I am a grandmother of 4. I raised my first grandchild up until she was 2 years old on a full time basis. her mother took her away when she was 2 and my granddaughter was devastated, she did not know her mother. my daughter said the basis for wanting to take her daughter back was that she finally had a stable place to live and a steady income. 6 months later she was homeless. i was able to keep my granddaughter most of the time, typically 4 - 5 days out of the week every single week. my daughter now has 3 children and is still living with her now husbands father and step mother in a 2 bedroom trailer in unspeakable living conditions. my daughter nor her husband have a job and have been living with her husbands father for almost 3 years now! until 9 months ago i was taking care of her children and supporting them financially. when my daughter and I had a falling out she took my grandchildren away from me and absolutely refuses to let me see them. I am all that my granddaughter knew her whole life and from one day to the next she has ripped away everything in her daughters life that she had. it used to be impossible just to take her home on the weekends without my granddaughter screaming and crying not wanting to let me go so I know this is causing serious damage and trauma to my little girl. I have tried again and again to see my grandchildren but have still not been able to. I would show up and they would call the police on me. I tried going through social services but they favor my daughter going by her side of the story. I called an attorney but they wanted $3,000.00 and told me it was going to be a long drawn out process and chances are I wasn't going to get anywhere near what I wanted. I asked about filing for custody they told me it was very unlikely I would recieve custody. I have researched and researched everything I could possibly think of to try to find a way and nothing has worked. It states the requirements for which a parent is deemed unfit to raise their children and both my daughter and her husband meet them all in which I have been able to prove yet social services seemed to have an excuse for my every complaint. when I pointed out the fact that neither one of them are financially capable of providing for the children she told me as long as someone was meeting their needs, they were ok. when I pointed out the disgusting living conditions in which my grandchildren are now living in full time, the mold that is growing all over the walls, the roach infestation, the bed bug infestation and the filth that only keeps growing and the fact that my grandchildren were sleeping in the laundry room where you could not even see the floor and social services tells me well we can't do anything about the bed bugs because that an issue state wide, and when she did her home visit she didn't see that many roaches and as far as the children sleeping in the laundry room she actually told me that she was impressed by the way they were able to utilize what little space they had and that it was not really something that concerned them. I told her about my daughter suffering from mental illness that was going untreated and her husbands untreated mental illness as well, social services told me that there was no proof that her husband suffered any mental health issues and that my daughter was in therapy according to her. I told her how I witnessed her husband freaking out on her because he is a paranoid schitzophrenic and I seen him with my own two eyes as he flipped out on my daughter because of what the voices in his head were telling him about her, and as far as my daughter goes let me tell you that I know my daughter better than anyone and I am telling you she is mentally unstable and not on her medication because she can not pass the drug test that is required to recieve her medication. I went on to tell her about the neglect and abuse, I went on to argue the fact that my grandchildren were not safe in that environment under their care and all the reasons why, and she went on to give me an excuse or an exception to my every complaint. I realized it was a waste of resources and enraged me to think of the kind of people who train to do this job and then don't do their job. what kind of people are they hiring to protect the children that need it? I realized that the social worker herself had to be the same kind of person that my daughter had become and that was disappointing. My grandchildren are not safe, not taken care of, not in a good nor safe environment, not in the care or presence of anyone who has their best interest in mind, not under the proper influence and their needs are not being properly met. while I can't tell you how many times i have sent one of my other children over there to check in on my grandbabies for me and it is exactly the way it has always been, my daughter and her husband are still in bed at 3:00 in the evening while the kids are left alone, what worries me most is when my daughters husband's daughter is there. she is about 8 years old i guess, my granddaughter is now 4, my grandsons are 3 and 1 and his daughter is not even suppose to be around my grandchildren as she is a danger to them since she tried killing my granddaughter once already. The laws have got to change. The state of kentucky is the absolute worst when it comes to this matter. It is just about impossible to remove children from their biological parents no matter how much you are able to prove them unfit, and this is mostly thanks to social services who protects the parent first and not the child the way they are suppose to. I am not speaking on a financial level, i realize there are many who struggle to raise their children in poverty but they are still people who love their children and do what they have to , to provide for them and raise them right, then there are people like this, who use their children for their own selfish needs, who don't care about the damage their lifestyle causes their children, who are capable of working but choose not to, who would rather live off of other people and let other people provide for their children while they only provide for themselves, and their drug habits every week.  while these people lay around and sleep all day and assign their responsibilities of these 3 children to the oldest child in the house who is 4 years old and gets held responsible for any mess that's made, or any cry that's heard or any action that's taken and then punished is just unacceptable. Stop protecting the unfit parents and start protecting the children! that what you're suppose to be doing in the first place so how is it that it never gets done that way???? It's called Child protective services not parents protective services. why is no one protecting my grandbabies and everyone protecting my daughter??? If you're not going to do your job when I call you to check on my grandbabies why in the hell are you so damn thorough at doing your job when she calls you to remove me from her property? Oh and it's not even her property at that. why are you so damn concerned with me showing up trying to see my grandchildren and not at all concerned with why Im trying to see them. I don't know what is considered to be abuse by law or in the eyes of the law but when I think about how my granddaughter must be feeling having lived her life one way then taking everything from her and forcing her to live another way, or what she must be thinking or being led to believe and how this is, has and or will effect her now and in the future, seems to me, to be the type of abuse that should be unforgiveable and should be punishable by law. You're not allowed to kill someone without breaking a law and serving time in prison, but you are allowed to destroy a child's innocence and ruin their entire life if you so choose to just because .... that doesn't seem justifiable to me. Children should be given every chance and every opportunity to love and be loved back even more, to be led by good examples and become good people, to have the very simplest of pleasures from childhood at the very least and not be transformed by the effects of not even having the bare minimums. My daughter has not bought her daughter a single gift for any of her birthdays, Christmas or any other holiday or special occasion that means the most when your'e a child, I have always made sure she was taken care of because I knew what kind of parents my granddaughter had. Her father has not seen her nor does he want to see her since she was about 3 months old, my daughter didn't come back for her until she was 2 years old and she only came back for her because her now husband was raising his daughter and she couldn't very well tell his baby's mama that she wasn't a good mother if she herself didn't have her own kid. Now they call themselves her parents but have yet to provide for her, since my daughter has eliminated me they now have had to dig into their storage to find his daughters clothes she has outgrown, for my granddaughter to have clothes and shoes to wear. When her birthday came around my kids went to her birthday party and the only one who brought a gift was my son. Her mother had nothing for her, and since she has no friends she had no party, that breaks my heart. I went over there on christmas day with the back of my truck loaded with christmas presents for my grandkids, hoping to god that she could set her drama to the side if even for just an hour and have the heart not for me but for her children to let them see me and open their gifts I got them, but she couldn't, as a matter of fact she was just so caught up in her ego that she could resist missing the opportunity to smile in my face and tell me No I couldn't see them and making sure I knew that they were her kids and she doesnt have to let me see them if she doesnt want me to, and as her husband stood there just despite me had to let me know as well that they were their parents (even though he is NOT the father of my granddaughter or my oldest grandson and he knows how bad it angers me when he claims ownership of them) and he doesn't have to let me see them ever again! as I stand there thinking first, how they are more my children than his by blood and how I raised and supported them and not him and the kind of person you would have to be to be able to smile so selfishly in someones face knowing what that person has done for them kids, and means to them kids and has done for him as well and not even hesitate in thinking about what "his kids" might want or how it would have made them feel to be able to come outside and see me on christmas day.... that right there is the kind of abuse I am talking about. Since I apparently have next to no rights as I am just the grandmother and not as important of a person in their life whereas neither my involvement nor my absence is of great consequence, yet this man holds more authority and say than I, their mother who showed up when she wanted to arguing she now had stability has every right, though has not had a place to live with all 3 children along for the ride in going on 3 years now, has not had employment in over 2 years and her husband who is not the biological father but yet has more rights and say than the maternal grandmother has not held a job for more than 4 months at a time off and on over the last 3 years, has not saved a single dime to provide his family with their own place to live where the children might actually be able to have a room or anything they might call their own in almost 3 years, has not been able to provide for the childrens needs although they have both recieved income taxes 3 years running and earned income credit on all these kids for 3 years now, they both recieved 3 stimulus checks each and are just overall low class trash who can't take care of themselves, are definitely UNFIT parents but yet they are untouchable. They are protected by the laws, by the government, by social services, by the police, by anyone and everyone and while everyone is protecting them..... who is protecting my grandchildren? The laws have got to change, your agencies have got to change, your morals have got to change, you know this is wrong but because the law is so damn unbendable from every angle all of you in power and with authority do absolutely nothing, and that's just not acceptable to me. I am not giving up on these babies because I have been rejected and hit a wall at every corner ive turned or door I've opened. I love these babies more than anything and they deserve to live a better life than this and I refuse to stop until I have them with me again, I don't care how long it takes, at some point someone has to step in and stop the abuse that's being caused to these kids mentally, emotionally, and psychologically and I can only imagine what they must endure physically. Just because you are able to have a child physically doesnt mean you should, and the law needs to recognize that not every woman who gives birth transforms into a nurturing loving mother and infact can remain a self centered selfish abusive person who is determined to make sure they run their life and themselves completely to the ground taking all their accumulated "baggage" with them..... not fair, not moral, not right, not justice! Help me save my grandchildren before their "Parents" take everything within them, away from them. before they cause anymore damage, before they reach the point beyond repair. Let them be loved since their "parents" deny them of being loved.