Refused kinship care

[Unknownnumber]

My parents tried to encourage my wife and I to look after a family members two young children under a kinship arrangement as they were unable to care for the kids and they were placed in (voluntary) foster care. We didn’t feel that we were in a place to offer this and so declined, though not without feeling extremely guilty about it. My parents have since decided to care for them themselves, although are currently both in their 70s. They are pushing for us to be a back up plan should anything happen to them and have advised that the social work department need this in place at the point of the order. Can anyone advise if this is correct in England? Am I a terrible person for not wanting to get involved and standing my ground on my original decision. There are many, many layers of family (on a different side) between us and the children in question which would be extremely challenging to navigate. It’s causing me a great deal of stress and anxiety trying to maintain a good relationship while not doing something I’m being asked to do.

If you don't want to or feel able to support your parents to care for these DC then you must say so to parents. I'm a foster carer and my adult son is our back up plan. This means in reality he comes to look after FC if we have 3-4 days holiday alone each year but we usually go on holiday with FC. He also comes to sit with FC one evening each month whilst DH and I go out in evening and we pay him well for this.

Thank you, I am willing and happy to support my parents where I can and giving breaks etc. I am not able to commit to taking the kids into full time care should something happen to my parents in 4, 5, 6 years time.

Be very careful with kinship care,very little support especially financial. I am surprised they are accepting them at that age.i am 71 former foster carer then a special guardianship but age is always against you.you need special advice for your parents from kinship care organisations.

Thank you. I understand completely what you are saying and I have tried extremely hard to make sure my parents have considered this fully and aired my concerns but equally understand why they don’t want to listen. As the children are so young, I didn’t think it would be an option but the social work department are now almost at the point of finalising.

There’s a poster MrsDevere who along with her husband took in their great nephew when he was just under 8 weeks old as the mother was a druggie. Bec had to give up her job at the time and they had to buy everything and she had to battle with her local authority to get a small allowance to contribute to the cost of raising the infant.

They raised him as their son.

I don’t blame you for holding out and saying no, it’s a massive responsibility and if you are not 100% committed then everyone will suffer.

Make this clear to the social workers and your parents. If that's the only concern then they will likely allow your parents to go ahead anyway on the grounds it's still better for the kids to spend some of their childhood with family than the connection being broken entirely by adoption, if that's even an option.

I don't think your parents realise how tiring and worn out they would be doing school runs,playing with them,activities, looking after a child that's ill ,no time for themselves. I fully understand the emotional side that they are family but unless they are very healthy and have plenty of money I feel from experience it would be a mistake for them to do this without thinking it through. Children's services are short of money and understaffed so always looking to get children off their books.

The parents probably know exactly how tiring children are.
The alternative would be the care system. They probably also know the care system is far from ideal and children do end up getting moved around causing untold damage.

They'd rather burden themselves and try to spare their DGC more hurt and stress.

I really appreciate all the different perspectives. I do agree in their 70s this won’t be easy and while I have encouraged them to think about this, ultimately the decision is theirs/ the councils to make. I am available to provide some support for weekends etc. my main issue is that they now want me to agree to provide full time care should anything happen to them - which if we’re honest is likely. I work abroad for large periods of time and so would not really be suitable with the care and also contact arrangements. I will still be working past 18th birthdays. I am just really struggling with the guilt and also have the foresight that it’s not going to stop at 2 children.

It's such a tough decision to make, but I think it's far better to be honest and open about the fact you won't do it.

We have DN with us after the death of his Mum and the whole situation was made much harder by someone being utterly unrealistic about their situation and being adamant they'd take him in as it was the "right thing to do". It ended with massive stress for everyone, an extra move and the resultant unsettledness for DN and it would have been much easier (despite being phenomenally difficult) had they been more realistic.

That'll be especially so in your situation if there's likely to be more children added to the mix as years go on

Thank you, I know you are right and I will just have to be strong so as not to give any false hope. If in 2/5/10 years time that came to fruition who knows what situation I/ they/ we could be in so can reassess but as of right now in my current situation I can’t sign up to it, which was why I didn’t take them in the first place.
I truly commend what an amazing thing you’ve done for your DN.