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

It sounds to me like you should be more worried about your impending baby.

I assume SS are involved?

There is no such thing as a kinship order, so I'm not sure you have all the facts here. There is a Child Arrangemenst Order or a Special Guardianship Order in order for a child to be place with kinship carers. These happen over weeks and involve a full and detailed CAFCASS investigation of the circumstances and then the family court judge rules where it is in the best interests of the child to live. So I really dont think it is as straightforward as your oartner has made out.

Does your partner still have parental responsibility?

If he wants his daughter to live with him, and you full-time he needs to go back to court and they will investigate suitability, again. I would suggest, and suspect the court would too, that juat before you're about to have a new baby in the house probably isnt the best time to try and make a dramatic change in your SDs living arrangements.

Also, if she can spend as much time as she likes in the holidays, why isnt that enough?

Would the daughter not of been on a child in need plan first?

I feel like there is more back story to this, she hadn’t been letting any workers check up on her and ignored the doors to workers (I’m assuming SW/ health care visitors ). Why would SWs be calling in on her in the first place? They don't just randomly turn up to check unless they have a reason too.

Also, I know someone who spent 5yrs in prison for GBH (in his 20s) and now in 50s has his daughter full time, it went through the courts and the courts went with him so I don't think the father's criminal history has anything to do with it.

I can understand why you want her to come to you but I think that its probably better to maintain the consistency of her contact with them and you - you couldn't just not let her see them again as they would have rights too.

Ok, so we have an SGO for my husband's niece. Someone here is not telling you the full story. SS work with families for months, sometimes years, to get them to improve their parenting - then it has to go to court where a judge looks at the evidence to decide if the threshold for removal has been met. The only way a child is removed that quickly is if the child is in imminent danger (usually physical or sexual abuse).

So, assuming she was removed immediately and placed with grandparents, the next step would be a full assessment of anyone putting themselves forward to care for the child. This would involve social workers, cafcass and the child's guardian ad litum. Where was your partner when all this was happening? My guess would be still with the child's mother, refusing to co-operate with officials. The grandparents may be getting an alllowance (probably not as much as you think and the child benefit is usually taken out of it if you claim the child element of UC). We got £0 allowance by the way. The money they receive is nowhere near the cost of raising someone else's child.

But that's beside the point. If you genuinely believe your partners version of events you need to 1)speak to SS 2) be grateful to your inlaws, raising a child on an SGO is so, so hard 3)speak to a specialist in family law 4)evidence all your claims and 5) take it back to court to revoke the sgo(you'd need to do mediation first). Oh and it will need to be the child's father that does all this . Not you. I bet he won't

Oh and yes, if grandparents have an sgo they have overriding parental responsibility. SS will no longer be involved and they get to decide who she sees and for how long unless it was put in the court order - in our case 2 hours a month. If it isn't court ordered they get to choose how often you see the child