Question o foster care

[Deleted]

My neighbor is a sixteen year old girl.  I met her when she was 14  and hired her to babysit a puppy for about a half hour each day while I was at work.  Yesterday her brother told me she broke probation and was sent to foster care. My question is, is foster care also used as kind of a punishment or would there be another reason she was sent to foster care?  I am basically just being nosy, so didn't ask the brother any thing.  She and the brother lived with the grandmother.  The grandmother seems nice enough but I think is probably not a very good parent.    She told me the kid's mother was a prostitute, which was kind of a harsh thing to say.  I don't really know them well.  I ended up giving my dog to them when I started working out of town, so we have the dog in common.  She, the dog, comes to visit me every weekend. And I will talk to them when I want to take the dog to the park.  I have paid both  the kids a bit to do a bit of work around my house, i.e, dogsitting, painting a wall, and letting someone in my house to do some work.

Does a kid going to foster care mean the family was treating her badly?  Does it mean the enviroment was probably bad for her?  Or could it just be punishement?  I don't know what she did to break probation or why she was on it or even that she was on it before yesterday.

Again, I am just being nosy wanting to know how these things work.

[Deleted]

Foster care can be for neglect as well as abuse. There are things like failure to protect, which means the parent didn't do the harm themselves they just didn't stop it from happening. Most likely she is in foster care because the grandmother is proving to be unfit, considering she is in trouble with the law. Just guessing, I would think she is in a group home with strict oversight and counselors onsite. It would be the softer version than juvenile detention.

ETA - Parents can also request foster care for their kids if they feel unable to handle them. That can seem like punishment but the parents I know of that have taken that option are trying to save their family's sanity and divert their kid from the wrong path.

[milee]

I've never lived anywhere that used foster care as a punishment; there are far too few foster families/homes and I'd question if it was effective punishment anyways if the bio family home was appropriate.

Most likely, she's in foster care because her bio family either isn't willing or able to adequately supervise her. Failure to supervise - a nice way of saying you're not stopping your kids from running wild - can be a reason to remove kids. It's a little odd but not necessarily unreasonable that the brother is still at home. Maybe the brother is older, has a different school schedule, there's some other reason why he has or doesn't need extra supervision or some other reason? But it could also be that part of the girls' problem is with the home environment itself. When you have one child removed and the other stays, there's more to the story. Not saying this is the case here, but most of the time when I've seen the girls removed and the boys left in the home, the boys were molesting the girls. It's sad when you learn just how many of the kids who look like hoodlums have been molested and abused.

[Deleted]

Jun 7, 2015 13:04:38 GMT -5 milee said:

I've never lived anywhere that used foster care as a punishment; there are far too few foster families/homes and I'd question if that's effective, anyways if the bio family home was appropriate.

Most likely, she's in foster care because her bio family either isn't willing or able to adequately supervise her. Failure to supervise - a nice way of saying you're not stopping your kids from running wild - can be a reason to remove kids. It's a little odd but not necessarily unreasonable that the brother is still at home. Maybe the brother is older, has a different school schedule, there's some other reason why he has or doesn't need extra supervision or some other reason? But it could also be that part of the girls' problem is with the home environment itself. When you have one child removed and the other stays, there's more to the story. Not saying this is the case here, but most of the time when I've seen the girls removed and the boys left in the home, the boys were molesting the girls. It's sad when you learn just how many of the kids who look like hoodlums have been molested and abused.

It's really unfair, Milee, to plant the notion that the girl's brother molested her in Hinkle's mind.  How about the girl simply broke probation, demonstrating that the grandmother lacked control over the situation?  Think shoplifting or truancy, for example.  For all we know, the grandmother put her on probation, telling her that she would have to send her to foster care if she broke the rules one more time. 

Hinkle asked how the process worked.  You went beyond that to speculate.  That is how rumors start.

 

[swamp]

she may be on probation as a result of a Juvenile Delinquency finding (criminal conviction for a kid). She failed to obey probation, so foster care is often a result of breaking probation. It usually means the custodian can't control the kid.

[milee]

I hoped my use of qualifying language would indicate that I was guessing... and that even the guess about molestation wasn't necessarily the most likely scenario.

Hickle asked about how foster care works and I answered based on what I've seen.  I don't know this family or anything about them and am just relating what I saw when I was involved. 

It's also tough to know from the OP, but I assumed "probation" was the legal form, not a family punishment.  Could be either.  If the legal form, it indicates formal legal issues but if the family type it could just mean rules the grandmother put into place.  Also, even though the girl was living with the grandmother, it's likely that this was actually foster care and that the current foster placement just happened to be with the grandmother.  But if things aren't working out, the girl's continuing to get into legal trouble or a variety of other reasons, she could be moved from one foster home (grandmother) to another (outside of family.)

[Deleted]

I was investigated for Failure to Supervise with the last girl I had. I had given her a bottle of Advil for period cramps and she said she took an overdose. Actually to her aunt and friend online her exact words were "I took a handful of pills and now I feel funny". I'm sure it is completely irrelevant that she told them this 5 minutes before I turned off the WiFi for the night. I had the fun of spending 4 hours at Emergency just to be sent home because she was fine. For the record I got the bottle of Advil from her and there were no more hand 10 or 12 missing and I know she had been taking them for period cramps before that night.

CAS policy is that all medication of any kind must be locked up and kids (this girl is almost 15) that need it have it administered by the foster parent, recorded and reported at the next meeting. This policy includes Advil, Tylenol, cough syrup...anything. I had given her unsupervised access to Advil. GW thought it was hilarious I would be investigated for Failure to Supervise "You're always all up in my business" to quote her. It ended up getting recorded as a failure to follow policy.

This is a long winded way of saying Failure to Supervise is like anything else. There is a spectrum of what it refers to.

[Deleted]

Most likely its a family placement and with the newest probation issues gramma has said no more, and if there is no family placement, Foster care it is. 

Ie. If this girl hadn't gone to her grandmother, she probably would have been in foster care already.

[Deleted]

Jun 7, 2015 13:42:39 GMT -5 @southernsusana said:

Jun 7, 2015 13:04:38 GMT -5 milee said:

I've never lived anywhere that used foster care as a punishment; there are far too few foster families/homes and I'd question if that's effective, anyways if the bio family home was appropriate.

Most likely, she's in foster care because her bio family either isn't willing or able to adequately supervise her. Failure to supervise - a nice way of saying you're not stopping your kids from running wild - can be a reason to remove kids. It's a little odd but not necessarily unreasonable that the brother is still at home. Maybe the brother is older, has a different school schedule, there's some other reason why he has or doesn't need extra supervision or some other reason? But it could also be that part of the girls' problem is with the home environment itself. When you have one child removed and the other stays, there's more to the story. Not saying this is the case here, but most of the time when I've seen the girls removed and the boys left in the home, the boys were molesting the girls. It's sad when you learn just how many of the kids who look like hoodlums have been molested and abused.

It's really unfair, Milee, to plant the notion that the girl's brother molested her in Hinkle's mind.  How about the girl simply broke probation, demonstrating that the grandmother lacked control over the situation?  Think shoplifting or truancy, for example.  For all we know, the grandmother put her on probation, telling her that she would have to send her to foster care if she broke the rules one more time. 

Hinkle asked how the process worked.  You went beyond that to speculate.  That is how rumors start.

 

Milee is hard for me to understand anymore.  I quit reading her posts when she said I defended child molesters on the Duggar thread. 

The girl is, I think, 2 years older then the boy.  The boy said he just got his driver's licsense or maybe just the permit, so 16 maybe 15.  The girl was 14 in Feb, 2013 when I met her, because I asked then.  The grandmother told me she would not help the girl get a car, because the girl wanted to move back with her mother.  That was when the grandmother told me the girls mother was a prostitute, that would be the grandmother's daughter.  The grandmother's husband died about a year ago from an illness.  So there have been some hard times in the family for awhile.

Thank you to everyone for the answers.  I was curious how it worked, but the whole situation is really none of my business.

[thyme4change]

I was thinking maybe Grandma initiated it as punishment.  Like - she said "I just can't handle this/you." And moved her along.

However, seeing other people that actually know what the hell they are talking about say that it is used when a guardian is not controlling the situation - that seems more likely.  

[Value Buy]

Jun 7, 2015 14:00:22 GMT -5 swamp said:

she may be on probation as a result of a Juvenile Delinquency finding (criminal conviction for a kid). She failed to obey probation, so foster care is often a result of breaking probation. It usually means the custodian can't control the kid.

If she broke probation,I would think she would go to the county Juvenile housing unit, before she is assigned to foster care. 

[Peace77]

I wouldn't look at it as Grandma doling out punishment but more that Grandma couldn't deal with a disobedient teenager any longer.

[swamp]

Jun 7, 2015 18:42:20 GMT -5 Value Buy said:

Jun 7, 2015 14:00:22 GMT -5 swamp said:

she may be on probation as a result of a Juvenile Delinquency finding (criminal conviction for a kid). She failed to obey probation, so foster care is often a result of breaking probation. It usually means the custodian can't control the kid.

If she broke probation,I would think she would go to the county Juvenile housing unit, before she is assigned to foster care. 

Foster care comes first. And not every county has juvenile detention. 

[milee]

Jun 7, 2015 17:49:46 GMT -5 @hickle said:

Jun 7, 2015 13:42:39 GMT -5 @southernsusana said:

Edited to remove a statement that wasn't factual and was a bit snarky to boot.

[Deleted]

@hickle I hope the young lady gets her act together quickly, by the ages you provided she has to be close to 18. That is when she ages out of foster care and is looking at adult repercussions.

[shanendoah]

As a note, both Mini Wheat and Cupcake were in kin care (family care) before being placed in our home, though they came from very different situations.

When children are in the care of non-parental family members, there are a few ways it can happen.
Parents could have died and family members are their guardians. No state involvement.
Parents have asked family members to be the guardians. No state involvement.
Parents have been found to be unfit and the state got involved, and their second option (first is always to leave kids with the parents) is to place the kids with family members. But the state remains involved.


Based on the very little @hickle knows/has shared with us, I would guess we are in the third case. Kids were removed from mother's care by the state and placed with the grandmother. Girl has issues. She has a record and is on probation. She broke probation. She is now out of the grandmother's care.
This could be for a number of reasons. Grandmother could have requested it - she could have said she's trying, but she's just not able to care for this girl at this time, and still care for the boy and herself, especially with the death of the grandfather in the last year.
Grandmother and social workers could have come to the decision together that one of the consequences of girl violating probation would be that she would be removed from her grandmother and placed in the foster care system.
Social workers could have determined that grandmother was no longer able to care for the girl and removed her from the home.

My guess would be the first or second cases, leaning toward the second.

BUT it's all speculation. Still, those are the most likely scenarios that I know of that would result in girl no longer being in grandmother's care but boy still being there.
However, if the original scenario was one or two, no initial state involvement, the state would have gotten involved at the time of sentencing (when the girl received probation). But it makes the first of the second group of options more likely.