Our 30 year old daughter is a serious meth addict & a single mum. Without going into too much detail, her 5 year old child is being
neglected ( our grand child ). My husband and i are in our early to mid 50s , so we aren't too old, and we have her child a couple nights a week. We have liased with DCP to get some supports in place for our daughter such as in home help, respite, NA meetings, urine tests, check - ins etc ... but all as DCP have suggested is 'why can't you take her child a bit more'. My husband and I have serious health problems and I've told them we cannot physically manage more than twice a week. I am on treatments for a stage 3 high grade very aggressive cancer, and my husband has Parkinsons Disease. We aren't well ourselves, and there are no other family to help out. How can we get DCP to do more? We also will not be supportive of foster care scenarios with strangers as this move will traumatise her child, and not only that, DCP said they dont use foster placements if family can do it. I told them again, we are sick so we cannot do more than 2 days a week. The department lack so much funding and compassion. They have so many reports of our daughters meth use from her child's school and the police, so there is plenty of back up. My husband and I don't have the energy to fight this, and DCP won't step in. Police also will not do anything until an actual crime has been committed. Both these departments dont see that a crime IS being committed, via child neglect. Why does her child have to be seriously injured or die before they will act? We are frustrated and worried. What more can we do?
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9 Replies
Can you take your grandchild full time and maybe get an aupair? Or see how much centrelink/dcp money you get and hire some help? Is the child a handful or something?
Also, you keep referring to your grandchild as "her child". It's very odd, not particularly loving/caring/maternal, were you also a cold mother? Would explain a lot.
Saying 'her child' because I do not want to disclose my grandies gender. It's not intended to be disected as cold. I'm trying to stay as anonymous as possible. If I've written this giving wrong intentions to the reader, it wasn't on purpose. My daughter was raised very lovingly by us. Our daughter chose her life once she became an adult and is affiliated. I can't really say much more so as to stay discrete, but my post is about DCP support and other supports. So if you can't offer any solutions for help, please move along.
My daughters child, AKA my grandchild, is not a handful. As mentioned in my post, I have cancer and cannot physically manage more than two nights a week. I am often in a lot of pain. I cannot afford an aupair as I am on centrelink. Even with centrelink payments for our little child, it would never be enough to cover the cost of someone else's time. We were hoping there were services to help our little ones mum for in home help, and/or us, but we keep hitting a stone wall. We are desperate.
The sad reality is, that DCP is so under funded, the help just isn't there. If things were to step up, with you not being able to become a full time carer, the child will land in Forster care. What about the dads family? What's dads situation? Could that side of the family help?
I'm too sick to help full time. I do two days a week and I'm broken at the end of it as I'm in pain. We are so worried for our little person. The dad, who was an only child, passed away from a drug overdose 3 years ago. His parents have also passed from cancers many years before I'm just so sad that there is limited funding resources to support sick Grandparents to help with things like this.
What about respite care? I knew a lovely family who would regularly take a child for weekends or just the day. If you have more help then it may not become overwhelming
As someone who grew up with a mother addicted to heroin, it was traumatising. I'm 33 and I still get PTSD with things. I understand it's a hard situation foster care seems scary and uncertain but living with an addict parents is way more scary. If you really can't do it you're going to have to trust that the system. i really feel the child had more chance of being in an unsafe situation with mum than in foster care.
You need to make a report via DCP about a child at risk. What they want you to do is take the child in with no supports, as a family agreement, which means they won’t have her on the books, they will not need to pay you the foster care allowance or offer any supports. With court orders you will be entitled to more support and so will your grand daughter, however if you or other family members don’t step up she will go into the foster care system, but contact with you should be able to continue.