Spare Kids

[Aliantha]

I've decided to post this thread and see if other people think the same thing about a particular situation I'm in at the moment which I think is a bit weird.

We have some neighbours across the road, and they're a family of 6. 5 kids and mother who we have a fairly friendly neighbourly relationship with to the extent that we'll sometimes have a glass of wine together and so forth. Father is off the scene. There was domestic violence and he's not allowed back on the street at this point.

Anyway, about 4 weeks ago, mother (K) goes to New Zealand to take care of her own mother while she's moving house. She was supposed to only been gone for a week or so, but it's now a month. The three younger children aged 5, 9 and 11 were left in the care of the two older boys aged 16 and 17 who are in their last and second last year at high school. Over here, it's almost exam time for seniors, so the two older boys have lots of study to do, along with showing up at their part time jobs several times a week each.

Last Saturday the oldest boy (C) went out and didn't come home till the next day at about 3pm. Obviously we were all concerned and when he finally got home he came to my house rather sheepishly to apologize for me having to look after the three younger ones. His explanation was that he just couldn't cope with the kids anymore and didn't know what to do because he feels he's not meeting any of his commitments now.

Long story short, I offered to take care of the younger three and support them till their mother gets home (which is supposedly this Friday or Saturday but time will tell).

The thing I can't make a decision on at this stage is whether I should call child protective services or not. I would rather not because I don't want to see these kids split up but on the other hand, I'm not their legal guardian, so if something happens while I'm caring for them, I'd like to know that I'm not going to be held responsible (if that doesn't sound too mercenary). They're great kids, and they deserve a lot better than they've been getting from both their parents. All five of them are. I'll also mention that C the oldest boy thinks he's bisexual (I suspect he's just plain gay but what would I know), so that's another issue/challenge he's working through at the moment. He's also school captain so has extra responsibilities there.

Thoughts?