP. Irrelevant of why your dd is in care, sounds like it’s all difficult and sad for everyone involved.
Perhaps it’s the grandparents influencing your dd?
In terms of the social work side, if you have instagram there is an account called ‘lalalaletmeexplain’ who is an ex social worker who gives relationship advice etc. I think you can DM her via her ‘asklalalaletmeexplain
page and she may give you some advice? Not guaranteed of course xx

This with bells on. I do really feel for you @Marie299 but she's nine, I'm not surprised she's going back and forth between wanting to see you and not, she's only little and complex emotional issues are hard enough for adults! I really hope you can do the work to be there for her and can see her more when she's ready.

They kind of do, I became pregnant at 15 and they did had a very bad experience with one professional blatantly lying about me as well.
They’re also a lot harder on parents who were in care themselves I know quite a few people with stories similar to the ops.
I wasn’t even in care but when they wrote up their report when I was 15/16 they felt the need to add that my father drank too much when I was a young child (I didn’t even live with him so there was absolutely no need for that)

It’s a shame mumsnet doesn’t let you delete posts because this thread was a bit harsh the first few pages and could even be outing. Op I would try and move it to 30 days only so it disappears in a month

Hi OP, you have clearly had a troubling time and are making attempts to improve your situation.
I hope you are getting support and advocacy.
I know from personal experience that social services will only separate children from their parents as a last resort.
I don't doubt that you love your daughter and it is important to continue with maintaining contact and building bridges.
Parenting is very hard, even for those in supportive relationships and no one gets everything right.
Please take care of yourself.
Step by step

If you have a court order allowing you contact that isn't happening then you need to go back to court. In the meantime you need to do your telephone / video calls consistently at the same time and days every week. Try sending cards with a little gifs. Thinking of you. Hope you had a good week. The gifts don't need to be lavish or expensive a badge, stickers, her favourite sweets.

Realistically, she might feel some way about you or seeing you. Maybe she feels othered by you. Like all of her friends have a mum and dad and she's with her grandparents who are her parents until you visit and it reminds her that they aren't. Maybe seeing you hurts her. I'm sure she loves you but she's bound to feel a bit conflicted. Maybe she feels guilty about loving you because she loves her grandparents. Kids are complicated. Is she getting therapy?

As she gets older she may feel more able to articulate and express her feelings. I think you need to just keep the door open to future opportunities.

This is like one of those awful TikToks where parents claim that social workers took their DC ‘for no reason’ or, in one case because they ‘were jealous of the babies clothes’.

I’m sorry OP but I agree with many of the pp’s. Social services do not take children for no reason, why on earth would they? Where is the benefit to them? Not saying they are all saints but if anything I would argue that they more often than not don’t remove DC quick enough in many cases which leads to the horrible stories we see in the news almost every day.

Your daughter I’m sure will have lots of feeling around you that might be conflicting and distressing. You have to just keep going with what she wants and not push it further until she is ready. I very much doubt that anyone is lying about her not wanting to see you, again what would be in it for them?

Hi OP. Social worker for looked after children here. I am sorry that you’re going through this really tough situation. But I do think you need to spend some time reflecting on what’s happened in order to move forward.

Judges will only make a decision to remove children when they absolutely have to (please note only a judge can do this, not a social worker). You have had two children removed. Your lack of insight into why comes across strong on this post and I wonder if it does to your daughter too.

At this point in time, you should take some time to really reflect on why they were removed and what they need going forwards. If your daughter is happy with phone contact for now then don’t push her. Be there for her and show her you can put her needs above yours and respect where she is at with what type of contact she feels ok with.

If you do this consistently then she may want to increase this contact in the future, but this has to be led by her. Your job now is to remain calm and consistent, not blame others for her being removed and not asking her if she wants to see you (I would imagine you ask this and she finds it hard to say no so she says yes and then later tells her grandparents she doesn’t want to).

I wish you all the best.

Suggest maybe sending letters, gentle approach and perhaps building up to getting face to face contact. Maybe apologise for what they went through so they don’t think you are angry with them. It will come together in time

I feel for you. I highly doubt it it's totally your fault. That said, your daughter does need support growing up and so do you probably. I would focus on getting yourself into a gentle stable routine first, with an easy going job etc, and get support for yourself if you need it and give a bit of money to help your daughter grow into a decent adult if you can. It will be worth it for you all down the line. Then if that's in order, I can't see why you wouldn't be able to see her every 6 weeks. If/when you are on stable ground yourself, I would go back to court and apply. Sorry you're in this position. You have 2 kids who are doing well though, that's not a small thing and you will always be their mom. The kind of mom you want to be and how much you think they are worth is completely up to you, other people will follow suit

There are people on this thread with far more knowledge than me, but I wonder if your daughter is scared of being taken away from the only home she really remembers? Am I right that she has been with her paternal grandparents since she was 2? They are her constant, they are here safe place, they are home. I presume that you having them back is not on the cards and you are just looking to keep a bond with her which is totally understandable, but a 9 year old might not understand that. Can you reassure her and let her know that you recognise her grandparents are her primary care givers and will remain so whilst gently building your connection?
In life I have realised you can only ever meet people "where they are" as in, if you want a relationship with anyone you have to accept who they are and what they are comfortable with, they are unlikely to change.
Perhaps keep the phone calls going without mentioning any sort of face to face at the moment and be led by your daughter.

The way your DC feel about you will be rooted in why they were removed. You appear to be minimising the reasons for that.
The first thing you need to do is take responsibility for having your children removed, and think about the impact that has had on them. You build from there.
If you talk twaddle like ‘SS were on my back’, ‘they were removed cos my mum died’ you will never get a relationship back with them, because you aren’t acknowledging why and how you damaged them in the first place.

I agree with this.

I worked in a supported accommodation unit for children in care, my caseload was the mothers and babies. Young mums who were in care and then having babies of their own.

Every single one of the babies had a social worker, a couple because there was obviously significant risk due to mums lifestyle, but a lot of them had involvement because baby was deemed to be vulnerable due to mum being in care and having no support system in place.

Some mums were sent to mother and baby units where they were supervised or watched via CCTV 24 hours a day, some remained with us with regular social worker contact. Every single move they made was scrutinised.

Some of those mums absolutely should have had their babies removed, and some just needed a lot more support than was available to them, because they didn’t have a role model to look up to, they didn’t have experience of positive parenting and they didn’t have family or partner support.

I’d like some of the mums on this thread to remember their darkest moments with their newborn or toddler- up multiple times in the middle of the night with a screaming baby you can’t settle, tantruming toddler refusing to get in the buggy, weaning baby reusing to eat anything so you cave in and give them a biscuit instead of broccoli, and imagine how you would’ve felt coping with that when you were probably about 20 years younger than you were when you had your newborn plus living with 24 hour scrutiny from professionals and no family support at all.

All SGOs have parents retaining PR. However, the SGO holder has overriding PR.

I have my granddaughters on SGO.

This is really stupid what you've said. The post is about op wondering why her child doesn't want to see her. Taken at face value how on earth does it mean the post is all about op. She was asked questions she answered them. Seriously if you hadn't got anything worthwhile to say maybe head to the daily mail.

One thing that growing older has taught me is that you can't change the past. You can only change the future and the path in front of you. Going forwards, I would start writing a weekly letter to both children and end each one saying you love them and miss them. Keep it light - hope school has been OK, and you're sleeping well - and include a bit about what you've done too. That way, they will know you are thinking of them.

It's going to take baby steps - in a way (and I don't mean this horribly) you are a stranger to them. So let them get to know you, slowly and without any pressure from anyone. Once you start to build a bond again, life will hopefully get easier for all of you.

SS won’t be involved now. There will be an SGO support worker for the grandparents but that will be it. Unless a new concern is raised and a new case opened they will not just pop round and chat to this child. Nothing in OPs posts suggest SS would be interested.

You can’t ‘insist’ on contact. It doesn’t work like that. Very few SGO court orders have contact schedules written in. Usually it’s a ‘suggested contact schedule’ which is rarely more than once a month. Then it is up to the SGO holder to decide how and what this will look like.

If she can show significant change in her life she can apply to the court to discharge the SGO. This will be at her own expense and she’ll need permission from the court to try this.

She could also apply for a child arrangement order with a C100 form. It’s not common but can happen.

Yeah you can't do that. If the CHILD is refusing the visits the court will side with what the child wants.

I was 4 when my parents divorced and even at that age the court took me to a controlled room with a professional both with both parents present, with each parent individually (I assume to check interactions for any signs of fear, coercion or abuse) and then by myself to asked me what it was I wanted. It was my feelings that mattered in the final decision not either of my parents arguing about what they wanted.

Whilst it isn’t a reason, you have to understand that care leavers do face discrimination in this area that wouldn’t happen otherwise. There’s a huge amount embedded stigma towards them in terms of this sort of thing, and children are absolutely removed from birth for risk of emotional harm on the basis of their own past and little else. If you are care leaver, you are automatically referred to social care by midwives. I had it all myself although I was 26 at the time, it was one meeting and I never heard from them again, but even that isn’t really nice. What care leavers experience can’t be compared to someone who has not ever been in the system.

The label of ‘care leaver’ is used against you are you’re treated as a risk and not an autonomous adult, regardless of whether your behaviour aligns with that or not.

OP you clearly did something bad enough in the past to warrant the removal of your DC. My best friend is a social worker and they don’t want to take children away for no reason. You being in care and your mum dying when you were young would not warrant the removal. I think you’re in denial honestly and you need to face up to reality.

Have you read the responses on this thread from people who have worked in this area?

So because your friend is a social worker, you’re an expert on this? Despite no education in social work, social policy or sociology? Nor any personal insight into how the system works as you’ve lived it?

Thought not.