Me (f29) and my husband (m27) live in a cul de sac. Everyone is too close to one another and it means people are naturally in each others business. Right from the beginning I had issues with one of our neighbours. She is the type of woman that lets her children wander about without a care, but that is not the worst part. She has a uncanny skill for talking the neighbours into babysitting for her. I am normally the type to say no but even I have been roped into it way too many times. Yesterday she came knocking on my door again. So I pretended I wasn’t home. She continued to knock harder and I thought she would yank the letterbox right off. So, I went to answer. She quickly said a few sentences that I didn’t quite understand and that she would be back on Sunday. She has 6 children ranging from 6 months to 7 years old. I told her I couldn’t and she said the black cab was waiting for her. I tried to grab her hand to stop her from leaving. I said I was unable to and she ran off and got in the cab.

I was pissed and that is putting it mildly. I waited 40 minutes and then I sent her a text saying that if she couldn’t pick them up in 10 I would call Children’s Services. She didn’t answer the text so I called her and she didn’t pick up on the first two rings but picked up on the third. I told her the same thing again and she tried to tell me it was too late for her to come back as she was out of the city and that if I didn’t want to watch them to drop them off at Jennifer’s (the 68year old lady with health issues living on the opposite side of me). I repeated that if she wasn’t here in 10 she could pick them up at the local council if they decided she was a fit enough mother. She said a few bad words and told me I would never. So I did as in the moment it felt like she was baiting me. After phoning Child Services I sent her a text that it was done. She phoned me back and said she was halfway to Blackpool and that she would murder me if it was true. So I sent her a video when Child Services picked them up. The police were there too as they said they often tag along for collecting abandoned children in case something criminal has happened and they asked a lot of questions about the mother. Last night me and my husband had a huge fight. My husband was in fostercare and he said “right cow you are.” He said I should have declined at the door instead of waiting 40 minutes before calling CSC, when the mother couldn’t reasonably pick them up in 10 minutes. He said I had other options like not opening the door or running after her and throwing the children into the black cab instead of giving silent consent. He also said I did it on purpose as the mother offered Jennifer as an alternative so why hadn’t I done that. In my defence, I am not comfortabel to hand over children to a third party and good manners say you don’t show up on an elderly lady’s doorstep and give her six unruly children to deal with for a few days. I would never have lived down that shame. My husband argued that once I had dropped them off at Jennifer’s it would no longer be my business, but something between the mother and our other neighbour. He told me anything that happens to those children in care is on my head and then he told me of things he himself experienced and what he knew of others in care had eperienced. I haven’t slept all that much and my husband left for work without speaking to me. I wonder if I should go back to Child Services and say I overeacted or that it was a misunderstanding and find a way to make it up to the children and get them out of there. I had no idea forster care was that bad.