AIBU to be angry my sister will not keep our niece?

[Sharktale2020]

I am so upset and angry with my sister but unsure if I have the right to be.
Our niece(a well behaved 14 year old) was removed by social services from her dads and is not able to return back.
She has been staying at my sisters(her aunties)but my sister is adamant that when the next review is up she can no longer keep her.
The truth is she doesn't want to in case it impacts on her many holidays and going out(she is in her 40s)
When I challenged her on why she just comes up with the most ridiculous excuses.
She has a spare bedroom and the means to give her a goodish life(considering what the poor girl has been through)
I have offered to do all I can -get bunk beds and have her every weekend but she still refuses.
I have volunteered to have her at mine despite having no room(she would have to share while we either put up a petition wall causing minimal space and we would be over crowded)
While this is being done she would have to go into care as my sister is counting down the days until our nieces time is up at hers and won't keep her a minute longer.
She has 4 people in her house who all drive and could help out-no young children.
My husband and I have our nieces sister living with us-a hyper active 6 year old who we have had since birth.
We love her dearly but life is hard and we get no help.
The irony is my sister considers herself to be a Christian woman!
Maybe it's me and people don't help each other any more but I can't think of any one who would see their niece go into care when they could prevent it without it dramatically affecting their life.
She knows how hard it is for us as a family and she really doesn't care.
How can someone have such a cold heart?
And to top it all she has told my niece she will like being in care as she will have her own bedroom and get taken out!!
No mention that it's likely she will be shipped around and gave to change schools.
The poor girl is going through enough.

Try breathing into a brown paper bag. I’ve heard it can help.

Or just step away from the thread, if only for the sake of your blood pressure, because ranting, raving and attempting to shame people really isn’t going to achieve what you seem to think it should.

Oh, I'm the nasty piece of work? You're the one who would quite possibly put your own teenage niece into care!

But yeah, when challenged, employ DARVO. It's a good one!

This is what I'm suggesting - that it's not a choice between housing the 14yo or abandoning her. It may be that the best of a set of bad options is for her to be taken into care but have a high degree of involvement and oversight from family members. You're right - the most important thing is to be curious and to be unafraid to kick up a stink.

Over my dead body would my niece or nephew go into care. I find it unbelievable that anyone who is not living on the streets would turn a family member out like that. I would find a way.

You were never in a position where you had to make the choice to take in your nieces and never will be. Yet you are attacking posters who in fact have adopted children who are "not their own progeny" and who have experience of the many complications of fostering and kinship care. Your posts are pure hypocrisy. If you really cared that much, you'd look beyond your own family and foster a girl in the system who needs you. But you won't.

It's pretty sad that there are people sharing personal, and sometimes traumatic experiences in this thread and someone is steamrolling over it derailing the whole thing for their own personal entertainment. In fact it's not sad, it's bloody shameful.

Cruel people deserve to be called out. And of course, they don't like to be. So now the messenger is getting shot.

I hope that all the people who have stuck up for the sister's decision reflect on how they would feel if they died and their sibling threw their own children into care at 14.

Not a nice thought, is it, Cruellas?

I agree, bloody shameful. How would THEY like their children to be put into care by their siblings, if something should happen to them? Utterly wicked.

This is the final time I will respond to you as I agree with a PP that the thread is getting derailed.

You are saying horrendous things about people you don’t know based on your (drunk?) interpretations of their statements on this thread.

You are coming across unhinged. It is possible to feel passionately about something without throwing abuse around at people.

To be clear, you have NO idea what I would personally do in this situation and also NO idea of my own personal experience of abuse, neglect or the care system.

It's like watching a madman rave on street corners.

If people don't feel capable of raising a child, they don't have to. And your hyperbole and mud slinging isn't going to change anyone's mind, or help the OP, so I don't really see what you get out of posting here.

Those poor kids. But you're angry at the wrong person. This falls on the waste of oxygen parents.

Actually, we did support my husband's niece from age 14, who was in a bad situation. She wanted to go to military school (this is abroad) so we sent her, as it was her dream to be in the military. She's 32 now and happily ensconced in the air force of her country. She's of a different nationality, so couldn't live with us, but her troubled mother lives in the UK and I offered to have her live with us, but my husband (whose sister it is) said no. Instead, his older brother, who is very wealthy, bought the mother a flat and paid her bills. We went halves on the military school and on her uni costs that weren't paid by the military. And we also gave her more money, and pastoral support, and had her to stay.

I thought I was used to all the stone-cold hearts on MN, but this thread has really shocked me. Do people not understand how vulnerable teenage girls are to all the pervs about?

You seem to think those of us you’re ranting at are required to care what you think of us. We aren’t.

You’re more than welcome to think what you like about me. Getting yourself worked up like this is however, is pointless. The only person you’re managing to upset is yourself, so it’s at most an exercise in masochism.

I'm appalled by someone who would turn their well-behaved teenage niece over to the care system instead of simply giving her a home for four years.

If that doesn't upset you, then I guess you're just the same. Insult me all you like, I have right on my side, and you don't.

I have 3 friends who are foster mothers. Two specialise in teen placements. They are bloody amazing at what they do and quite frankly it sounds like this poor girl would be better off with them then with an aunt who can't be arsed with her.
It pisses me off when people assume that all foster carers are abusers. Most abuse occurs in families and foster carers are professionals who are well trained and well vetted.

I notice the insults began when I asked how people would feel if they died and their own kids were turned over to the care system instead of living with a sibling.

Finding the mirror uncomfortable, are we?

Oh Christ, I've heard it all now.
'i safeguarded our family member by agreeing with my husband when he refused to house her and sent her away to military school while our excessively wealthy family threw money at the situation instead'
Military school, those well known academies of nurturing, love and support... Definitely trolling (and yes I've reported not just troll hunting)

Be pissed off at the facts, not at the people taking the facts into account. Stats show that abuse is rife in the care system. The fact that it's not everyone doesn't mean it's not rife.

Like you and your husband?

Well my kids are all adults so it’s kind of a moot point.

What about me and my husband? We did loads for my niece and her mother, and would have had his niece to live with us if there wasn't an international immigration barrier.

Right, so you attacked another poster whose husband wouldn't be happy with them fostering, but you (like the wet lettuce you accused someone else of being) caved in to your own husband refusing a caring/housing responsibility towards his own vulnerable sister (and by extension, his niece). But that's ok because you spent some money.

Sad situation all around, how terrible for these children and yet you get endless people including governments trying to get everyone to have more kids. When the truth is a good chunk of people shouldn’t be having kids, and this is obviously one of the more extreme examples of it. We need less and better quality parents IMO.

And it’s also a good example that none of us are an island so this is why in many cases people can rightfully express opinions on the way others live . So often people will say “it’s none of your business” blah blah but at the end of the day, we all live in society together and our decisions affect others. Especially those closest to us.

All that to say no one is really at fault here other than the parents who abandoned her and her siblings.

I am a child free woman of a similar age who loves travelling.

And while I’d like to think I would take in any of my friends or families kids rather than to see them go into foster care, I can understand how it’s not for everyone.

Yes, you make a really good point. My adopted daughter number one is now 18 and she cannot live at home any more. Mainly because she makes false allegations against me. Just to illustrate the complexities of traumatised children, I have been arrested, detained in a police cell for 21 hours and interviewed under caution with a duty solicitor present after my AD1 falsely claimed I had assaulted her. Despite the police deciding no further action within 24 hours, I was then put through a child protection investigation by my LA and taken to a child protection conference. The shame and distress still burns me. I love my AD1, I just can’t give her access to destroy my life any further. We see each other every day, I advocate for her strongly, she phones me about 800 times a day, and she knows I will always have her back. Life is calmer without her living at home as my AD2(10) and I are not constantly awaiting the police sirens and blue lights. Living with traumatised children can often feel impossible. It’s easy for others to judge. Anyway, as I mentioned previously, all it takes is one phone call to your LA to put yourself under scrutiny as an adoptive parent or a foster carer.