full care order on my 12 year old,have i chance of getting him back
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Conshay123
- Posts: 3
- Joined: Tue Apr 23, 2019 4:43 pm
full care order on my 12 year old,have i chance of getting him back
<t>HI MOMS DADS AND FAMILY.....i really need advice as i have noone else support....iv two kids,one is 21 year old man who i brought up brill no ss involvment,he is a happy working adult,never been in trouble,wn place,no problems....iv a 12 year old boy who got took in to care two years ago,dont know where to start but here goes,i have bipolar,and unstable personality disorder,i onlky got diagnosed a few months ago and just started getting right help for it,(i believe if i got the right help in the first place i would not be posting this now....heres some facts to make irtt shorter....iv suffered a few bad relapses with mental health first because of bipolar i did not eat for a year i thought i was getting poisened,pulled my self out of that,tried killing myself at a teenager and other things but NEVER got help....making it short,i lived with my mam in a 4 bed house with 2 kids all there life,i was mams carer,she was agraphobic,i looked after her and my children for years,did nothing other than that....anyway i met my ex partner when i was on a high with bipolar (UNMEDICATED)i was vunrable and thought mnothinmg would harm me,ex persuaded me to smoke heroine (id never even toutched a joint in my life EVER,it helped with mental health,anyway this partner was abuse and i very fast became a differnt person,i was not the mam i needed to be,i lost my son to care completly as at that point i was so in gutter i could not fight for him i had noone,i was on the streets....anyway i got clean,engage with all =drug workers and mental health,i have a lovely two bed hpouse,been ok now for a year......i get to see my son supervised= every 6 weeks....(this all happened in two years befor this i was the best mam i could ba e so close)anyway i a being told by my eldest son that my youngest is not happy were he is,he is getting treat like a prison inmateno love,just boot camp,i know he must be unhappy as for him not to like someone theres something wrong....my eldest is rying to get him to speek up,but he is scared he will get punished and get his playstain took away again for 6 weeks (he got ot took away for 6 weeks befor as he looked at a naked woman<they embaressed him and made a big deal out of something all teeagers go threw anyway theres many other things but....but i just need advise on if ii have a chance to get him home ,hes in full foster care,i am fully myself now,my so has recently started getting into bitds of trouble to in her care,i fear he is going to get ruiened because of were he is....i fully take the fact of i hurt him and did him wrong,i thought at first he was happy were he was as noonoe was telling me nothing,i was ok to not disruot him anymore if her was ok (as much as it hurt)but hes not..............HE desperatly needs tp be home....if theres no chance then how do i get him out if there,he feels hes on egg shells all the time and scared to speakup himself....am i entitled to a solisitor legal aid at this late stage ...............................................thankyou for any help</t>
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Suzie, FRG Adviser
- Posts: 4249
- Joined: Mon Jul 04, 2011 2:57 pm
Re: full care order on my 12 year old,have i chance of getting him back
Dear Conshay123
Welcome to the parents’ discussion board and thank you for your post. I am sorry that we were not able to respond to you before now and to hear about the difficulties that you and your family are experiencing.
Your 12 year old son has been in foster care for two years. You explain very clearly the circumstances that led to this; you experienced difficulties for many years, you became unwell, your condition was not diagnosed at that time and you were not receiving any treatment, you had an abusive partner who encouraged you to use drugs and all of these issues meant that you were not able to safely care for your younger son at the time. You recognise this which shows that you have been able to think about how things were and how your younger boy was affected. Your eldest was an adult by this time.
You have now moved forward a lot and you must have worked very hard to achieve this – you have a diagnosis and are beginning to get the right help and support for your mental health needs, you worked well with drug services and no longer use and you have your own accommodation. Well done for all that you have managed to do and for continuing to work through the issues which affect you.
Your older son has told you that his brother is unhappy in foster care but is worried about speaking up about this for fear that he will be punished by his foster carers. You are also concerned that your son is beginning to get into trouble in foster care and how this will affect his future.
You are wondering if (and how) he might be able to come back to your care and, if not, what can be done about his current placement where he feels anxious and vulnerable. You are clearly a caring mother who wants what is best for her son.
I think that your son is in a long-term fostering placement where the plan is that he should remain until he is 18 when the care order ends.That does not mean that he can never come home but it would mean that the expectation is that he will remain in foster care although this must be regularly reviewed.
At the moment you are having family time with your son every six weeks and this time is supervised. It is usually wise to focus on establishing the best contact arrangements you can including trying to move from supervised to unsupervised and increasing the regularity of contact, before trying to argue that a child should come home. This is because neither children’s services nor the court are likely to agree to a child returning home if their current contact with their mother is supervised.
Although you are making huge progress I wonder if you are still at an early stage in your recovery from the difficulties you faced. What do the other professionals you are working with think about this? You have worked well with them, what do they recommend for you as a parent?
I would recommend that, to begin with, you:
• Contact your son’s social worker and Independent Reviewing Officer (IRO to ask that they let you know what would need to happen/what assessments of you they would need to do in order for you to see you son more/or for your son and you to see each other without supervision.
• Ask (in writing) that they carry out an assessment of your suitability to care for your son which would also need to include any help that you need from them to look after him.
We have an advice sheet on reuniting children in the care system with their families which explains all of this in more detail.
If children’s services don’t agree that you should have more/unsupervised contact with your son or that he should come home then you can look into your legal options to challenge, i.e. to apply to discharge the care order. You ask if you would get legal aid at this stage – it is not automatic and it would depend on whether you met the legal aid agency’s means and merit (likelihood of success and benefit to you) test.
For a court to end a care order they would have to accept that there has been a real change in circumstances from when the order was made and you would have to show the court why you think it is in your son’s best interests for the care order to end. The court would then look at any current risk to your son. I would query if you are in the best place to take that step yet.
I think your best option at the moment is to:
• Try to find a way of working with children’s services to increase your contact and clarify what they think you need to do and why in order to address any concerns they have.
• Let your son’s social worker and IRO know your worries for him at the moment. You have explained in your post that you never tried to disrupt his placement as you thought he was happy there but now you are concerned that he is not and that he is not able to speak out.
• Tell them exactly what you are worried about and why and what you would like them to do/think they should put in place to help your son.
• Ask them to look into this and to keep you fully informed about their findings.
• Ask that he is offered an advocate to help him be heard properly or that he is advised of his right to make a complaint .
• Ask them to let him know that he can access advice and information from the Children’s Commissioner’s Help at Hand advice service.
These advice sheets on contact with children in care , duties on children’s services when children are in the care system and complaints may be helpful to you.
If you would like to speak to an adviser please call our Freephone advice helpline on 0808 801 0366 Mon- Fri, 9.30 a.m. to 3.00 p.m.
You are also welcome to post back if the situation changes or you have a new query.
With best wishes
Suzie
Welcome to the parents’ discussion board and thank you for your post. I am sorry that we were not able to respond to you before now and to hear about the difficulties that you and your family are experiencing.
Your 12 year old son has been in foster care for two years. You explain very clearly the circumstances that led to this; you experienced difficulties for many years, you became unwell, your condition was not diagnosed at that time and you were not receiving any treatment, you had an abusive partner who encouraged you to use drugs and all of these issues meant that you were not able to safely care for your younger son at the time. You recognise this which shows that you have been able to think about how things were and how your younger boy was affected. Your eldest was an adult by this time.
You have now moved forward a lot and you must have worked very hard to achieve this – you have a diagnosis and are beginning to get the right help and support for your mental health needs, you worked well with drug services and no longer use and you have your own accommodation. Well done for all that you have managed to do and for continuing to work through the issues which affect you.
Your older son has told you that his brother is unhappy in foster care but is worried about speaking up about this for fear that he will be punished by his foster carers. You are also concerned that your son is beginning to get into trouble in foster care and how this will affect his future.
You are wondering if (and how) he might be able to come back to your care and, if not, what can be done about his current placement where he feels anxious and vulnerable. You are clearly a caring mother who wants what is best for her son.
I think that your son is in a long-term fostering placement where the plan is that he should remain until he is 18 when the care order ends.That does not mean that he can never come home but it would mean that the expectation is that he will remain in foster care although this must be regularly reviewed.
At the moment you are having family time with your son every six weeks and this time is supervised. It is usually wise to focus on establishing the best contact arrangements you can including trying to move from supervised to unsupervised and increasing the regularity of contact, before trying to argue that a child should come home. This is because neither children’s services nor the court are likely to agree to a child returning home if their current contact with their mother is supervised.
Although you are making huge progress I wonder if you are still at an early stage in your recovery from the difficulties you faced. What do the other professionals you are working with think about this? You have worked well with them, what do they recommend for you as a parent?
I would recommend that, to begin with, you:
• Contact your son’s social worker and Independent Reviewing Officer (IRO to ask that they let you know what would need to happen/what assessments of you they would need to do in order for you to see you son more/or for your son and you to see each other without supervision.
• Ask (in writing) that they carry out an assessment of your suitability to care for your son which would also need to include any help that you need from them to look after him.
We have an advice sheet on reuniting children in the care system with their families which explains all of this in more detail.
If children’s services don’t agree that you should have more/unsupervised contact with your son or that he should come home then you can look into your legal options to challenge, i.e. to apply to discharge the care order. You ask if you would get legal aid at this stage – it is not automatic and it would depend on whether you met the legal aid agency’s means and merit (likelihood of success and benefit to you) test.
For a court to end a care order they would have to accept that there has been a real change in circumstances from when the order was made and you would have to show the court why you think it is in your son’s best interests for the care order to end. The court would then look at any current risk to your son. I would query if you are in the best place to take that step yet.
I think your best option at the moment is to:
• Try to find a way of working with children’s services to increase your contact and clarify what they think you need to do and why in order to address any concerns they have.
• Let your son’s social worker and IRO know your worries for him at the moment. You have explained in your post that you never tried to disrupt his placement as you thought he was happy there but now you are concerned that he is not and that he is not able to speak out.
• Tell them exactly what you are worried about and why and what you would like them to do/think they should put in place to help your son.
• Ask them to look into this and to keep you fully informed about their findings.
• Ask that he is offered an advocate to help him be heard properly or that he is advised of his right to make a complaint .
• Ask them to let him know that he can access advice and information from the Children’s Commissioner’s Help at Hand advice service.
These advice sheets on contact with children in care , duties on children’s services when children are in the care system and complaints may be helpful to you.
If you would like to speak to an adviser please call our Freephone advice helpline on 0808 801 0366 Mon- Fri, 9.30 a.m. to 3.00 p.m.
You are also welcome to post back if the situation changes or you have a new query.
With best wishes
Suzie
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