Firebird
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Post by Firebird on Mar 24, 2015 11:07:58 GMT -5
(((later))))
You guys are an inspiration.
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shanendoah
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Post by shanendoah on Mar 26, 2015 10:34:56 GMT -5
I need to do a quick social worker vent.
Cupcake has been with us 7 weeks. That means it has been 8 weeks since she saw her mom, who she had been seeing weekly. The break in visitation was not because of anything mom did but because Cupcake was moved out of family/kin care into foster care, and the social workers are overloaded. (People who should have 18 cases have 27.) We have been pushing on the parent visit, and I did say that at this point, it was not our first choice, but if bio-mom was up for it, we would take Cupcake to the visit. State SW (who is the supervisor of the office) took us up on this offer. I should also say that all email communication with the State SW has included our Agency SW (and our agency is our licensor, so they kind of care what's going on). Yesterday, as it looked like we might have a visit set up for this weekend, with us chaperoning it, our Agency SW called C and lectured him on how we can't do that- liability issues and the like. C responded basically by telling her - you know what, if we made an offer that's against the rules, ok, let us know that, but we honestly can't be expected to know all these rules. Pop Tart had no parental visits and sibling visits only happened because her sister's family reached out to us the first time. The State SW who DOES know all the rules, accepted our offer. So if you want to yell at someone, you need to yell at him. (Which she did, and now I don't know if the visit will happen this weekend or not.) C also mentioned that our agency (who we pay, and the state pays) is supposed to help out with some of these visits. And the response - but you're planning the visit on a weekend. No one wants to work the weekend.
Yes, we're planning a visit on the weekend because during the week, Cupcake is in school. I am at work. Cupcake's mom is at work. If the visit weren't on a weekend, it would still need to be after normal working hours on a weeknight, which no one is going to "want" to supervise either. But one of the things your agency advertises, in getting people to get their foster licenses through you (which costs money, vs getting them from the state, which doesn't cost money) is that your agency and social workers will assist with supervision of bio-family visits.
I have a lot of respect for social workers. I really do. And I don't think we pay them nearly enough for the work they do. But yelling at us for trying to do what is right for a child in our care, and then whining that the needs of the families involved don't match up with your preferred time lines, that's not going to win you any points with us.
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TheOtherMe
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Post by TheOtherMe on Mar 26, 2015 20:18:36 GMT -5
Shane. Of course, you and Cupcake's mom would want the visit to be on a weekend. Sheesh.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 26, 2015 21:35:26 GMT -5
So basically Agency SW doesn't want you to do something that they can get paid for doing... you'd be cutting out the middle man... ?
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shanendoah
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Post by shanendoah on Mar 27, 2015 0:37:09 GMT -5
oped - Not quite like that. The Agency is already paid. We paid them in the form of paying for our home study (instead of getting it free through the state). The state pays them based on how many foster children are in homes they licensed. The majority of that money is passed on to the foster parents, but the agency keeps some of it for administrative costs, including the costs of helping provide supervision for bio-family visits. No the concern is liability issues - if something happened between bio-mom and us. Because they are responsible to the state for us. As our licensor, it's kind of like they are a loan guarantor - so if we do something bad, it reflect back on them.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 27, 2015 6:03:21 GMT -5
Ok. It just seems weird the state was ok with it but they were not I guess. I am beginning to question all potential conflicts of interest.
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shanendoah
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Post by shanendoah on Mar 27, 2015 9:59:32 GMT -5
oped - the state is okay with is because they are understaffed and over burdened. The SW who did the health and safety visit this month as 27 cases when she should have 18. And that doesn't count the cases she is helping out on (like ours) because the SW they were assigned to took another job.
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shanendoah
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Post by shanendoah on Apr 7, 2015 17:58:08 GMT -5
Another vent about social workers (after which I will be offline for almost 5 hours, and probably not on this board again until tomorrow).
We had one visit with Cupcake's birth mom a two weekends ago. C took Cupcake, and he said it went well. (He also said that given the spot mom is in now, he doesn't see a judge granting termination of parental rights - TPR, if Mom fights it.) We were supposed to have another visit this weekend, but it was Easter and the family member who was supposed to host/supervise the visit was busy.
As soon as we knew that wasn't going to happen - last week - we contacted the social workers to try and put together a visit for this week, during the week, because we leave for Disneyland this weekend, and we didn't want Cupcake to go 3 more weeks without seeing her mom. We had had a phone conversation with birth mom and knew what her days off were, so presented those as the best options. This time, our agency social worker was actually helpful and said she could supervise the visit and here were the times she was available on the days we mentioned and she would just need form X from the state.
After that, we heard nothing. I checked in yesterday and got the response of "weekend visits are a go but weekday visits will have to wait because Mom hasn't gotten back to us". Remember, Mom works. Mom works business hours, just not a M-F schedule, but has worked every day since we contacted them, so not a huge surprise they haven't been able to talk to her during business hours. But I wrote back and had to remind them - we can't do a weekend visit this weekend, we will be out of state, and that we're not trying to set up regular weeknight visits right now, this was a one time thing so that Cupcake doesn't go as long between visits with her mom. Nothing from the state. Our agency social worker copied us on an email she sent them today.
And we don't have an actual confirmation about a visit NEXT weekend, when we get back, which is the other thing we've been trying to set up, since we won't have a lot of energy to spend on it next week while we're on vacation.
There's just been so much misinformation and miscommunication coming from the state sw's office that it's getting frustrating. And then we add to that the likelihood that the legal risk is much greater than we were led to believe and that we might actually be a long term foster family for Cupcake, not an adoptive family, which means we're stuck dealing with the social workers longer, and I just want to scream. (I so need this upcoming vacation.) Because we're not going to say- oh, mom is working to get Cupcake back, she's not going to be adoptable, bye bye then. She's in our house. She's in our family. This is a fit, so it's not like we're going to kick her out. So yeah, frustrated and tired, and doing our best to be advocates for Cupcake in a type of situation we never wanted to be in.
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chen35
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Post by chen35 on Apr 7, 2015 18:05:17 GMT -5
There's just been so much misinformation and miscommunication coming from the state sw's office that it's getting frustrating. And then we add to that the likelihood that the legal risk is much greater than we were led to believe and that we might actually be a long term foster family for Cupcake, not an adoptive family, which means we're stuck dealing with the social workers longer, and I just want to scream. (I so need this upcoming vacation.) Because we're not going to say- oh, mom is working to get Cupcake back, she's not going to be adoptable, bye bye then. She's in our house. She's in our family. This is a fit, so it's not like we're going to kick her out. So yeah, frustrated and tired, and doing our best to be advocates for Cupcake in a type of situation we never wanted to be in. This would be the most frustrating part for me. I am so sorry!
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mmhmm
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Post by mmhmm on Apr 7, 2015 18:28:50 GMT -5
shanendoah, I'm so sorry, hon. You're trying so hard to do the right things for Cupcake and it must seem like obstacles are being thrown into your path from every angle. Hugs to all of you! How very difficult this must be!
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Apr 7, 2015 19:35:55 GMT -5
So annoying!
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zibazinski
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Post by zibazinski on Apr 7, 2015 19:43:45 GMT -5
Poor kid I just have zero faith that she won't be a boomerang In and out of foster homes. Does this mean you were lied to in order to put cupcake in your home?
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shanendoah
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Post by shanendoah on Apr 8, 2015 10:35:08 GMT -5
zibazinski - I don't know that we were lied to. I do think that we perhaps did not get a complete picture. At the same time, we agreed to take Cupcake as a same day placement, so it's not like there was time to go through all the nuances. We were told she'd been in foster care for a while. We were told the state was filing for TPR. Those things are all true. What we were not told was that the likelihood of a judge approving TPR is actually low. We were not told that Cupcake's mom was still very present in her life because the visits were informal, not supervised by the social workers, so while everyone new about them, they weren't actually in the paperwork. Cupcake's mom is trying to get her kids back. And she's got a pretty strong support network - relatives who can't necessarily take custody of the kids, but who can definitely be there to help out, etc.
One of the things that really clued me in that this was more of a legal risk than we had initially thought was a comment from our agency social worker. Cupcake has two brothers also in care. We don't know all the details of their situation (and we shouldn't), but there was talk of trying to add Cupcake to the mom's visits with the boys, and our social worker said "if she wants custody of all three kids, she has to show that she's capable of parenting them all at once" (okay, not an exact quote, but close enough). So if my agency social worker is talking about the mother's plan to get all three kids back, then there's definitely a plan.
And now, on the truly selfish side of this frustration. I can't do Cupcake's hair. Trying to get Cupcake's hair done at a salon was a disaster. Cupcake's mom put her hair in cute little buns when she saw her a week and a half ago, but that was supposed to be a week long hairdo. It needs to come out and be washed and redone. I had counted on Cupcake's mom being able to get it up in braids for Disney. Now that's not going to happen. I still need to take out the buns and wash Cupcake's hair. And that means Cupcake's hair will be "natural" for the entire Disney trip, which means having to brush/comb it every day, harder to get the swim cap on to protect it from chlorine, etc. What it really means is a daily fight while we're on vacation, a fight that would absolutely have been avoided if social workers could have gotten their act together and understood that maybe sometimes you have to try calling someone after 5pm.
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zibazinski
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Post by zibazinski on Apr 8, 2015 12:20:27 GMT -5
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Post by Deleted on Apr 8, 2015 12:22:12 GMT -5
See if you can get her mom to tell her to let you do it so it will help the mother keep her hair all beautiful. That might ease up on the fights.
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chen35
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Post by chen35 on Apr 8, 2015 12:39:14 GMT -5
Cupcake remembers how painful it was to have to brush through her hair each day, right? Maybe she would be open to trying the salon again?
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shanendoah
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Post by shanendoah on Apr 8, 2015 13:10:50 GMT -5
laterbloomer & chen35 - Even with an assist from her mom, I am not at the point where I'm willing to risk the kind of breakdown we had in a salon again, and I can't do white girl hair, let along a little black girl's hair. I don't know, maybe we'll try and keep this hair style in for the duration of the trip. I think we will have a phone call with birth mom this week, and maybe we'll ask her advice on the matter.
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andi9899
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Post by andi9899 on Apr 8, 2015 14:01:40 GMT -5
Do you have any black friends you could ask for help? I had no idea black hair was so difficult to deal with. I knew it wasn't as easy to care for as other hair, but not that much different. How old is she? I'm assuming pretty small if she had a breakdown in the salon.
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Firebird
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Post by Firebird on Apr 8, 2015 14:36:24 GMT -5
I know we don't know the whole story and this isn't the point of the thread, but it is so fucking frustrating the way people can just pop out kids, screw around enough to lose custody of them, then do this ridiculous "maybe I want them, maybe I don't, maybe I can take care of them, maybe I can't" dance for YEARS on end, totally screwing with the kids' heads and never letting them feel secure in a situation that could otherwise be very stable and good because they could be yanked away at any time. People suck Anyway. I'm glad you guys are going on vacation. It sounds like you need it. Hang in there.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Apr 8, 2015 14:40:05 GMT -5
Most of the time the parents think they can take care of the kids and are doing just fine with it. They don't recognise abuse or neglect.
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shanendoah
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Post by shanendoah on Apr 8, 2015 15:46:13 GMT -5
andi9899 - Cupcake has a natural "afro" - the really tight, zig zaggy curls, and yes, it is very different from my own fine, straight hair (which I also am not good at doing - ponytails are the extent of my ability to do hair). It needs to be cared for differently, and no, I can't just gather it all into a single pony tail, or really even two pig tails. (Right now it's in four little buns.) There's also the fact that among black women, doing hair is often a cultural/family bonding experience. A once weekly thing where all the women in the family gather and everybody's hair gets done. While I don't know the extent to which that was played out in Cupcake's family, I do know that doing her hair was a big part of the weekly visits with her mother. It is a bonding experience and something that, in her 7 y/o mind belongs exclusively to her mother. And right now, I'd rather focus my energy on fighting the battles over reading and math and not hitting people when you're mad then getting her to be calm and quiet enough for someone else to do her hair. As for black friends who could help- that's how I got to the salon in the first place. I went to the niece of a friend of mine, on the theory that someone who does hair professionally would be better (and quicker) at it than someone who doesn't. Cupcake's meltdown had nothing to do with being in a salon, and everything to do with the fact that the person combing her hair wasn't her mom. The first time I washed her hair, it took 45 minutes because she was melting down during it. (This has gotten better.)
I don't assign ages to meltdowns. I'm nearly 40 and have had a meltdown or two in recent memory, though generally I'm able to keep it together until I'm at home and it's just C and I. Pop Tart is 11 1/2 and had a melt down last night, supposedly caused by how difficult it is to press a button (seriously, I had one temper tantrum and one melt down last night over who had to press a button). It wasn't about pressing a button, that was just the precipitating event. It was an expected melt down because Cupcake gets to see her birth mom and Pop Tart has not seen her birth mom in over two years, nor do we have any contact with her, and I knew this melt down was coming, even though Pop Tart had insisted she was fine with it.
Firebird - Here's the thing, in both cases, birth mom made some bad choices. In Pop Tart's case, birth mom's choices were around substance abuse. We talk about addiction in our house as a disease, a disease that is very hard to fight. Last night, Pop Tart and I talked about the fact that her mom was battling addiction, and finally made a choice to relinquish her parental rights. I could have phrased it as the drugs winning. I didn't. I phrased it as love winning - her mother lover her so much that she made the hardest decision a parent could ever make - to let Pop Tart go so that she could have a better life. Cupcake's mother has also made some poor choices, not the same ones Pop Tart's mother made, but poor enough choices that the state stepped in and removed the kids. She loves her children. She is acting out of her love for them and fighting to get them back and trying to make better choices. Is that sustainable? I don't know, but I am not going to fault someone for trying. It may get to a point where she realizes she can't win, and she'll relinquish. It may come to a point where a judge tells her she's out of choices and terminates parental rights. Or, it may come to a point where she actually has it together enough to get her kids back. I don't know. I only know she's still trying.
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andi9899
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Post by andi9899 on Apr 8, 2015 15:53:49 GMT -5
Do you think if the mom talked to her about letting someone else fix her hair it would help with the meltdowns around her hair?
I gotta say, you are so much more understanding than I could ever be. I think I may have had my own meltdown by now. I could never do what you do.
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shanendoah
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Post by shanendoah on Apr 8, 2015 16:40:49 GMT -5
I use meditation techniques during child melt downs. I sit on the floor in their room, leaning against the bedroom door (to prevent running out), close my eyes and breath. I don't engage until the screaming stops (often either "get out" or "no", repeated over and over), unless I am hit, kicked, or have things thrown at me, at which point I remind the child that we don't hit/kick/throw and they need to stop. In some cases I will hold an ankle still, or gather items thrown at me, not letting the child take them back. But for the most part, I sit on the floor, with my eyes closed, and focus on breathing.
Other melt down preventing measures include talking to C and venting here.
I was very blessed in my 20s to have a friend whose life experience barely touched the same places I did. He was a father whose kids went back and forth into foster care and with their mother. Sometimes, he was the one that would make the call to CPS to come get the kids. I don't want to go into details because that part isn't my story, but lets just say he was someone who understood the bad decisions he had made, was working to make better decisions, and if you ever saw him with his girls, you would know it wouldn't be right to remove his parental rights. It was a friendship that changed the way I view the world permanently, made me a better person in general and honestly probably made it possible for me to be a foster parent. I can't tell him this as he passed 5+ years ago, but I am friends with his oldest daughter on FB, and I have told her.
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shanendoah
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Post by shanendoah on Apr 8, 2015 16:43:23 GMT -5
Oh, and everyone (I mean everyone, including every sw on the planet) suggests we ask mom to talk to Cupcake about someone else doing her hair. And maybe we will at some point, but as I said, that's a major bonding time for them, and I think asking bio-mom that would be very painful to her, too. That, and I think Cupcake's hair looks adorable when allowed to be natural. It takes a little more work to keep it tangle free (and battles with her about it), but again, it's just one of those battles I don't see a point in fighting right now.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Apr 8, 2015 18:41:52 GMT -5
I meant get the mom talk to her about brushing it every night. From my understanding that only hurt because CC was fighting it. Then they get to keep the routine of special styles and you can groom her on a daily basis.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 14, 2015 18:45:24 GMT -5
Things have taken an unpleasant turn lately. GW graduates in June and moves out July 1st if she can find an apartment. This combined with a 21 year old boyfriend and a new interest in "recreational drug use" (her phrase) have her chomping at the bit to be "free". In that vein I can say nothing right and she is getting increasingly disrespectful. Now she is going out and refusing to tell me where. So far she has been coming home by curfew. I'm getting the "you're not my parent or my guardian, I just pay you rent" line. Sigh. It's going to be a long 2 months.
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taz157
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Post by taz157 on Apr 14, 2015 19:16:04 GMT -5
Oh no Later. Hopefully she "wakes" up sooner rather than later (no pun intended).
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Apr 14, 2015 19:19:29 GMT -5
Thanks taz.
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mmhmm
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Post by mmhmm on Apr 14, 2015 19:42:51 GMT -5
Ick. I'm sorry, later. I had really high hopes for that girl. I sure hope she doesn't blow it all!
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Post by Deleted on Apr 14, 2015 21:42:48 GMT -5
I'm really hoping it is a stage mmhmm, a really, really unattractive stage.
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