Facilitating access?

[babytinkabell]

My fd has been with us 3 months, shes 17. There hasn't been access with bio mum until now as fd hasn't wanted it. However mum is now demanding access every other weekend or saying she will take fd out of care (its a voluntary order). Fd says she will attend access which will be in mums home which is 40 mins away every other saturday for a few hours.

Fds mum drives and has a car. Saturdays are busy in our house, I attend college every 2/3 saturdays and we have 2 kids who often have matches, parties etc. Is it unreasonable to expect mum to do the travelling to facilitate access or should it be 50/50, e.g. we drop her to mums and mum drops her home. The sw hasn't given any indication of how this contact is to work and mum is suggesting she would like to meet half way.

Personally I would want Mum to collect her and then I would go and pick her up. Sounds fair to me... better that way around and then you are sure that (a) Mum turns up and that also (b) that she comes back!!

I know how frustrating it is - we are being asked to do more and more - I am willing to do what I think is fair and reasonable and I then know that no matter what the SW's say, I've done my bit...

I presume the contact is unsupervised..? (my LO's were supervised even tho voluntary)

At the end of the day its down to you - its your time, its your weekend and its your family life, but as fd is now part of your family, I would hope that you would consider this every other sat as not a huge inconvenience and workable...

Good luck

Thanks for the reply. Yes, contact will be unsupervised as far as we know. We were thinking along similar lines as you, in that her mum would collect her from us and we would collect her from her mums. Its just not going to work the weekends I have college so we'll just have to hope that mum will be flexible for those weekends as my uni is over 90 mins in the opposite direction, I leave at 8 those mornings and dont get back till 6 so we'll have to see what'll happen those days. We've always done all the travelling for our other foster kids contact but the parents have always been more flexible with days than current fds mum, e.g. they were happy to have access on the sundays which suited us better as we're both at home most sundays. But fds mum is insisting it has to be saturdays or she'll take fd out of care.

Isn't your fd able to travel alone at 17? She will no longer be accommodated when she is 18 in any event, so mum talking about "taking her out of care" is pretty futile. What are the plans for your fd when she is 18? Re contact - if mom has a car I would think she should pick up and drop back.

In theory fd could travel alone but there is no public transport available for this journey. When fd is 18 she will still have another year left in school, so the plan at the moment is for her to remain in care, hopefully with us until she is 19 and ready to attend uni.