So my inlaws have always been terrible parents but over the last few months our 13 year old neice has made us aware that they are actually incredibly emotionally abuse, neglectful,manipulative, parentify them and have assulted the 14 year old who is currently waiting to be assessed for additional needs many times. The 13 year old has been discussing with us and her Grandad and his partner and children about how she can’t live like that anymore and we were trying to think of ways of how to address it until one day she called her uncle saying that her step dad had grabbed her by the throat and pinned her against the wall threatening her because they had argued about her tidying her room and said she was scared and asked to be picked up which he did and had her for the night. The next day the parents came to where we were and assulted us and called the police which also got social services involved. After hours of back and forth it was decided the 13 year old was to stay at the womans house who runs the stables she goes to as her parents refused to let her stay with her uncle or grandad and the niece also didn’t want to go and stay with her nana because she was scared she would just take her back home. She stayed at the lady’s house for about a week before being allowed to go and stay at her friend’s house which is where she still is. The parents have still not allowed contact with the grandad and uncle, for a while they denied access to all of the family besides them and the nana until social services told them they had to let her have contact with her other family members as they are isolating her. She has only seen a social worker twice and it has now been over a month since this all started. In the last meeting she ended up behaving in a way that the social worker said they were very concerned abuse was involved as she seemed traumatised and that a meeting with a child psychologist would be arranged immediately, this was two weeks ago and she has heard nothing from them since. We have just found out from the nana that social services have apparently now decided no further action required.
This now leaves the child in the position where she is stuck living at a friend’s house with her parents still having control over her life and with the possibility of the parents collecting her at anytime. Social services and nspcc said they would step in if this was to happen but what we cant understand is how more isn’t being done to get her settled with family and not just stuck sleeping on a friends sofa. She is incredibly depressed and we are all very worried about her.
So any advice on what we can do here? I’ve heard about child arrangement orders but I’m not sure they apply in this case? The current carer for her has also issued a complaint to social services about their parenting as he has seen how traumatised she is. When complaining about the lack of any action from social services is there anything we can site that they should be doing or how they aren’t meeting her needs for long term?
Location: England