It’s a slightly quieter house now in that baby Cookie has gone home to live with his relative. She’s over the moon to have him, and he’s a content little guy with all the holding and doting that’s going on. So it’s a happy ending in my book!
It almost didn’t happen, because the relative suffered a massive house fire several days before Cookie’s court date. We wound up giving the relative basically all our baby stuff, since all she’d accumulated for him went up in literal flames. We sent along his crib and a pack and play, a swing and all his clothes, a baby gym, some toys, and a bunch of books. Honestly we were thrilled to be able to help – what a horrible thing to have one’s house burn down! The relative had insurance and is rebuilding, and has a temporary place to stay, so it all worked out. But I’m sure the relative will be dealing with the trauma of losing everything like that, including pets, for the rest of her life.
Not only were we happy to be able to help Cookie and his relative, but we were happy to get rid of a lot of baby stuff. No more newborns for us! I had desperately wanted to do a newborn once in my life, and I am so glad I did, but it’s an exercise in sleep deprivation like no other. With my health issues and my general love of sleep, it was a stretch for me, and I don’t feel the need to repeat the experience.
Right now we are taking a break from taking any new placements. It’s probably going to be a fairly long break because I need ankle surgery to reconstruct a torn tendon and other associated damage. I don’t have a surgery date yet, but my pre-op appointment is in early March. It’ll be days with zero weight on my ankle, followed by 6 weeks in a boot, and a lot of PT and patience. So we don’t plan on taking any other kids until I’m fairly well healed. We still of course have a 3 1/2-year-old Sprout, and 10-year-old Kiddo on weekends, and that’s enough to keep me busy for a while.
Speaking of Sprout, we are struggling with her visits. We have twice now driven her 2 hours each way to see her Mama, who she asks to see regularly. The court had ordered visits at a half way point every other week, but Mama can’t get rides to the rendezvous point and she doesn’t drive, so those visits haven’t been happening. So in the beginning of January, and yesterday, we took Sprout all the way to her Mama’s new house to see her.
I can’t do the long drives because without a nap during the day, I’d get too sleepy to drive home safely. So Seth has to make the trips. I’m happy to ride along when I’m able to just so we get some family time together. Seth is a nurse and his schedule is cray cray, and we have Kiddo on weekends, so we just take advantage of whatever week day we are able to go and make it happen.
Well, the first time we went out there we alerted our case worker about some conditions in the home that weren’t great, and she notified the new case worker in Mama’s new county, and that case worker was angry that we’d taken Sprout out there at all. We kind of shrugged it off and just did it a second time a month and a half later. Well this time Mama chose to keep Sprout’s siblings home from school so they could see Sprout, even though we would have stayed long enough for Sprout to see them after they got home from school. It wasn’t our choice, and we didn’t ask Mama to do it. But the case worker in Mama’s county is now furious with us for giving Mama a “reason” to keep the kids home for the day. She asked rhetorically why we couldn’t just have gone next week during school break week. But we can’t make next week work because of Seth’s work and PT (he has a shoulder issue) schedules. So we went when we could.
I’m beyond frustrated. Here we are doing the very best we can for this kid and keeping her in contact with her family, which is, by the way, court ordered. We are driving 4 hours round trip to make the visits happen. And we are in trouble for it? We have a call in to the case worker in Mama’s county so we can have a direct conversation with her rather than having her pass messages to us through Sprout’s local case worker, and maybe that will help. Regardless, I’m not going to tell Sprout she can’t see her Mama because the case worker out there doesn’t like it. I can’t do that to this little girl who misses her Mama and needs to know her culture.
Nothing in foster care is ever easy.
We are still waiting for the County folks to do what they need to do to terminate Sprout’s parents’ legal rights to her. The court ordered them to file paperwork by the end of January, but it didn’t happen. I’m not an ounce surprised, but I am frustrated. Sprout needs specialized medical care out of state but we can’t get it for her until she’s adopted and on Seth’s insurance because nobody out of state takes our state’s Medicaid. So, we wait. And I worry about missing windows of time to do more advanced treatments for her because she is still in the foster care system and undoubtedly will be for a long time to come.
On top of all that, the case worker she’s had since she first came to us is moving to a different division of the county, so we will be getting a new case worker soon. Will it be someone good? Someone so new they don’t know what they’re doing? There’s soooo much turnover among the case workers because it’s a thankless job, and because of budget cuts and people quitting, they’re terribly overloaded. There have been a couple of articles about the situation, and every case worker we talk to confirms they simply cannot do all they need to because there’s way too much work. See the links to the articles below.
Anyway, that’s all the news from Lake Woebegone. Luckily Sprout is thriving and happy, and Kiddo is doing pretty well too. So we love on them as best we can and enjoy the hell out of having them in our lives.
sprinklesonachaoscupcake.com 