First off, I don’t have to transport this weekend! And I had a nice, long, venting conversation with Social Worker That I Actually Like which made me feel better.

Some of you asked about the court dates. These court things that I go to are merely reviews of the case. The social worker writes up a court report for the judge which details everything that is going on. When court starts, the judge makes note of everyone who is present (which is why I go..I want it known that I am an interested party). Then the juvenile officer speaks and asks that the court report be accepted as evidence. Then the guardian ad litem does the same, and then Mom’s attorney does the same. They can add anything if they wish, but typically nothing is said. If anyone has any motions to bring forth, they can. The juvenile officer and the guardian ad litem make their recommendation, which in this case was “to continue the status quo in an attempt to reunify the children with their natural mother.”

Then the judge sets the next review date and we all leave.

However, some important things will be coming up soon. First, we are getting closer to the year mark that the kids have been in care and around that time, there will be a permanency hearing. At this hearing, people will actually testify. This is a review to see whether the case goal is still appropriate. (Meaning, is it still appropriate to work towards reunification?)

I have been told that if things stay the way they are, then a TPR will be filed at the year mark as well.

What this means is that the juvenile officer will file a request for the rights to be terminated. All people named as parents will have to be served, and then there will be a TPR hearing. The judge will decide if there is reason to terminate the rights.

So basically this court date in October will do very little, except to establish to the judge if any progress has been made. At that court date, he will set the next court date, which will either be another review or the permanency hearing.

The fact is, Mom is running out of time. She needs to start seriously stepping up to the plate in order to be reunified with these kids. Yesterday I said something to the SW about the court date and how I was worried they were going to send the kids home a few days before Christmas and the SW said, “Well, I wouldn’t worry about that. Mom still has a LONG way to go.”

No matter what happens, though, the situation is still sad. I’m not a fan of Mom at all, but it is hard to hope I get to keep the kids, because at the same time, that is hoping that she fails and loses her kids. It is a tough place to be in.

On a completely unrelated note, my body is killing me. I’ve had my period for over a week and this morning I woke up with horrible cramps. I want to crawl back into bed. WTF, body?

Everything is staying as it is with the case. It will be reviewed again in mid-October.

Right now I don’t want to be a foster parent at all. I love these kids, and if they were mine, I would stop RIGHT THIS SECOND.

Right this second.

I do not want to transport to visits so Mom can be rude to me. I do not want to care for a sick baby all night because Mom gave her a food that she is allergic to.

I do not want to be told that the visit next week is moved to this day, and by the way, you also need to transport to a visit this weekend, even though you already have plans.

I want my money. When you thought you had overpaid me, you yanked that money so fast my head was spinning. When it is clear that you underpaid me, you insult me and offer no solution or estimated timeline as to when this problem will be fixed.

I hate not knowing. I hate not knowing what is going to happen to Bubba and Snowbaby and it is driving me a little nuts. I’m headed to court now, but I don’t anticipate finding out much except when the next court date is.

I just don’t know if I can do this anymore.

where this whole fiasco started.

Bug moved into my home at the end of July 2 years ago. She was a straight adoptive placement FROM A RESIDENTIAL TREATMENT FACILITY. She had been there for over NINE months because she was unable to function in foster homes AND in group homes.

Despite this, she was placed in my home as a traditional foster child and not behavioral.

Now, just for comparison sake, Callie is classified as a behavioral child, and I’m sure if you’ve read this blog for any amount of time you know that her behaviors are worlds apart from Bug’s.

At the time Bug’s subsidy was created, I had FOUR social workers working on the case. None of them mentioned the fact that if I took a six weeks course, Bug could be classified as behavioral.

And I was ignorant to the process, and that ignorance has cost me NINE THOUSAND DOLLARS over the past two years. NINE THOUSAND DOLLARS.

At the beginning of this year, I was re-licensed and found out that this behavioral class was offered. I asked Cammie then, if I took this class, could we have Bug classified as behavioral. She said NO.

I decided to take it anyway. I finished up in February, at the same time that Bubba, Snowbaby, and Butterfly were placed here.

Sometime in April, a social worker told me that what Cammie had said was NOT true. That I could absolutely request that Bug be classified as behavioral.

I asked Cammie a second time, and this time she said that she could be classified, but I would have to wait until the end of May to go to a staffing.

I did, and I went to the staffing where it was overwhelmingly agreed that Bug was a behavioral child.

So not only have they insulted me, disrespected me, and withheld over $800 (not to mention the $160 they owe me for respite I did which they have yet to pay me for), but I really..no, let me rephrase that..BUG really got screwed from the beginning by them.

And to be honest, I understand why foster parents get so pissed off. We aren’t paid, and if we question it, we are told that we are assholes for expecting to be paid. We are told we need to be at this meeting, and this visitation, and this court date. We get in major trouble if we slip up and the tags expire on our vehicle or if we forget to bring something in the diaper bag (even though Mom is supposed to provide the diaper bag.) We are supposed to get reimbursed for mileage but a lot of the time, someone forgets to put it in the system.

Meanwhile, Mom can move away from her kids for reason and she gets free rides provided to her.

Nobody transports the kids. Nobody transports the foster parents. But Mom, the person who abused the kids in the first place, gets free transportation.

I can’t afford a lawyer, and as much as I want/need that $800, they know they have me trapped. I love these kids, and they know it. I’m not going to jeopardize the kid’s stability in this home over the money.

And I’m sure that is what they count on. Someone gives you shit about bananas on your counter, or about a mark on a kid that got there completely on accident, and your only choice is to shut up and take it OR LOSE YOUR KID.

People do foster care for all sorts for reasons, but when it comes down to it, the reason we are paid to do foster care is not even because we are providing a service to the state. But because we NEED that money in order to be able to care for these kids. These kids who we love, but who are not ours, and could be taken from us in an instant.

Per the state:

“Cash payments, which cannot exceed the rate, which would have been paid if the child had remained in out-of-home care. This payment is to assist the family with day-to-day living expenses for the child such as food, clothing and shelter.”

1. I’m short $1000 worth of funds which are supposed to be used to provide for the five special needs children in the house. Instead of giving me the money, I get lectured on how I shouldn’t count on this money.

2. People like Gina get investigated for things that they went out of their way to report in the first place.

3. People like Maerlowe get cited for things such as having unpeeled bananas on their counter and not having paper towels in their bathroom.

FYI.

If you owe someone quite a lot of money, and you have not given them that money because of several months worth of YOUR admitted errors, DO NOT say to them:

“Please, always remember not to count on the subsidy for income it is simply meant to supplement your steady income and help with expenses.”

Because seriously? Could you be anymore rude?

You screwed up. You have caused my payments to be seriously delayed.

I think that was just the straw that broke the camel’s back.

So the meeting was..um..not fun.

I can imagine it is not comfortable for Mom either, to be in a room with the “team,” especially if you feel the team is out to get you.

Although, I was a little more comfortable with this meeting than the others because I felt like they addressed some of the things that Mom isn’t doing that she needs to be and were honest with her. Of course, Mom didn’t like to hear any of that and became very defensive. Of course, if she is going to get these kids back she is going to need to stop being defensive and start taking responsibility for herself and her actions. I can say, based on what she said today, that she is nowhere near close to doing that and to be honest, her time is running out. The team is trying to maintain a balance between giving Mom time to do what she needs to do and giving the kids stability. Of course, they can only offer her so much help. At some point, she has to take responsibility for herself and those kids and it is just not happening.

*************

I have a large walk-in pantry and one thing I’ve been trying to do it buy things in bulk. I’ve set up several Amazon subscriptions for laundry soap, etc. I’m trying to buy a freezer so that I can really buy more things in bulk. They are pretty expensive, but I think it would help a lot because I could buy the big packs of meat and divide them up into smaller bags.

Today we hit up the local discount grocery store. We bought 3 packs of stain remover, 5 packs of baking soda, 12 cans of peas, 12 cans of corn, 12 cans of pork and beans. 5 bottles of apple juice, 3 bottles of vinegar, 6-12 packs of diet soda, 3 packages of applesauce and a lot more. It filled up two carts (And only cost $200 by the way..yay for discount grocery stores.)

I sent Callie to go get some boxes of this pasta salad stuff that the kids really like.

“Hey!” she yelled. “Mrs. Duggar, how many of these things do you want?”

Sorry, Cluttergirl, but I can’t get behind the “man-pris.” Although, aren’t man-pris somewhat of a French thing?

Either way, boy-pris on Mr. High School Musical are not good. Trust me on this one.

After my vent post, I wrote a letter to the kid’s team that said what I said here in a much more polite way. Almost immediately, I got a response from our social worker, followed by one from the social worker’s supervisor, the guardian ad litem (the kid’s lawyer) and the juvenile officer.

All of them were very supportive of me, complimentary of my work with the kids, and they vowed to discuss all of the negative stuff that is going on with the kid’s Mom at the meeting this week.

Which, I’m glad they were so responsive, but did I mention I have to be at this meeting? Boy, that will be fun.

It was also said that they will be telling Mom that a TPR will be filed at the year mark if she does not start making the appropriate changes. We are almost at 7 months.

Izzy and Callie took their learner’s permit written test yesterday and bombed it. They tried again (you get two tries each day) and failed again. Matter of fact, every kid who took it failed it. This state is kind of dumb, because they don’t teach the kids driver’s ed in school. I had both classroom and behind the wheel training when I was in school.

Callie came really close to passing, but Izzy missed almost every question. For her, it is a reading issue. She reads on about a 3rd grade level, especially if it is unfamiliar things. Izzy has been displaying a few behavior problems. In a lot of ways, she is similar to Bug, but a lot less defiant. She likes to sneak food, and she’s about 60 to 70 lbs overweight. She is very sensitive too. Last night all hell broke loose here over a fight which seemed to start when she told Bug that her brother started school yesterday and Bug said she didn’t care. Izzy took that as a mortal insult about her brother.

At one point, I was moderating a discussion about whether it was ok to call someone’s mom a crackhead if, in fact, their Mom is a crackhead.

Here is part of that discussion:

“MY MOM IS NOT A CRACKHEAD. She didn’t do crack. Just cocaine.”

“Crack is cocaine.”

“SHUT UP!”

Ah, the joys of foster care.

I still haven’t got my $1000 bucks yet.

More later but here’s one for the road…

Me: BUBBA! Why are your hands in the potty!

Bubba: I’m washing them.

I’m to the point today where I don’t feel like being a foster parent at all.

I can’t stand the fact that they offer very little assistance in things that they should be able to assist with. Like, you send me a kid who apparently has some sort of medical issue but you don’t send her with medicine. And now she is insisting that she has to take this medicine everyday and the school won’t let her participate in PE until she has the medicine. Well, would it be that difficult to help arrange for her to get this medicine? Seriously. Am I supposed to magically know what doctor she saw previously who precribed her this medicine? Am I also supposed to be able to convince the social security division that even though all I have is a photocopied form that has the WRONG social security number on it, that I should be given the kid’s social security card?

And by the way, you are a freaking school. You must deal with foster parents. Don’t act like I’m an idiot because I have neither a birth certificate or a social security card. I’m doing the best I can. I’m not even the kid’s legal guardian. You try to deal with a government agency when you aren’t the legal guardian.

I have gone out of my way to be nice to the birthparents of my kids. But I absolutely will not tolerate them saying rude things to Bug. And I am about fed up to here with the constant demands. I am happy to share pictures of the kids with you if I have pictures. But when I tell you that I’ve got FOUR rolls in the store getting developed, do not tell me that I need to take MORE pictures and bring them to you. I do not need to take weekly pictures and develop them for you. Developing pictures is expensive. I provide you with pictures as often as I can. I also bought two packages from school since you can’t afford the school pictures. But I can’t do it every time I see you. I can’t afford it.  I am also a little busy taking care of your kids. Also, tell your boyfriend to stop taking pictures of me because next time I’m going to rip the camera out of his hand.

I am happy to do respite. But I want to get paid for it. How come every time I do respite I’ve got to track down my payment? 

I would also appreciate someone answering my email as to why you took $100 away from my last check. I’m trying to be patient with you, but you owe me over $1000 dollars right now. A THOUSAND DOLLARS. I need that money. Can I please have it now?

Please don’t schedule meetings in the middle of the day and then tell me it is mandatory that I attend without checking to see if maybe one of the five children that I’m taking care of has somewhere to be. Or, you know, if I have something I need to be doing. I’m more than willing to try to accomodate you, but come on.

I really love these kids, but man. I’m about fed up.