Dear Curios
Welcome to the Family and Friends Carers' discussion board and thank you for your post. I am sorry to hear of the difficulties that your daughter is having. I am very sorry that we have not been able to respond to your query before now as we are currently receiving a very high level of posts.
You have been caring for the daughter of your ex-partner for over a month. She is 17 and you have always had a very close father/daughter relationship. You don’t say you were married to her mother and from what you say, I don't think you have ever applied for parental responsibility for her. Children’s Services are involved due to the poor relationship between the young person and her mother although it seems that their involvement is minimal. You are not receiving any support to assist you to care for the young person and are querying the legal situation and whether you are entitled to any support from children’s services such as kinship care allowance.
I would suggest that you and your daughter ask children’s services in writing to confirm her current legal status and the process under which they are working with her (with written reasons for this). This is unclear at the moment and would be the basis for you or your daughter challenging the support or help that she or you are able to receive.
She should certainly have a copy of any
assessment of her needs that has been undertaken and of any current plan that is in place. She might want to get some independent advice for herself; she could get in touch with the Office of the Children’s Commissioner’s
Help at Hand advice service whose details can be found here. They can advise any young person who is unable to live at home.
From what you say, your daughter asked to come to live with you, although you believe that children’s services instigated this. It does make a big difference how the arrangement came about and whether a young person was placed with a carer by children’s services (in which case they may be
accommodated under a voluntary arrangement ) or whether it is treated as a
private arrangement .
This is discussed fully in our advice sheet
on relatives and friends taking on the care of a vulnerable child in an emergency .
Sometimes, arrangements are regarded as
private fostering arrangements which children’s services have a duty to monitor but only up to the age of 16 (or 18 if the young person has a disability). In your case, although you are not legally the young person’s stepfather, she is over 16 and so this duty does not apply (unless she has a disability).
I would recommend that you have a look at the information on page 27 of our advice sheet on
family support which sets out the different ways in which children’s services can accommodate a homeless 17 year old (with their consent) under a voluntary arrangement (section 20) where children’s services are responsible for their care and support needs (and must assess and support their carer if approved temporarily and then permanently as a foster carer) or under a child in need arrangement.
Once you know children’s services’ current position ( and if you can clarify if there are any child protection concerns for the young person) you could post back with an update for more tailored advice or ring to discuss with an adviser on our Freephone advice line (0808 801 0366 Mon – Fri, 9.30 – 3.00 ) and of course the young person can seek advice as mentioned above too.
You may want to try to find a copy of the local authority’s family and friends’ care policy
here and our advice sheets on
children's services' support for relatives and friends looking after someone else's child and
social security support for relatives and friends looking after someone else’s child (b) may be helpful too.
I hope this is useful.
With best wishes
Suzie
- any money would effectively be put towards Daughter and her car etc, it’s not like I’m on the breadline at all - but... 