Please keep me anonymous. We’re really hoping for some advice from other mums/step-parents who may have been through something similar. We’re feeling completely torn about what to do for the best.
We are a blended family and have three children aged 10, 7 and 5. I have two older children from a previous marriage.
The 7-year-old is our disabled daughter. She has a learning disability, is non-verbal and has complex medical needs.
There is a very long and complicated history between my husband and his ex-wife. Their relationship has been extremely difficult and, from our perspective, there has been a lot of controlling and abusive behaviour. Since they separated, contact with the children was repeatedly stopped. At one point she moved house and we didn’t even know where she was living, meaning we went months without seeing the children. Despite us pleeding with her.
Over the years, we raised concerns with Social Services numerous times and also contacted the police when his ex was violent towards my husband in front of the children. We repeatedly tried to raise concerns about what we were seeing and hearing.
I had a gut feeling that it was going to take something really bad to happen for anyone to listen to us. Eventually Social Services contacted us and told us the children were being placed on a Child Protection Plan because of concerns about neglect and their mum’s relationship with a registered sex offender. Knowing his crimes again little girls she still wanted to be in that relationship.
We subsequently found information in Social Services’ reports that was extremely concerning, including that the children had been left alone with him and even left alone in the house while their mum and her partner were out.
The sex offender eventually went to prison. Their mum continued ‘working with Social Services’ and had made out that she was being controlled by him. Since then, we have found evidence that she was continuing to see him while he was in prison. She then had another boyfriend and, months later, another partner.
Whilst all of this was going on, we applied to court for the children to live with us, or at the very least for us to have regular contact, because we still weren’t seeing them.
Eventually we started having weekend contact again. During one of those visits, our youngest told us that his mum’s then-boyfriend hit his children and went into quite a lot of detail.
We immediately raised our concerns with the school and Social Services. The very next day we received calls telling us that the children were being removed from their mum’s care and placed into foster care — and asking whether we could take them.
Obviously, we said yes.
We went down and collected them and they have now been living with us since June.
Social Services have given us documentation confirming that the children are living with us to be safeguarded from mum and the various partners/relationships that have been around them. We have been told that if their mum wants them back, she would have to take us to court.
So far, she hasn’t done that. In fact, she is giving up her house and, as far as we can tell, has no intention of asking for the children to return to her. I can’t lie — that’s been a huge relief because our priority is keeping the children safe and settled.
Since they have been living with us, we have also discovered things that have been incredibly upsetting.
There is clear evidence, in our view and that of SS, of emotional abuse and neglect. Some of the messages we have found on our 10-year-old son’s phone from his mum are messages that no parent would ever want to see their child receiving. There are also things the children have said to us since coming to live with us that have been extremely difficult to hear.
We’ve also discovered that quite a few of our daughter’s medical appointments had been missed.
At the same time, the children are absolutely thriving.
The boys are doing brilliantly at school, have made lovely friends and are settling into their new life. We are also getting them the emotional help they so need. Our daughter is getting the medical care she needs, we’re working towards a specialist school placement for her, and she is making progress with her communication — she’s signing more and is even attempting some words.
Since they came to live with us, all contact with their mum has gone through us. At the moment, she FaceTimes them once or twice a week. We have facilitated that because, whatever has happened between the adults, we understand that she is still their mum and we don’t want to unnecessarily prevent communication.
But now, after around three months, she has asked to physically see them.
This is where we are completely torn.
We have already made it clear that she will not be taking the children away anywhere on her own.
The question is whether we should:
1. Invite her to our home and allow her to see the children here for a few hours, with us present?
2. Let her see them when we are down in the area, my husband has family there are we are going to see them — we live around 2½ hours away, and historically we have always made the long journey to facilitate weekend contact.
Part of us understands that she won’t want to sit in our house for hours seeing her children, and we don’t want to unnecessarily make things more difficult. But equally, given everything that has happened, we don’t feel comfortable with the children being taken anywhere with her at this point.
And this is the part that is really difficult for us emotionally.
We feel an enormous amount of guilt.
We keep thinking about the things the children have said in little snippets since coming to live with us and wondering how much we didn’t know. We genuinely didn’t realise that we could potentially have had the children living with us sooner. We thought we had to go through Social Services/court and that we couldn’t simply take them from their mum because who wants to take children from their mum.
We raised concerns repeatedly. We contacted Social Services. We contacted the police. We went to court. We tried to get contact. But we still feel guilty that they were in that situation for as long as they were.
We don’t want to punish their mum. We don’t want to make decisions based on our feelings towards her. We genuinely want to do whatever is safest and healthiest for these three children.
So, if you were in this situation, what would you do about the first physical contact after three months?
Would you have her come to your home for a few hours? Is that long enough?
Would you meet somewhere neutral?
Would you allow contact while you are down in her area?
Would you have someone else present?
And how would you approach the first meeting after such a long gap?
We would really appreciate advice from people who have actually been through difficult family/contact situations. Please be kind — we know this is complicated and we’re not looking for anyone to simply tell us that their mum is awful. We just want some perspective because we’re struggling to work out what is genuinely best for these three children. Who by the way have not asked to call or see her once.
Thank you if you’ve read all of this. ❤️
Source
You could get SS to arrange visit to a contact centre