Important appeal court win for grandparents

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David Roth
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Joined: Thu Aug 10, 2006 11:14 am

Re: Important appeal court win for grandparents

Post by David Roth » Tue Oct 16, 2012 9:40 am

nana543, it is very important if you are applying for a special guardianship order to make sure that your need for support and finance is assessed before the order has been granted, as most councils will be reluctant to put in this suopport afterwards. Once the assessment has been done, you are then in a position to negotiate with the local authority as to whether the finance and support they are proposing to offer will actually meet the needs of you and the child.

There was an important judgment (the Lewisham judgment) that stated the starting point special guardianship allowances should be the amount the special guardians would receive if they were fostering the child. This would be the maximim amount that could be paid - if the special guardian were receiving child benefit and any child tax credit, then that would be deducted from the SGO allowance, and local authorities can also do a means test, so the level of the alllowance would come down the higher your income from other sources was. If your solicitor wants to quote this case, the reference for it is B V London Borough of Lewisham [2008] EWHC 738 (Admin)
David Roth
FRG Policy Adviser

confusedinfrance
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Joined: Tue Feb 14, 2012 3:10 pm

Re: Important appeal court win for grandparents

Post by confusedinfrance » Wed Jul 02, 2014 9:27 am

It has been a very long and tedious path since my initial post on this forum, but I have been through all avenues open to me via the councils internal complaint procedure, and the LGO. It transpired that the stage 2 complaint revealed that the authority doesn't have a clue about how this case should have been handled and were the perpetrators of a constant stream of misinformation, confusion and misinterpretation. The LGO identified exactly the same, and that recommendations given to the council within the stage 2 complaint had not even been looked into, let alone implemented, also the LGO identified a small shortfall in payments, which is supposedly going to be rectified by the council. However there are still issues that need to be aired regarding the placement of my granddaughter here with us, but, as usual, there seems to be mountainous obstacles to climb to attain such information. The main area of doubt is concerning the aforementioned Grandmother X, and did she obtain a residency order after taking on the care of her granddaughter. There is also the quote about, "either you take her or she goes into care", exactly the same phrase as used to me at the start of my adventure, but according to the Social Worker involved in my case, it is definitely not a phrase that she would use, and indeed she would be amazed if anyone, within the council would use anything like that as it amounts to emotional blackmail. So, in effect, is there any way I can find out who the social worker involved in Grandmother X's case was, and also if she was granted a residence order, prior to receiving her just payments.

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David Roth
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Joined: Thu Aug 10, 2006 11:14 am

Re: Important appeal court win for grandparents

Post by David Roth » Wed Jul 09, 2014 10:54 am

confusedinfrance, you are in essence asking whether you would be able to have access to the children's services department's information about your granddaughter. I understand that you are her special guardian, meaning that you have parental responsibility for her. We do have an advice sheet that deals with getting access to this type of information - the relevant paragraph states:

Who can ask to see information held by Children’s Services?
- Anyone can ask to see information about themselves which is held by Children’s Services. This includes a child with “sufficient understanding and maturity”. This means that you can ask Children’s Services for the information they hold about you. You can either make the request yourself, through a solicitor or through someone else acting on your behalf;
- Parents, or others with parental responsibility, can also ask on behalf of their child if they are too young to ask themselves, or if they are old enough but cannot ask on their own because of a disability.

You can read more on our Advice Sheet 26: http://frg.org.uk/need-help-or-advice/advice-sheets
David Roth
FRG Policy Adviser

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