This Is Why

By my own admission, I have recently become a cranky foster parent. I am irritated and irritable. 

Today was to be the day that the parental rights of OT's birth father were to be terminated. That is not going to happen. Yesterday we found out that the hearing has been rescheduled for October 10. And it hasn't been rescheduled as a termination hearing but as a status review, which means that nothing of legal consequence will occur; the facts of the case will be stated and the judge will get an up-date from all attorneys and then will set a date for a termination hearing. That date could be set for a month or more after the October 10 hearing.

This is why I am cranky.

Foster families - friends of mine - have been waiting for the better part of a year for adoption paperwork to be completed and filed so that a petition can be made to the court for finalization dates. These families have inquired about the progress of the process - because as far as they know they have completed and returned everything they were responsible for - and receive no answers. Instead, blame is shifted between agencies.

This is why I am cranky.

Families caring for kids with challenging behaviors need support. All of our friends who are foster families have wonderful support systems and are a part of a great group of fellow foster families, but also need to rely on the professionals to access needed services. For one particular family, after months of reporting difficult behaviors and challenging circumstances, little to no support has been offered by the professionals. Meanwhile, this family continues to struggle to maintain the placement out of concern for the child. Only when the situation escalated to crisis-level did the professionals get involved. And then proceeded to blame the foster family for allowing the situation to become a problem.

This is why I am cranky.

When the professionals elicit feedback and input, and seemingly hear and respect the perspective of foster parents, and then no apparent improvements are made; and instead of clear and honest communication there are excuses and insults... And then we are implored to go out of recruit our friends to do this.

This is why I am cranky.

The system is broken. I am a part of the system. I am irritated - by the bigness of the system and littleness of the funding; by the lack of training because case worker turn-over is so high; by too much to do in too little time; by the smallness of my voice even though I desire to advocate in huge ways; by my own crankiness.

These past few weeks have set me to considering and reconsidering if we are done fostering. Maybe I'm tapped out. Maybe we've got enough going on here. 

Or maybe I  just need to get over myself. Maybe I've gotten a little too big-headed and small-minded. My focus has shifted from the day-to-day care of the children in my home to big picture problems. 

So we have decided to take a bit of a break. With OT on his way to his new family - even with all of birth dad's shenanigans - there is a natural breather before we open our home to more children. Perhaps this breather will alleviate the crankiness and allow for clear thinking to move ahead.

Six Months Later

The child abuse report of six months ago was unfounded. Our T was returned to our home after twenty-one days. And now he's getting ready to leave again.

During the time of the abuse investigation, the case worker for the agency that has custody of OT changed - again. This was the third worker for this case. The hand-off between case worker number one and case worker number two had been problematic; whereas number one was loud and brash and pushy, number two was a push-over. We went from poor communication to almost no communication which was precisely what led to the ludicrously false allegations made against us.

The second case worker had allowed the birth father to run the case. Dad wanted to have unsupervised visits, so we had to drive OT to his father's door and then back again to pick him up; dad had no responsibility for transportation. Then birth father requested that birth mother's supervised visits take place at Chuck E. Cheese's - every week, for three hours. Then dad bullied his way into getting full weekend visits. When he was forty-five minutes late for meeting for the first visit, we were told that we needed to work with him. And if we reported that he was late and he was reminded to be prompt, he would retaliate by complaining that I hadn't fed OT, or I had cut his hair, or he was dirty, or didn't have proper clothing.

Enter case worker number three. She was handed the case by worker number two with the comment: "This will be an easy case. The kids will soon be reunified with birth dad." Her first home visit to our house was during the twenty-one days that OT was not with us. For more than an hour she listened to me relate the journey of the previous year; the lack of communication from the workers, the obvious manipulation by birth dad, our frustration of no one listening to our concerns for the safety and OT and his sister. 

This worker wasted no time. She stopped all unsupervised contact; all visits were moved to the agency office to be supervised by the same worker so that documentation would be consistent. 

She contacted the therapists who had completed assessments and treatment for both birth parents, and found that birth dad had been lying to his therapist for the past two years - having never told the therapist that he had children, let alone children in the system due to the near fatality of OT.

This worker refused to answer dozens of texts from birth dad; something that worker number two must have been afraid to do. She has been threatened and harassed and toted - by this birth father - as a tyrant; unfair and unreasonable. He has complained to her supervisor, the agency director, and anyone who happens to pick up the phone; he has tried repeatedly to have her removed from the case. And several times she has called to tell me she just can't "do it anymore." And I beg her to not to quit; remind her that these children need her to advocate for them.

After two months on the case, the new worker presented these issues and others in court. The judge scheduled a full day hearing for August 15 for Termination of Parental Rights. 

On August 15 birth dad entered the court room, announced that he had just fired his attorney, and requested a continuance until he hired new counsel. The judge told him that this announcement (and manipulation - that's not what the judge said, but that's what I think birth dad was doing) would only serve to prolong the inevitable, and that he had thirty days to inform the court of his new attorney. The hearing proceeded for birth mom and she lost her parental rights that day. The Termination hearing for dad was rescheduled for September 28.

As part of the preparation for the Termination hearing, the case worker needed to identify permanent placements for OT and his sister. Of course we were asked if would adopt them. And we said... no. Because he is two years old and we are no longer young parents we felt it best to have the foster family where OT's sister had been living adopt them both. Until the beginning of September that was the plan. But birth dad continued to manipulate; he knows where OT's sister goes to school and was able to find their home address. So that family, for safety reasons, decided to not move forward as an adoptive resource. 

And here's where you have to know it's all God.

The family that OT had been placed with initially, where he went from the hospital after suffering traumatic head injury and required multiple specialists appointments and early intervention services; where a brand new foster mom was faced with aggressive and hostile birth parents and an agency worker who blamed her for those issues, and after months of feeling helpless decided that another family might be better suited to handle the craziness and stress - THAT family had recently moved into a larger house, THAT family had become good friends of ours, THAT family had been praying all along that OT and his sister might become available for adoption.

And so it has been that every weekend for the past month, OT and his sister have been able to stay with their new family. And that after the hearing to terminate birth dad's parental rights, they will be able to officially be placed with their family. And so six months from now I will hopefully be able to report that an adoption date has been scheduled.

Stay tuned...