We are hoping for some advice with regard to caring for our murdered daughter's 3 children.
I won't go in to the detail of my daughter's murder, other than to say that it was her partner, and father of the 3 children in question, who murdered her. He is now serving a life sentence in prison.
For the last 6 months or so, we have been going through an application for a Special Guardianship Order (SGO) to allow us to take custody of our 3 grandchildren - they are currently in temporary foster care and have been since shortly after our daughter's murder.
Since the beginning of the SGO application, we have made it clear to the local authority (LA) that we need a little financial support to pay for one of the children's nursery childcare. We both work and can not afford for one of us to give up working, nor can we afford the nursery fees.
We have made it clear to the LA that the support that we're requesting only needs to be provided until such time as our grandchild starts full time school - in less than 2 years time.
We are quite prepared to absorb all the additional costs that come with raising children from toddler stage, into adulthood and beyond. But we simply do not have the £550 per month needed to top up the statutory nursery allowance until he turns 3 years and one term, and then the £350 per month required from that date until he starts school in September 2021.
We are prepared to find our way to paying all other costs, including the cost of childcare during school holidays for the school age children.
We have made this position clear to the LA since the very first meeting. It's not a case of us 'wanting' their money, it's a case of us not being able to afford to care for our grandchildren without it.
Given the circumstances that have led us to the position of having to care for them, one might have thought that the LA would help as much as they could. After all, it is not as if we just woke up one morning and decided that we wanted to care for them. We're here because their mother was murdered by their father!
Despite us making it clear that we need this help, we went to court this week for what we thought was the final SGO hearing, where we thought that the judge would agree to our SGO and the children would be with us within 2 weeks. In fact, the LA had a agreed a transition plan with us, where they come and stay with us for weekends, and we increase our day visits with them. This transition plan was only put in place and agreed by the various authorities, because it was acknowledge that the placement would be made this week; that it was essentially a foregone conclusion.
We also (naively) believed that having made our need for support very clear at every stage, that the LA must have been in agreement, because if they were not, how could they have progressed the process to the point that the transition from LA care to our care had already been agreed and was being actioned.
We now realise that the social workers that we were in regular contact with from the LA had not made our position regarding child care support clear to their superiors. We went to court this week having had no firm offer of financial help, but for the reasons explained above, we assumed that it would be.
What a mistake that was on our part! Minutes before the judge was due to hear the case, the LA authority told us that they could offer us £17.95 per week in support! We told them in no uncertain terms that it would be impossible for us to care for the children with that level of support, but they held firm. Ultimately, the judge then heard the case and was told that we were making our offer of care conditional on financial support (we were not, and never have been allowed into the courtroom to make our own case!).
The judge - thinking that we had changed our position at the last moment, was apparently very angry with us and has suspended the impending placement and transition plan.
We now feel utterly destroyed and mistreated by the LA. We accept that technically, our ability to provide care IS conditional on us receiving financial support, but not in the context that it was presented to the judge. Without us having the opportunity to present our views and concerns to the judge personally, we are entirely reliant upon the LA and other parties inside the courtroom to present our position. Unfortunately, not only have they not accurately represented our position, they've actually MISrepresented our position.
In our view, they've done that deliberately. We feel that they've known for months that they would only offer us £17.95 per week towards the £550 per month child care cost, but knew that we could not accept it. They thought that if they progressed the case to the point of it reaching the final hearing, that we would feel that we simply had to accept whatever they said.
They clearly thought that we were insincere when we said that we simply didn't have an additional £550 per month in hard cash to hand over to child care providers. Certainly not on top of all the other additional costs of raising young children that we would start to incur too.
The LA say that there are no mechanisms in place for them to offer any further help - for them, we've been means tested and in their opinion, we can and should just find that money! Despite their repeated claims that they don't have a magic money tree, that's precisely what they think we have!
So, that's the background; why am I here asking for your advice??
The court has now instructed us to seek legal advice as to what we should do next. We are doing just that, but I also want to reach out to the community for advice.
We are advised that we need to explore other potential care plans other than an SGO. Whilst an SGO would have given us the parental responsibility that we would like, it seems that it does not offer us the support that we need. It is suggest that other arrangements might.
Can the community offer us any advice as to which other type of care arrangement might work for us and might allow the various authorities to support us with the child care costs that we need? Could we foster them for the short term until our grandson starts school and then seek an SGO or adoption at that point? Would a family foster arrangement provide the short term financial support that we need? If not, are there other types of care order that might?
Please understand, that despite what the judge now apparently believes, we are not looking to care for our wonderful grandchildren in order to benefit from a payday! In fact, the mere suggestion of that makes me feel sick! All we need is support for 1 year and 10 months for childcare and we will find the money for everything else associated with caring for, and raising children to adulthood. Once our grandson starts full time school, the problem disappears and we will not seek a further penny from the LA.
We will of course seek this advice from our solicitor, but in my experience, it's always better to take potential options to a solicitor, than it is to just turn up and ask them what we should do!
Any advice or helpful views on this really distressing situation is very much appreciated.
Thank you in advance.