But the kids were in his recent stream, unless he only has them for the day and only when the grandparents are there
That was most certainly a supervised visit, with supervised being the grandparents.
On one hand, it's good the grandparents have their shit together as it means that the kids aren't facing fostercare.
Side note, I want to point out that not ever single fostercare family is a child abusing nightmare. The ones that I ended up in treated me quite well. Those folks don't make the news cycle.
On the other hand for Nick and Kayla is that since the kids are with family and those people seem to be good, CPS is going to drag their feet with restoring full rights to Nick and Kayla. They would probably get their rights back a lot faster if the kids were in fostercare.
Ultimately there are two goals for CPS. 1) don't cost the state money and 2) minimize the stress of the kids. The situation right now is that there is zero incentive for CPS to change the current living conditions for the children. I need to be clear, I have zero inside information on this case and my personal experience is from a completely different US state.
Believe me, no matter how bad you think a family situation is, kids don't like being separated from their parents.
It's so utterly fucked up that Nick cares more about shitposting on the internet and drama beefs than he does getting healthy for his kids. And the worst part about this is when his kids are older, and the oldest probably already sees the shit on the internet, the kids will be able to see what their dad put as more important to himself then them.