What to do?

AS a retired social worker i am very pleased you have had such support, and hope that your stepdaughter is able to benefit from their help. good Luck daisy and well done for being there for the children.

We hear so many bad things about social services and other government bodies but I'm very impressed. We had a long meeting yesterday with a social worker from child services. My stepdaughter was there as was my step-DIL. Stepdaughter looks miles better, I do know there is many a slip between cup and lip, but she looked clean, tidy and bright-eyed and I have been like a storm-trooper going to her cottage every day. It is immaculate now and when I took the children down to see it, even though they wouldn't talk to their mother they told me they thought it all looked lovely. K, the social worker, is organising parenting classes and also arranging for the children to go to Teen-Anon. They are having counselling at school and the stepdaughter is having counselling from a local addiction specialist and is also going to AA. The children are going to have a phased return to contact with their mother. She is going to pick them up from school on Friday and give them tea and spend a couple of hours with them and then I will pick them up and bring them home with me. K will check with the children that they are happy with this and then their mother will gradually have them more and more but with social services (and me) keeping a beady eye on the situation. She is getting amazing support but has been warned that if she doesn't keep it all together the children will be taken away formally as opposed to, as now, informally, with family support. Anyway, at the moment I say hurray for social services.

Sadly I have no contact with my stepdaughter any more. She was a lovely child and my husband adored both her and her brother but as a teenager she became very spiteful and treated her father horribly so he never saw her again after the age of 18. She refused to go out for a meal with him when invited and when her godmother gave her a beautiful and expensive piece of jewellery as a gift, godmother was appalled and embarrassed by receiving a message which was “actually I wanted money”! Very sad, though I am still in touch with my stepson, who gets on well with my 2 sons. My husband died a while ago - stepson came to the funeral with his wife and teenage children but neither first wife nor stepdaughter bothered to give my husband the respect he deserved...

i may be slated for this but i can see why your bil has washed his hands of her you need to think of yourself for once maybe grieve for your husband we all have problems but she sounds selfish and a user for once instead of running round after her maybe the kids need foster care you need to involve social services and she needs tough love left to her own devices

Also, these children are French citizens and should have stayed in France and let their tax payers pick up the bill, not ours.

Probably untrue. The children are likely to be British citizens if their mother is a British citizen. Children take the citizenship of their parents.

Not that I am suggesting they be sent back to their father.

The children will be EU citizens after Brexit too, as their father is French.
If he can give them nothing else, that would allow them to have a French passport and EU citizenship. Presumably they have British citizenship too and then they would have dual nationality.

quiz the children are EU citizens until Brexit. So, just as the million plus Brits living and working in Europe benefit from the health and social care offered in Europe, these children benefit from what we can offer. Are you really suggesting these kids be sent back to France to an alcoholic father who lives in one room in a friend's house? Clearly OP needs to make sure she's not imposed on and can't cope in her mid Seventies with bringing up young children but if she can keep in touch with them that will give them a reassurance that someone cares even if the parents are incapable.

quiz the children are EU citizens until Brexit. So, just as the million plus Brits living and working in Europe benefit from the health and social care offered in Europe, these children benefit from what we can offer. Are you really suggesting these kids be sent back to France to an alcoholic father who lives in one room in a friend's house? Clearly OP needs to make sure she's not imposed on and can't cope in her mid Seventies with bringing up young children but if she can keep in touch with them that will give them a reassurance that someone cares even if the parents are incapable.

The children are very unlikely to be denied contact with their mother (and you, if you want to be in contact) which can even include overnight stays and holidays if you're willing. So it's not like today's foster care breaks up family relationships necessarily. If I were you I wouldn't offer to have any of them living full time in your home at all. If you did, all the help would fall away and you'd be left struggling with the whole lot - mother, children and all.

Let's understand this. The mobile home was filthy so she was then given a better cottage! This woman cannot take care of herself and hold down a job but was employed as a carer! Who makes these ridiculous decisions? Contact social services and say you will continue to be a grandmother only ( not a carer) to these children but I would suggest you wash your hands of this stepdaughter or your own health and bank account will suffer and you will not be in a fit state to be able to help anyone. Also, these children are French citizens and should have stayed in France and let their tax payers pick up the bill, not ours.

I am a foster carer and I can assure you that SS always try to ensure children can remain in contact with their relatives if at all possible. Even when family members take drugs or abuse alcohol they still encourage supervised contact. If these children are being exposed to these terrible conditions you describe it is not fair on them to allow it to continue and would be far kinder to notify SS who usually try to work with parents to see if they can improve lifestyle and accommodation before they would remove the children. You have to think of the children who are innocent in this and need a stable and safe home life.

I've pm' d you Daisy

Grannyactivist is right, time for you to step back a little Daisy, you cannot and should not be in the position of offering full time care to this family. Help where you can but these children need long term professional support.
I hope the meeting goes well on Wednesday but you need to stand firm with what you are able to offer.
Good luck.

DaisyL you have done a wonderful job of stepping in and 'holding the fort', but the truth is that these children need a long-term future and, being realistic, that will not be with you. Difficult as it may be in the short term I do think that you should be honest about your limited capacity to bail out this family any longer and let social services know that the children's stay is time-limited.
Please let us know how you get on.

Try not to worry too much until the meeting on wednesday.
Let them know your concerns and ask what support, both practical and financial is available.
I feel very sad for the children, and for you to be in this difficult position. You have already done a lot for them but its important that you take your own circumstances into account too. Teenage children can be hard work anyway without all the disruption they bave had.
Make a few notes to take to the the meeting so you dont forget anything you want to ask. Good luck and hope things work out.

Happy New Year to everyone! I'm feeling a bit daunted as all the rest of the family seem to be turning their backs on these children. I don't blame my step DIL as she has been great but she was divorced from their uncle years ago and has never been close to my stepdaughter, but stepdaughter's brother (my stepson) refuses to get involved. The saddest thing is that it is tarnishing my memories of my late husband as I realise that none of his three children are/were very nice people.

Charities such as Buttle UK or the Royal National Children’s Foundation can sometimes help with the cost of boarding.
if that helps at all

Good luck whatever you decide for the best welfare of the children (and yourself).

State boarding schools still charge about £4,00 per term per child and unfortunately I don't have £24,000 pa spare income! At the moment their mother is going to AA and various alcohol support groups and the children are with me. We have a meeting with family services on Wednesday so will know then what if any support there is for me and/or my step-daughter.

stateboarding.org.uk/

Boarding school is really not an option - there isn't enough money for that.
There are state-run boarding schools; I'm not sure where they are.

Poor girls, they do need some stability in their lives; I don't know what the answer is but it would be quite a responsibility for you take them on.

Things have now moved on quite rapidly and the children have been taken away from their mother and my DIL and I have temporary care (custody?) of them. We are quite willing to share the responsibility for the girls on a temporary basis - the social worker seems to think that it will be three to six months. My GD (who is a solicitor) is worried in case we can be forced to take permanent custody of the children. I cannot believe that a court can order anyone to look after child that is not their own but does anyone have any experience of this. It is not that we don't want to look after the children more that we don't want to have sole responsibility for them - particularly when they aren't related to either of us except by marriage and we haven't been involved in their lives at all until fairly recently.

DaisyL I do applaud your efforts to help and can sense your reluctance to involve the 'authorities', which I have some sympathy with. But the bottom line is your help is most likely to have a sticking plaster effect than to create lasting change that will improve life permanently for the children. May I suggest that you have a plan prepared for if your best efforts don't produce the results you hope for? Neglect can have extremely damaging effects, most particularly on the self-esteem of children and at some point, for their sake, a line needs to be drawn and an appeal for help made to social services. Perhaps monitor the situation over Christmas and then decide if mum is able to put her children's needs before her own on a permanent basis.

Thank you grannyactivist - I have had a look at the site you mentioned - they are definitely being neglected but is the alternative of being in care and without their mother better. Progress today has been that the disciplinary hearing has said that the complaints have now been passed to head office. One of the problems is that she lies all the time - she swore to the hearing that she had not had a single drink while she as suspended, but my DIL spoke to them later and felt she had to say that this is completely untrue she has been drunk for four days -they already knew this and could smell the alcohol on her this morning. Anyway, the upshot is that we have had another blitz on the house, bought food for the children and said that she has to go to an AA meeting every day between now and Christmas and that I am going to pop in every day to make sure that she has done the washing up, put the rubbish into the bin and hoovered. It is a bit like having a child with a learning disability who is being mentored and supported in order to live independently, but at least in that case, I feel sure it would be much more worthwhile and you would feel that there were some achievements.

It sounds as though the children may be suffering from neglect and the family needs more targeted help than you can give. Before you contact the NSPCC it may be worth reading their information on what the indicators of neglect are, it may help you to be more confident about recognising and addressing the issues:
www.nspcc.org.uk/preventing-abuse/child-abuse-and-neglect/neglect/