My son wants to come home, foster care and her son causing problems

Post Reply
tribalism7
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Jan 29, 2021 8:49 pm

My son wants to come home, foster care and her son causing problems

Post by tribalism7 » Fri Jul 02, 2021 12:51 am

My son, now 11, is in foster care, with my sort of my friend… I was best friends with the now,foster carer,, and I always said to her if anything ever happened to me, would she make sure he would always be ok. I was diagnosed with Bipolar about 20yrs old, had my son, aged 38, and in between those years, had times of great times of life of being successful, managerial jobs types of life to being hospitalised so I was fully aware of my health and their implications. I had a best friend, her son and my son are the same age, in the same class, but very different, each had their own set of besties but we all had a family kind of thing going on, us two being single parents. It then got to a point where I knew my mental health was going down hill, and she started helping me out a lot, and I then said to her, if I get bad, have to go to hospital, can you take care of him, to which of course she agreed. I went into hospital, got chucked out days later, then had a complete breakdown, worse I’d ever been, totally gone, but she looked after him, whilst at the same time, trying, with my Mum, to get me the help I needed, but I didn’t get it. It went on and on, the dr kept saying I was ‘attention seeking’, I’d had a psychotic breakdown (he later got struck off) but thank God, I signed a private foster care agreement so she had rights and could get financial support. I was, in every way, responsibly and caringly thinking about my sons care and wellbeing. Eventually a care order was given so I now have parental responsibility with social services. I have now been out of hospital for 1 year and 8 months. I have had to do anything, everything, and all in between to ‘prove’ I’m a ‘good mum’ and that I’m ‘not a danger’ to him, even though I never was. He has said to them for quite a while he wants to come home, to which they always say to me ‘we listen to what the child wants’. However, the foster carer (now kinda my ex-best friend, due to everything, has become the huge problem. Her son causes havoc. He was always challenging but now every time I get my son something, wether it’s Christmas, birthday, something for our home, her son kicks off, but I mean REALLY kicks off and my son feels awful, he feels bad he’s had a present, and scared, I mean really scared to tell them about it, because the foster carer has allowed it. The first time I got him a big present, he was absolutely shaking with fear because of how they’d react when they knew what I’d bought him. In decisions about my son doing anything, her son is always there and kicks off, the foster carer has now gotten to the point of voicing s**t, inappropriate, putting my son in this state of feeling bad for wanting to come home, using the fact that my son is very much sensitive to hurting anyone’s feelings. He wants to come home but feels bad about telling her in case she feels sad, but she’s constantly making him feel this, but her son is doing this as well as guilt tripping him, and making my son feel awful about me buying him stuff. Today she dropped my son off, his new chair had arrived but he didn’t know as it was a surprise. The foster carer son ran in, upstairs to my sons room and saw the new chair first - threw a guilt trip on top of him being the first to see it. My son could then not enjoy his new chair and was really sad and troubled for his whole time here. And then he was gutted to realise he wasn’t here for the weekend, he’s becoming more f'd up by their not wanting to let go on top of social services, for one being over cautious, but now, on top of that, because for them, it’s ‘all going well’, they’ve basically said they have really troubled kids that need them and they know my sons ‘safe’…. Basically they don’t have to bother. For this entire time, I’ve played by their rules, when you’re ‘mental’ there’s a whole lot more rules, even the fact I never neglected him, abused him, hurt him,the fact I took him from his s**t of a ‘sperm donor’ and lived in a refuge for 8 months, then went through 2 years of court, on my own to protect my son from the sperm donor, got a special dispensation from the court to protect my son so that I could change his name, and then when my son went officially into ‘foster care’, they had to then ‘legally contact the ‘father’ sperm doner…. So on top of my son losing me, he was forced to meet this strange bloke, who’d tried to kill him….. and I’m still trying to get my boy home, who wants to come home…… but they’re a bit busy with really troubled kids plus the foster carer and her son kinda love having my son around…….. so, yeah, I’m the s******t mum in the world but my boy loves me and just really wants to come home… In his words “****** social services”… Please, please, please can somebody please just say something, help me, guide me, give me ANY advice. Please. And thank you for reading this far if you’ve made it… thank you

Edited by Suzie to remove swearing, as per forum rules

User avatar
Suzie, FRG Adviser
Posts: 4210
Joined: Mon Jul 04, 2011 2:57 pm

Re: My son wants to come home, foster care and her son causing problems

Post by Suzie, FRG Adviser » Thu Jul 15, 2021 3:57 pm

Dear Tribalism7

Welcome to the parents’ discussion board and thank you for your post. My name is Suzie and I am FRG’s online adviser. I am sorry to hear of the difficulties that you and your son have experienced and also that there has been a delay in responding to you.

It sounds as if you have had a difficult time over the last few years, having spent time in hospital when you were unwell. You made arrangements for your son’s care originally with your friend under a private fostering arrangement. Your son’s case then went to court, it seems, with a care order made, which means that children’s services are the main decision-makers for your son although you continue to share parental responsibility with them for him. Your son has remained in the care of your friend who must now be an approved kinship foster carer. Unfortunately, the relationship between the foster carer and you is much more strained now.

If you have any specific concerns about your son while he is in foster care you should let the social worker know so that they can assess the situation properly.

I can see how much you would like to have your son returned home to your care. It looks like you have regular contact with him, including visits home. Do you have continued support from mental health services and a good support network in place? These are likely to be relevant factors.

Children’s services are required to consider whether a return home or reunification is in the child’s best interests. However, it is not necessarily easy to achieve as there are quite a lot of issues to consider.

The best time to start asking for a child to be returned home is when your situation is much improved, when the issues which stopped you being able to care for your child have been addressed and you can offer stability. It is usually a good idea to make sure that children’s services are supporting you to have the best possible contact arrangements in place including overnight stays before you move on to try to argue for a return home.

You can:

• Ask the social worker in writing to assess your suitability to care for your son. This would also include looking at what help you would need from them to care for your son.
• If they won’t assess you, or you have a negative assessment, ask the social worker to provide the reasons for this in writing so that you can consider what you might be able to do differently.
• Involve your son’s Independent Reviewing Officer too.
• If children’s services are not in agreement about a proposed return home your only option then is to think about applying to the court to end the care order. You can find out more about how to do that here – but the main thing you would have to show is that there has been a real change in circumstances from when the order was made. There is no automatic legal aid to apply to end a care order; it is means and merit tested.

If you would like to discuss the situation with an adviser please call the freephone advice service on 0808 8010366, Mon to Fri, 9.30 am to 3.00 pm. Or post back on this board if we can help.

Best wishes

Suzie

Post Reply

Who is online

In total there are 9 users online :: 0 registered, 0 hidden and 9 guests (based on users active over the past 5 minutes)
Most users ever online was 318 on Fri May 28, 2021 9:04 pm