A residence order is a court order which allows people to take in children who are at risk/are being neglected by their parents/parents have died - it's not fostering or adoption. We took out a residence order for our little lad who has Noonans Syndrome as his parents were just not able to look after him (mother has Noonans Syndrome and father has fairly severe learning difficulties). We worked alongside the child protection team and it fast became clear that he would be taken into care which I just couldn't bear. Under advice from the social workers, we applied for the residence order. We were told that there would be no financial help whatsoever other than Disability Living Allowance/carer's allowance (at the time we weren't sure just how badly affected our little boy would be, as it turned out, it was quite severely though not quite worst case scenario. We had never heard of the allowance until another family had their successful claim published in the local newspaper...it's taken two years of harrassment to get the allowance in the first place and we were never expecting to have it backdated beyond the date that our claim was actually put in.
There are thousands of people in the same position we were in who have fought through the courts for years and years and social services have treated them incredibly shoddily and many are still battling it out with no end in sight, in that respect we have been very lucky though it's a sad state of affairs...We were lucky enough to have the country's best team of family rights solicitors on our case, others are not so lucky. I know to some it may seem mercenary to chase down financial help but the laws have to be changed, too many families are struggling to raise children which are not theirs and would otherwise be in care at a cost of thousands per week to the taxpayer and yet they receive not a penny.
Sorry for the rant and the long-winded reply lol
Topic: RESULT!! (Read 3453 times)
