To be infuriated with social services…

[QuaintLilacBee]

To cut a long story short, my son moved out and went to live with dad, grandma, 2 aunties, aunties boyfriend and a newborn last year. This is not a court ordered arrangement, no social services involvement etc. Child wanted to live with dad and as he has parental responsibility he is allowed by law to keep him and not return him if he doesn’t want to. Dad refuses any contact with me and grandma has taken over - she arranges visits with me, she takes care of him whilst dad works etc. she removed him from the school he was at since pre-school with me, and changed his school.

Recently she took him out of school and is ‘home educating’. After speaking to my child he’s told me that he does no form of education whatsoever. When I text to see him, she often tells me he’s ’still In bed’ at 11 and 12 in the afternoon. He comes to visit me looking exhausted and dishevelled, tells me he’s been awake until 2am on the PlayStation. He spends his entire life on games and has no education. Dad doesn’t bother with him. I weighed him as I noticed he had gained considerable weight since moving there, he now weighs 66kg at just 9 years old, which is morbidly obese. Any time I collect him, he’s got multiple bags of sweets and McDonald’s, so it’s clear why he’s this weight. They have no control over him, let him do anything, stay up all night, eat junk, swear, play violent games.

During the last visit to me, his little brother dropped a teddy behind someone’s fence. My eldest proceeded to kick and punch at the fence to get it open. I told him to stop as he was going to break it and get me into trouble, and to instead knock on the door and ask politely for access. His response was to tell me to ‘shut the f* up’. I asked gran to collect him and told her what he had said and she started laughing.

I rang ss last week as I’m concerned for his weight and education. My mum also rang them as she’s recently seen him herself and is concerned about him in their care. They said they have sent a letter to dad to offer ‘optional support’ and contacted the education board to do a check. Yesterday they called me back after I emailed them further evidence of his junk diet and gaming. She told me it had all been screened and allegedly does not require social services intervention. I am absolutely raging beyond belief.

I can’t keep him myself when he comes here, as he will just run away back to dads, and dad can keep him and not return him once again. He prefers living with dad as there’s no rules or restrictions and he can do whatever the hell he wants.

Im concerned for his health, he is very clearly at high risk for diabetes, heart issues amongst other things. He’s got no future job prospects or chance of any GCSE’s when he does no learning. His attitude and behaviour is uncontrollable. There’s essentially no hope for his future while he’s living there. Police have refused to do a welfare check on the child on 2 ocassions. He does not see a GP, go to school etc so there’s nobody in a safeguarding position to check on him at all. His last school even refused to give information to me about why he was removed, despite me having PR and legal right to his education records. I have been dismissed, refused information on my own child, and treated appallingly throughout this whole saga. He had terrible attendance at the school he went to with me, because gran was having him 3 nights per week at that point and would often keep him off because ‘he didn’t want to go in’. The school had also refused to allow me to collect him and handed him to grandma instead who has no legal rights. My child told me when he first moved out he ‘wasn’t allowed’ to talk to me. I walked round the whole of town with my 3 year old, going to every school near his home to find him. Eventually I found what school he was at, I called them, they confirmed he went there so I walked up to see him. The school had called GRANDMA and had her waiting in reception when I arrived, forced me to have a meeting with her and refused me to see my son, all the while dad has no involvement in any of this. I am utterly appalled at how I’ve been treated by every single agency. My child was never took off me, I have no issues with drink or drugs, never hit him, never emotionally abused him etc, no cause for concerns at my house. Just a strict routine of bed time at 8pm, no fizzy drinks, no junk food, must attend school etc and apparently this is bad parenting on my behalf to the point I’ve been treated like a criminal.

sorry for the long post but I wanted to get this off my chest.

I do qualify for legal aid. Do I need to pay the £263 myself and I get this back? Or is there a way to have this paid for me? I don’t quite understand as it’s redirecting me to make a payment.

Try legal aid? If you aren’t eligible get a job and save to pay for it. You seem to feel like a victim here, but it’s your child who is the victim, neither of his parents are doing enough for him. It doesn’t matter if your partner thinks your son is a brat or you don’t want his influence on your toddler etc, he’s 9, he needs protecting and parenting. If ex refuses mediation you can proceed with court.

Are you paying maintenance towards your son? If not start paying it so that it doesn’t go against you in court

Exactly this.

OP you cannot get social services to make him a better parent. That's not going to happen. You don't like the care he is receiving (understandably) but you aren't doing anything to get him back with you and remedy it. He's young, he lives where he's told to live. If you wanted to get him back you should go to court, if you can't agree with his father. You can't expect social services to sort this mess out for you.

There is no legal aid for private family court unless there is recent evidenced domestic abuse

It does seem, from your posts, that it’s not something you would entertain and the reason is because it will affect your life too much.

What do you want SS to do? If his own mother won’t step in and help?

Bring him home, go to court. I struggle, looking at my ds who is 14 now and imagine letting anything stop me doing my best. I may fail. It may be against the odds. But I’d give it a go!

The family court don't look at maintenance payments when deciding what is in a child's best interests for the purposes of a child arrangements order.

It costs £300 to apply to court. You don't need a solicitor's

She still needs to be paying it

This is such a depressing thread to read. You can’t find £263 to fight for your son’s health and future? It sounds like you’ve moved on quickly with a new partner and replacement (consciously or not) son and are now making excuses. If you can afford to be a SAHM with a three year old in nursery you can afford basic court costs to protect your first born.

it is not up to the state/social services to reverse your poor decision making.

You've been incredibly passive. If you had a court order in place dad wouldn't be able to just keep him and not return him even with PR. You need to go to court.

The judge won't just let your son decide where he wants to live. Decisions need to be made on his best interests and a chaotic life with limited education and an unhealthy diet is not his best interests. You need to show the court that you can provide a stable alternative and should be the default parent. On that score you can't just call granny to collect if he kicks off, you need to step up and parent him properly.

You are his mother, you seem to have allowed a small child to make decisions about where he resides despite knowing it isn’t the best for him and knowing that he is not old enough to make rational decisions based on a full understanding of the consequences. You have never taken it to court to try to enforce a more sensible set of arrangement because you think it will be hard and stressful and you don’t know whether you actually want to care for your child yourself anyway.

You are making accusations of poor parenting on the part of his dad and grandma but neglecting to realise that they are at least actually parenting this child whereas you appear to have given up all responsibility and mission the sidelines criticising and refusing to take any action to improve things.

Uour poor child is being neglected by everyone in his life who should be taking responsibility and being the adults who make tough decisions and take actions that while difficult are in the best interests of the child and will give him the most likelihood of success.

Social Services should absolutely be involved but they should be assessing all of you not just his dads side of the family.

Legal aid is different from help with court fee. You won’t be entitled to aid from what you have said

you’ll get a lot of misinformation about court from peopLe who don’t understand the system.

Follow the gov link sent earlier in the thread. Well done for starting this process.

You need to write to the head teacher setting out what you have said above. Clarify that you retain parental responsibility and that his grandmother, whilst being his primary carer currently, does not have PR. Remind them that they MUST share information with you as per working together guidance (government guidance)
If you want to play hardball you can reference Sara Sharif who was pulled out of school by her father with no communication with the mother, and who's school treated the step mother as if she were the mother, failing to include the actual mother in any communication. When schools ignore parents in the way they are doing with you, they overlook risk. Remind them that under proposed new legislation all people with PR must consent to a child becoming home educated and they should be taking that approach preemptively.

This is correct, unless she applied to court, he has the right to keep him. But she didn't...

I think the difficulty is that you haven’t taken proper action to resolve the situation. You should have applied to court immediately when grandma didn’t return him and sought to increase his time with you and less time with dad on the basis that it was harmful. You missed a second opportunity when he was taken out of school - you should have applied for the court to have determined whether school was better for him or whether it was in his best interests to be home educated by grandma. He’s 9 years old and you’re still saying you won’t go to court. I understand you’re saying that you never agreed to any of these arrangements but you also haven’t done anything to stop it. It’s possible that the damage to your relationship with him is now irreparable because dad and grandma have had so much influence you just can’t come back from it, whereas if you’d taken action in the beginning before it got to this stage you could have nipped it in the bud. Your inaction has cost you if you issue court proceedings now, because of the time that has passed. If you issue an application at court now you could still salvage some of this. I’m not sure why you wouldn’t move heaven and earth to try to resolve this tbh, it sounds dreadful for your son.

I do feel for you though having also been in a situation where I couldn't see how to help my DS, in my case through his SEN and very poor advice from all and sundry to just "remove demands" which would have led to him also being like your DS. It feels hopeless and it's hard to see how to change it. You have to be extremely determined (in my case to get him the right kind of education) and you have to be absolutely 100% consistent all the time (in the case of his behaviour).

That doesn't mean the judge just rubber stamps whatever a child wants! Judges very much expect a child to spend time with both parents. A reasonable arrangement would probably be that you share care 60/40 or 70/30 in dad's favour. They wouldn't go oh well this 9 year old prefers his dad so let's leave things as they are!

He's 9. He doesn't get to choose. Go to court and get a court order. If he runs away the police will follow the court order. You have PR. You have a right to information. You can do a SARs request and legally they have to provide the information within 30 days.

It's not an emergency!!
It might have been if you had applied the day they refused to return him but what makes you think it's an emergency now?

You have to pay for it. You won't get legal aid.

Yes, sorry, that's what I meant. I put it clumsily. I meant she has equal PR so she should go/have gone straight to court to sort it out

Obviously your dad is entitled to his opinion but I don’t know how anyone could “let go and move on” from their own child, especially as he is only nine! It sounds like he has been utterly failed and none of this is really his fault. This post gave really good advice about what you could realistically expect in terms of getting him back and sorted out. It would obviously be hard to get him back into education and healthy but I couldn’t simply accept that my son would waste his whole life without trying literally every avenue. I am confused about how this situation even came about with him saying at his dad’s full time? Did you not have an arrangement to share custody?

You need to go to court @QuaintLilacBee You have PR for your child and you need to use it.

I understand your frustration but you are asking social services to do your job for you which is to step up and protect your child from harm.

If you get good family law advice and apply to court then there will be assessments carried out by CAFCASS.

Yes a judge will want to understand the views of the child but they are not going to solely take the word and views of a 9 year old when there is evidence of harm.

You can’t leave him there and not fight for him because it’s the easier option for the rest of your family. I’m sorry if you feel that’s harsh but it’s the reality.

You will have to find a way to manage the situation and get your son the support he needs and that means he needs to be home with you in a safe and secure place.

At the moment this child is far too young and vulnerable to know what is best for him so letting him choose is ridiculous.

It seems it has gotten to the point that it doesn’t matter what the child wants. He’s a kid, of course he wants to stay up until 2am and do whatever he wants.

A court will take that into account.

You are obviously concerned, but that means you’ll have to deal with the hard parts which is going against what your child wants for his own good. In the end you are also his parent, and have just as much responsibility for how he turns out as the other parent.

Grandma can’t do anything (except manipulate) and is not to be considered in any of this!

See a legal aid solicitor.