FOSTER CARE STINKS

I have two entries in my head that I haven’t posted because I don’t want to publicly admit my negative feelings re: foster care.

However, today, I am comfortable enough to say that I am so sick and tired of all this crap. Ugh. The guardian came to visit yesterday and we had a long private talk. She is the only player in this mess who I feel is completely honest, doesn’t play “games”, and tell it like it is. She asked me about communication with the caseworker and of course I didn’t have anything nice to say, but the things I did say made it clear that this woman has been lying about some things. Then she asked me about a summer camp that the girls were supposed to be attending. I told her I had no idea what she was talking about, which made her quite angry. Apparently there is a camp that the family wants all the children to attend. The guardian has looked into it and felt that it would be a wonderful opportunity, so she gave all the registration information to the caseworker weeks ago. I told her that not only has the caseworker NOT enrolled the children like she said she would, she had told me yesterday that after submitting my repayment request for swim lessons not to ask for anything more because they were not going to pay for “a hundred more things!” I told the caseworker that the only thing the girls were interested in was a local camp (not the same one) but didn’t enroll because they thought they might be going home. She didn’t say a word about camp. At least other people are starting to see that what we are saying is true.

The other bit of disturbing news was that the guardian reported that the girls told the respite family that Gary and I said their house looked like crap from the outside, but let’s all hope it looks better on the inside. This made my blood boil. The guardian knew that it wasn’t true, but if the caseworker had already told this family how awful we were, then they hear this, why wouldn’t they believe it? I am so tired of defending myself, and really tired of taking care of people who turn around and tell people horrible things about me.

Honestly, there is only so many defenses a person can mount. If EVERYONE has something negative to say, whether it’s true or not ceases to matter. The guardian had a very good point; she said that we put our foot down too soon. As new foster parents when we told them we would not spend our Christmas Eve driving kids around town (20 miles from home!) and missing our own family celebration it was over the top and we will never be forgiven. The new caseworker came into the case biased against us and there is no fix for that.

I am so sick of this crap. Gary and I are going out of our way to parent some really hard kids who demand so much of us and in return they tell people we suck, and everyone treats us as though WE are the criminals here.

To share with you how pathetic my victories are these day, here is what gave me a giggle. The caseworker told us that she was going to FORCE us to send the kids back to the respite home by calling it a “visitation”. We relayed this to the supervisor who didn’t blink an eye. Two “clear the air” meetings in a row were cancelled and never rescheduled, so we went ahead and asked for a respite weekend thinking that if we were going to be forced into using it we might as well get our pick or weekends. Let’s keep in mind that this family had agreed to provide respite for us from June 18 through July 3. So we put in a request for June 28. We told the kids that we had asked for respite and they were so excited that it would be this weekend because this is the weekend that the respite providers daughter was getting married and they have been planning on going to the wedding and needed new dresses. Well, we finally here back from the placement guy asking if we can go during the week or any other weekend because the home isn’t available due to the wedding. I explained that we have reservations, and since respite is a break for us and NOT visitation, the kids will have to go to a different home. Tee hee hee.

I explained to the guardian how important I felt it was to have good communication with the family providing respite. I told her that we had provided lots of respite and had great relationships with all the parents, and if a child told me something disturbing, I would ask the foster parent about it and she would say, “Okay, here’s what really happened, see you Thursday night for pizza!” With this lack of communication the kids are making up crap, the family is believing it, passing it along to the caseworker, who is putting it in the file and passing it to the guardian…INSANE!

According to Gary, all we need to do is call the caseworker and tell her how opposed we are to summer camp to insure that she registers the kids! Good plan, Amazing husband of mine!