Kinship

[Mamacxxx]

Hi,
im hoping to get good advice and not just get bullied on here like I did months ago so be nice please thanks..

looking for advice about kinship.
it’s a long draining story , but the basis is, me and my partner are due a baby in 10 weeks and his daughter is 9 and currently is living with her grandparents under kinship court decided agreement.

she comes to stay on the weekends (Friday-Sunday) during school year
and when she’s in school holidays she’s here whenever she wants too, this can be weeks at a time.

we want to get her back off of kinship but we’re both terrified, my partners dad and wife are pretty well off financially and we can’t compare to that. We’re worried that it’ll just cause hurt to my SD, but all she says is I want to live with you now every time she’s here. (She’s 9)

the other issue we have is , the legal guardians over SD are my partners dad and wife but they have forced SD to call them mum and dad (this happens infront of her bio dad - my partner)

we both feel like the grandparents are being selfish at this point, keeping SD from living with us full time.
so we’ve got to the point now, do we go straight to lawyers with every bit of evidence we have to prove that SD is happier with us, even though it’s terrifying and we feel like we have no leg to stand on?

in the past my partner has explained to me about how he and his ex lost SD and really if I’m being honest it was clearly a set up.
SD was taken away that day and handed to Gparents and within a year she was under kinship whilst she was still seeing her bio parents.

so my question is, has anyone went through kinship order and had it reversed so that bio parent has full parental control over child again?

feeling a bit overwhelmed with it all, especially when gparents make it out like we don’t need to go to the lawyers , but we’ve never heard a whisper from social work or lawyers regarding the kinships- they can be pretty narcissistic and problematic, everything’s an argument when we have anything to say to them etc.

sos
thanks

I don't get it
It sounds like there must be a reason the child isn't living with a parent?
Either way, if her dad can have her and is fit to have her then yes he should do what he can to have her live with him

in the past my partner has explained to me about how he and his ex lost SD and really if I’m being honest it was clearly a set up.

🙄

Kids aren't just taken away from their parents willy nilly. Realistically both your partner and the child's mother must have been seriously abusive or neglectful for this to have happened.

I think you should be concentrating on your own baby because there is a good chance that your partner will be an inadequate father to them.

my partner was down in England working for a couple of weeks and bio mum was left with SD, social work was called as a complaint was made about the state of the house.
child was taken off bio mum, given to grandparents.

my partner hasn’t left SD life no time away from her it wasn’t like that, he just wasn’t there to stop her getting taken away from bio mum.

SD under kinship to my partners parents so we get to see her all the time but they aren’t willing to give her back, meaning we have to fight them at court.

Your assumptions are wrong. Asking for advice about getting her back not about what I should be concentrating on.

@Mamacxxx I think you need to speak to social services about the child coming to live with the dad don't you

I mean it sounds very strange that that didn't happen if you're saying there's no reason why it couldn't. So you need to talk to them about this first off surely. Then you can decide on what needs to be done next

See that’s the thing we’re worried about because a lot of the time if you go to social work they will reduce your visiting etc until they feel you fit, but when I’ve spoke to someone I know who’s a social worker she says we would be best going directly to family lawyers because it’s a court ordered kinship

also, we have reason to believe that they are refusing to hand her back because of the financial gain they have by having her ; kinship payments, child benefits etc etc
(we live in Scotland so this might be different from others posting on this)

So, your partner went to work for a couple of weeks and came home to his child having been removed?

The house was fine when he left, but SW were so concerned within that two week period that they removed her?

Am I reading that right? If so, I can be certain that this isn’t the truth (or at least, not the whole truth) you’ve been told.

There is no way at all the kids would be taken off the bio mum a) due to the state of the house b) that quickly and c) if there was a competent father in the picture.

I'm not saying he's going to be father of the year but if the child stays regularly overnight it's unlikely there are major safeguarding concerns, it's more likely he couldn't be bothered taking on the full time care. Social services won't care.

Your partner could have cared for his daughter rather than his parents. They wouldn’t have got kinship if the father could have cared for her. I’d ask to read the court paperwork as I bet you’ll have your eyes opened!

Ok

But don't you want to know why they decided to give the child to the grandparents? Rather than the father?

Because your post is saying that basically the child could have and should have gone to live with her dad. So personally if I was you, I'd want to hear from them why that didn't happen. Or does he not want you to know?

I'm presuming there's a reason they didn't put child with dad. So surely you'll be to know why they think child shouldn't be with dad, if you're suggesting fighting this anyway

Normally kinship caring is on the cheap so I wouldn’t expect there would be lots of money involved for anyone.

There is a bigger picture here that either your partner isn’t telling you or doesn’t understand himself which is a concern in itself.

If you’re due a baby in 10 weeks let that settle before anything else.

There are no concerns, I’ve had someone check 🤣 she’s with us regularly because she IS safe and she IS loved and looked after.

she was taken off them in 2018, she’s been staying over consistently the entire time I’ve been with my partner anyway and there’s photographic evidence he’s had her regularly before I met him.

SW have said loads of times that it was not her dads fault as he wasn’t there and the videos he has of saying bye to her before he went to work the house was perfectly fine?

it’s confusing to me how her bio mum failed so badly, but this is why I’m explaining because it doesn’t SEEM possible, but it is.

I would hazard a guess that there is far more to this story than you are being told.

I have read all the paperwork but thanks for your input

This just makes no sense to me.

He was gone for two weeks while SW swooped in, with no prior involvement, and changed the course of his whole life?

Did anyone phone him and tell him he had to get back up the road? Did SW not suggest that the kid could stay with him elsewhere while the mum got the house sorted? What was actually wrong with the house? Mould, disease, damp etc can’t take hold in two weeks, so I imagine it was mess?
I don’t believe SW remove a child without, at the absolute least, giving the parent a chance to work with them to improve the situation.

I think you’re being led up the garden path here, OP. Wool is firmly over your eyes.

Kinship carers get £847 per month, they’re also entitled to child benefit etc all the normal payments you’d be entitled to as a bio parent for example

There is no way this happened in the way you have believed. 2 weeks of a messy house and a child being taken away?! You clearly want to believe whatever lies your DO is feeding you

Not according to the Scottish government. Where are you getting that figure from?

Do the relatives have a Special Guardianship Order?

From what I know, bio mum failed to clean the house and had food lying about and was a general hazard for the child.
she hadn’t been letting any workers check up on her and ignored the doors to workers (I’m assuming SW/ health care visitors )
bio dad was called on the day sw intervened, but was told it had been from a complaint from anonymous.
he made his way up the road and was taken to council the next day (he stayed at a friends and child had already been placed with grandparents)
I mean, I’ve read all the paperwork, spoke to family and bio mum and although it’s not proven everyone has had reasons to believe it was a complaint form the grandparents. (They had been visiting whilst her dad was working)

the issue is, his parents are not very nice people and have swindled stories since the beginning. It’s a long winded story that I don’t have the time to write down but my parents dad wasn’t exactly the best person in the world to him and he was taken off his parents at a young age also.
so technically SD is under the wife’s care because partners dad has criminal history.

Listen, I wasn’t there and I can only go with what I’ve been told and shown and read, and this is what I know.
but we’ve had no SW intervention and no one’s spoken to us regarding seeing her etc, all agreements to see her has been through his dad and step mum