Family court ?!?

[Lola49]

Well. I don't know if this is normal but we'r grandparents who keep being cut off from our grandchildren. At times we'v looked after them for periods of time when pur daughter hasn't been çoping. We eventually had enough of being pushed out on a whim & made an application to the family court for a more formal agreement. We tried mediation etc but daughter refused to attend. Feeling very jaded after 3rd hearing. The judges clearly hadn't read our paperwork & although we'd made an agreement with the help of the solicitor & cafcass outside of the courtroom the judges decided that our daughter had been pressured into agreeing & said that they weren't going to make an order. Fast forward and another agreement was made with all parties agreeing to contact arrangements & so an agreement was made not an order but written by the solicitor. The judges though changed the wording of the agreement in such a way clearly stating that she didn't have to do any of what was in the agreement at all.
I'm just wondering who is looking out for the interests of the children? Fair enough the mother has to feel ok in order to do the parenting role but does that have to be at the expense of the children's relationships with other important people in their lives? And is ot normal for family courts to do their own thing. We just felt so undermined.
after all that time & work, not to mention expense we have no guarantees. Cafcass were involved & did a good report which was helpful to us but there was another social worker who has been involved from the local authority who said he didn't think there were any risks (historically this hadn't been the case). This was just yo make sure wr see the children regularly & so this can't be taken away just on a whim (which has happened before a few times now).
does anyone have any experience with this sort of issue & if so how was it resolved?

[2222]

A friend of mine was tied up in this sort of thing. The courts in his case gave no weight at all to the grandparents' wishes and placed little weight on the advantages to the grandchildren of continued contact. By comparison, you seem to have done remarkably well, I am afraid.

[Lola49]

2222 how sad for your friend, I thought that there was a big recognition of grandparents roles now? We feel like we went in with very little and came out with less - basically the judges seemed to not only side with my daughter but also we felt sort of duped by our agreement we thought we'd made - I mean really now we have nothing at all in place, its just on whether my daughter feels like we should see them or not and when. Are you saying that your friend came out with no contact at all?! where is the fair hearing in that?