My Family Moments: Bits and Pieces

Saturday, December 15, 2012

Bits and Pieces

I think I am coming upon a weakness of mine within this Foster Care journey. As every day passes we sit and wait for instructions or information on what will happen next. For me, that works great. My anxiety that I fight in all other aspects of my life is kept at bay with all the last minute updates. (I'm a super-star with last minute anything!) The downside is it's only bits and pieces. We are not privy to any information at all. We don't have any rights to know anything accept the well being of our "little man". This is killing me! I just want to know how the puzzle fits together is all. Why is Bio-Mom in jail? Why hasn't the Bio-Dad been found? Or maybe he has? Why wasn't "little man" given to his Bio-Grandma? I need to get over it. But it is going to be so hard. It really makes no huge difference to how we love and care for "little man". It will just satisfy my need to have answers.

Speaking of bits and pieces. It seems that is all I am able to give Bio-Mom when she makes her phone calls once a week. Prior to the actual call I am always going over our conversation in my head. I want to make sure I am giving her all the information that I would want to know myself if I were in her shoes. I talked to her once for about 3 minutes last week till my phone cut out. I felt horrible!! The one chance she gets to find out how her baby is and I drive down a road with no coverage! I left messages for his social worker and my social worker asking if she could have another call since it was my fault the call ended early. The second call was longer. All my practice "calls in my head" had no relevance. Bio-Mom asked the questions and I tried to give as much detail as I could. She was very interested in what he looked like. That was about it. It was very weird to have to edit my speech when telling a story. Instead of "Abby", it's "my daughter". Instead of "at the Volleyball game" it's "at the gym". It all turns out to be bits and pieces of her baby's life. The conversation went well overall. I'm able to email her supervising Parole Officer pictures that she will then print out for her. That makes me feel good. After I hang up, I have to kind of evaluate how I did and how I am feeling. I need to back up and remember who I just spoke with. A drug addict who is incarcerated and had her child taken from her. My heart has been pulled back in and I am back to reality.

Nite Nite!
:)Amy

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"Foster Family" Terminology

SW: Social Worker = This is a professionally trained (at times I feel from a YouTube video) individual who works for any County or private organization. My foster baby will have a SW and I will have a SW who is also known as a CCW. (see below)

CCW: Clinical Case Worker = This is a professionally trained individual, also known as a Social Worker who works for Angel’s Foster Family Network. They are assigned to a maximum of 12 families at one time and lead them through the fostering system. They are our right hand gal. (no males as of yet) This person does all the legal pushing and pulling on our behalf so we can focus solely on loving and caring for our foster babies. I would not and will not ever do my job as a foster mom without these people.

Supervised Visit = The bioparent has rights to see their child no matter the circumstances. Most often the visits begin as 1 to 2 hours, 1 to 2 times a week. An adult that is approved must watch the parent with the child at all times. (sometimes a lot of work and sometimes boring as heck)

Unsupervised Visit = The bioparent has rights to see their child no matter the circumstances before. If they are improving their situation then they will eventually get the right to have visits without supervision. The foster parent must drop off the child at an approved location and pick them up later. Most often the visit is for 2-6 hours 1 to 2 times a week. And these will only increase in length as the situation improves. (super hard for the foster parent to move to this step)

Foster Baby/Child = A child that has been removed from their biological family due to many different reasons affecting the welfare of the child. They are then placed in protective custody under the County and State.