Foster Care Nightmares

Last month, a foster mother’s foster son #1 moved across the country to be with his aunt. This is the way foster care is supposed to work. She also has a foster daughter who is age 6 and has two brothers in another foster home. The foster home once had all 3 kids but kicked the girl out after a few days. She had been told that the girl’s brothers couldn’t come and be with their sister until the other foster son #1 reunified, even though the woman is approved to house 4 children.

Once he reunified, she started pushing super hard to get the girl’s brothers brought there, so that the siblings could be back together, something the county seems against, despite court orders.

They had an overnight visit with the girl’s brothers on 9.24.22. At the same time that was going on, she got a call from foster son #1’s aunt, saying she wants to send him back to them after only having him for one month. Understandably, the foster mother is at a loss to understand the whole situation. Of course, she had told the aunt he would always have a home there and that the aunt doesn’t have to make that decision so quickly. Yet, the mother worried about his safety, if the aunt was that desperate to have him moved.

Her perspective is that she does have obligations to ALL 4 children. She wonders if the Dept of Child and Family Services will cooperate with all of these needs. She doesn’t want foster son #1 to have to move to yet another foster family and she is still committed to reunifying the other 3 siblings under one roof. She doesn’t want to have to choose which kids get more trauma heaped onto their lives ? She says – It’s so effed up how people discard children like they’re nothing.

Story Updated – The aunt called and demanded that foster son #1 be removed from her home immediately. So, the social worker flew out to get him. The foster mother doesn’t know what happened or even if the aunt is interested in maintaining any kind of relationship with him now that he’s back with her. Of course, this is heartbreaking all around. The foster mother is working with an attorney and he seems to agree with her that the brothers should be placed with their sister. But the social worker is definitely against it. so, this is still an unfolding story.

Getting Free Of Suspicion

It may be true that addiction is a complicated situation but I still find this story today very sad. I have no answers. I just hope it turns out positively for this mom.

I do outreach for drug/alcohol rehabilitation in my down time on days off. Distribute Narcan, help people get into treatment, etc. I have been working lately with someone new. The lovely woman is only a couple years older than me and she has a 9 month old baby. She got clean as soon as she found out she was pregnant. Baby was born with no drugs in the system. Department of Children and Families stipulated she needed to go to detox/rehab before they would even allow her visitation with her baby. Its a catch 22. She never started using again, so she has been clean a little under 18 months. The rehab facilities around here require drugs in your system for admission. So basically the Department of Children and Families wants her to stay clean and piss dirty simultaneously to do what they want. She refused to get high just to get into a program (go momma!) And we knew if she relapsed the Department of Children and Families would just use it against her. We managed to find a program for her that took her insurance, and did not require the dirty urine. She did her intake on the phone with them and she successfully completed the program. She’s home now, and all the Department of Children and Families will let her have with her baby is supervised visitation because they really do not believe she is clean. In my experience with the system, the more proof we have that someone is clean, the better things go. But she has been clean so long, I’m wondering should we have her do a hair strand test? Since she graduated the inpatient program, she was able to get into the state sponsored outpatient rehabilitation program.

Some more info – they seized baby at hospital. The baby was temporarily placed in foster care but was returned to the biological father once paternity was established. She already had a child removed and also placed in foster care temporarily. This other father (related to the older child) is very understanding and flexible, so things on that front are going well. The father of the infant in question here is flat out stonewalling. The mother is an awesome human. Very kind and honest. The quiet and respectful type. She has got a serious resolve when it comes to not giving up.

I agree with this comment – She may need a lawyer, this is crazy, if her and baby was clean at delivery her baby shouldn’t have been removed. I would also suggest she motion the court for unsupervised visitation. The Department of Children and Families are not the boss, they are truly the opposition. She can ask the judge for anything she wants. Lawyers often fall in line with the Department of Children and Families. From experience, I won my case with them by motioning to the judge without their approval. This is awful and so sad, I hope she gets her baby back soon.

Someone asked – Why did they take custody of the baby if neither the woman or her baby tested positive for illicit drugs? Well, this is the complication – she already had a child placed in the child welfare system unfortunately due to the previous addiction. So the Department of Children and Families seized the baby at the hospital. The mother is working on regaining custody in that case too. Different fathers, so these are treated as separate cases. The father for the older child is not stonewalling and is actually being incredibly accommodating.

The biological father got custody of the infant after paternity was established. There may be a bit of conspiracy and tag teaming happening with the biological dad and the Department of Children and Families. His attorney keeps filing motions with reason after reason why she shouldn’t be alone with the baby. Stupid thing is we have both weekly and random urine checks going back a full year. And we paid an independent lab to run the screens. So its has been expensive. We have been turning over the lab results that they give us, all their contact info is there to verify the authenticity. But the biological dad says that is not good enough. Its like what is it that you do want?

If you find all of this confusing, I do too. Life is messy. Still I am rooting for this mother !!

I Try To Stay Humble

Before I began to know who my original grandparents were (both of my parents were adopted) – adoption was the most natural thing in the world. How could it not be ? It was so natural both of my sisters gave up a baby to adoption. So, in only the last 3+ years, my perspective has changed a lot. I see the impacts of adoption has passed down my family line, ultimately robbing all three of my parents daughter’s of the ability to parent. Though I did not give my daughter up for adoption, finding myself unable to support myself and her financially, I allowed her father and step-mother to raise her without intrusion from me. To be honest, I didn’t think I was important as a mother. I thought that a child only needed one or the other parent to be properly cared for. Sadly, decades later, I learned that situation was not as perfect as I had believed. My sister closest to me in age actually lost custody of her first born son to her former in-laws when she divorced their son. He has suffered the most damage of all of our children and is currently estranged from his mother’s family, viewing us all as the source of his ongoing emotional and mental pain. I love him dearly and wish it wasn’t so but it is not in my control nor my sisters.

I realize that not every adoptee has the same experience. We are all individuals with individual life circumstances. Right and Wrong, Better and Worse – such exactness doesn’t exist. Everyone heals in different ways. We all begin where we begin. I began where I was when I started learning some of the hard truths and realities about the adoption industry as it operates for profit in this country. I also know that the adoption practices of the 1930s when my parents were adopted are not the same overall in 2021. There are only a few truly closed adoptions now and many “open” adoptions. I put the “open” into quotation marks because all too often, the woman who gives birth and surrenders her baby for adoption because she doesn’t feel capable of parenting, just as I didn’t feel capable in my early 20s, discovers that the “open” part is unenforceable and the adoptive parents renege on that promise.

Those of us, myself included, have become activists for reforms going forward. Society has not caught up with us yet. Certainly, there are situations where the best interest of the child is to place them in a safe family structure where they can be sufficiently provided for. No one, no matter how ardently they wish for reform, would say otherwise. The best interests of the child NEVER includes robbing them of their identity or knowledge of their origins. In the best of circumstances, I believe, adoptive parents are placeholders for the original parents and extended biological family until their adoptive child reaches maturity. Ideally, that child grows up with a full awareness and exposure to the personalities of their original parents.

Any parent, eventually reaches a point in the maturing of their child, when it is time to allow that child to be totally independent in their life choices, even if they continue to live with their parents and be financially supported by them. It is a gradual process for most of us and some of us are never 100% separated from our parents until they die. Then, regardless, we must be able to stand on our own two feet, live from our own values and make of the life that our parents – whether it was one set with a mother and a father or two sets of mothers and fathers (whether by adoption or due to divorce) – made possible for us as human beings. I do try not to judge but I do try to remain authentic in my own perspectives, values and beliefs. Those I share as honestly as I can in this blog with as much humility as I have the growth and self-development to embody.