Devoted gran fights to take care of daughter's children

Sep 20 2009 by Katy Simpson, Sunday Sun

A LOVE tug granny is locked in a frantic race against the clock to care for her dead daughter’s children.

Christine Mackie’s grandchildren were robbed of their mother by drugs and are now all she has left to remember her daughter.

But time is running out and just a year after losing her daughter, at the tragically young age of 29, Christine from Newcastle, faces yet more agony as she launches a heartbreaking fight to take her grandchildren out of foster care and bring therm into the bosom of her own home.

The devoted grandma from the city’s West End is desperate to reunite them with their extended family.

But social services on Teesside where her daughter lived, have refused Christine the right because they say her terraced council house is too small and, at 49, she is too old to take on the responsibility.

Christine though insists the love they would be given would make up for any lack of space, and she has even applied to move house to take them on.

Social services have told Christine she is too old and warned that her grandchildren will soon be put up for adoption.

Christine rarely gets to see the children, who cannot be named for legal reasons, because they do not live nearby, but the grandma-of-nine, who also has another daughter and a son, said: “I write to the kids every week, and I can talk to the older ones over the phone.