My Family Moments: Jumping In!

Saturday, October 11, 2014

Jumping In!

I'm so afraid...
...He's going to forget me.
...He's going to be mad at me.
...He's going to go crazy just having his biomom around.
...She is going to mess up and he is going to pay the price.
...This case is going to go another 2 years.
...I'm going to start resenting "Little Man", the system, Angel's.
...I'm not going to be able to handle this reunification.

The list could go on and on. Thoughts go through my head constantly, specially on those bad days. The bad days came pretty quick as unsupervised visits went from 4 hours to 6 hours to overnights. Not having him here at night was very odd. Something was missing. It was super quiet! I looked at my phone a lot. During the last few weeks of these visits "Little Man" ended up with a few scratched and random bruises. Some had reasonable stories, others not so reasonable. None of them were taken into account on judgment day. "Little Man" always did "great" at his visits with his biomom. No problem sleeping, no tantrums, just peachy! There is absolutely no way it was that "great". He hates going to bed. Every night! But it just doesn't matter anymore. The days are slipping away from us and he is going back home. I had to deal with that and fast.

Oh but what would this case be without a little fork in the road, right? And oh what a doozy! It's time for the TDM. Team Decision Meeting. I'm scared out of my mind and I have no idea what to expect since the game has changed people! The game has changed. (did change... reminder that this all happened months ago. I'm still catching you up.)

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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.