The girls just got back from a visit with their Mama. Once a month, the case worker takes the girls to meet Mama at a city halfway between where we live and where Mama lives. They get to see their siblings usually at these visits too.
When they got back, the case worker, who has been with this case for about a year and a half I’d guess, told me she’s leaving her job because she feels personally unsafe doing the job, and because it’s unsafe to have so many cases on her case load and someone will get hurt, and she can’t deal with the stress of that. I do not blame her one single iota.
But now I begin to stress.
The case worker’s supervisor is staying for now, and she’s up to date on what’s going on. She knows about the other sister and that we want her here, and is on board with the agency’s plan to keep the sister where she is for now, which I’m not happy about but am saying nothing for now for myriad reasons. My chief concern is that she’s not getting the medical care she needs or deserves. But that will be for the judge to decide when we get to the next hearing. Maybe the agency will surprise me and get amazing things done. It’s truly possible. It’s just unlikely given how understaffed they are and that a key provider is in Delaware.
Case workers have a lot of power.
Anyway, what will the new case worker be like? We have had some excellent ones and some doozies, I tell you. Given that the best ones are fleeing the agency like a family of skunks has just been dumped in their midst, I worry about who is left. If we get a bad one it could jeopardize everything, from the oldest sister’s coming here to the youngest’s adoption. Perhaps most worryingly, it could lead to Sunny getting sent back home to a Mama who loves her and is trying hard, but likely doesn’t have the skills she needs to provide proper medical and educational care to Sunny.
We won’t know who the new case worker is for a while. The current one stays until the 14th of July, and I don’t know how long it will be after that that the new one starts trying to get up to speed on this case. As the current case worker noted, no one wants this case. Mama lives two hours away, speaks no English, and three of the kids are high medical needs. There are medical providers for the kids in four cities and two states, with some as far as seven hours away from each other. Mama is working her plan but may not have the capacity to get the kids back, and so a new case worker may have to tell Mama that the agency made her jump through a ton of hoops for nothing. There are three different agencies and a foster home and a kinship home involved. It’s just so, so messy!
Adding to my frustration and worries, the case worker for the kinship home, who is with a different agency, did a no call no show for today’s visit. She and the other three kids just didn’t appear for it. So, while our girls got to see their Mama today, they didn’t see their other three siblings, and we don’t know where medical stuff stands for the oldest sister because that case worker wasn’t there to relay it. And who knows – her absence may signal that we are getting two new case workers on this case at one time. That would be… nightmarish. Let’s hope that’s not the situation.
This is the stuff that makes foster care so darn difficult. We’re in the dark, and to some degree so is everyone else. And there are good people, and bad people, and accomplished people, and incompetent people who go into social work. The agency is pretty desperate so is hiring who they can get.
Send up some good vibes for a competent and caring new case worker!
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