First of all, I just want to say that I am brand new to this group and I am writing as a concerned grandma in the State of AZ.   I found this group in searching for support groups of custodial parents.

I am the mother of a 26 yr old daughter and a 9 yr old son and I'm also the grandmother of two beautiful little girls ages 4 and 1.  I am writing concerning the 4 yr old.

My daughter had her when she was 22 yrs old and single.  The father was definitely out of the picture sleeping around with every 16 & 17 yr old he could find where he worked.  He is still living with one of them.  The state ordered my daughter to paternity testing as she at the time needed state health insurance and received approx. $200/mo cash assistance to support herself and her daughter.  The father refused to support either until the state stepped in and started garnishing his wages.  No visitation was issued at that time by the state and neither did he pursue it until the baby was almost 4 (shy of 3 mos.) 

My daughter tried to arrange visiting times herself but the father would either be late, never show up or if he did do what was arranged he let the the baby (and she was a baby) get into a tube of Neosporin which she ate and let her consume almost a quart of adult orange juice (which burned her mouth and diaper area tremendously) and did not feed her..The last attempt, he just didn't show up and went to California, wrecked his gf's car and then preceded to tell my daughter he couldn't give her money because he had to get Andrea's car first which was more important.  OKAY!

So, now we have a twit attorney, a first hearing of Aug 7, 2007 and no idea where to turn, go or ask advice.  Can we get a new attorney and is there just someone out here who knows of where we need to start?  We're scared to death and this little girl knows NOTHING of this person and neither do we except for a very disgusting website of the girlfriend on myspace.com which the atty says (OUT atty) that it has nothing to do with my granddaughter's welfare.

I'm sorry to ramble.  We have no one to really speak with (I am writing because my daughter does not have a computer nor internet access) who seems to really give a good you know what...If anyone knows where someone can get good advice, private investigating (we've been checking) here in Az...We'd be so grateful..