Complex Guilt

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We've been skating along in a state of mild shock for the last week and a half. Grace left our house on the 7th. I wanted to give it a week before I posted anything, and then I got sick and we went out of town. So now I've let it sit for too long, and there are many emotions all crowding to be in the same place in my head at the same time.

The other day, maybe about 3 days after she left, I came home and Leonard was kind of monosyllabic and mopey. He was able to articulate to me that he felt sad and a little empty without the girls around. Even in the last few weeks when Grace was spending a lot of time at her mom's house, she would still come home from school, play with Ziggy and then go out. This broke up the monotony of the day at home and infused some life into the otherwise dull day.

It's almost like we're dealing with a mini-grief cycle. Of course she isn't dead... heck, she's less than 2 miles from our house. But she's not our responsibility and she's not in our home. The room is clean and empty and no terrible, terrible music is coming from behind her door. That feels somehow wrong.

She's come by the house a few times, but always when I'm at work. Leonard hasn't asked the "important" questions, like how things are going with her boyfriend or what kinds of rules the new lady has. The brief texts I've gotten from her seem like she's doing o.k.

I've been missing Jill a lot as well. She did sign the papers for board extension (YAY!!!) which means that she has the option to move on to an Independent Supported Living program or some such situation. She will continue to be supported until she's 21 as long as she meets certain criteria. I'm very excited about this, as it means she has a good chance now of getting through high school.

She also got a packet in the mail from a college the other day. This made me feel a little proud- it's a rite of passage for many American youngsters, and it's fun to think of something as normal as college mail happening to our Jill, whose life has been anything but normal.

In the meantime, we're collecting the bits of our lives that seem to be scattered all around. We're holding off on any major pronouncements or decisions about more foster kids until some loose ends are sorted out- probably not until mid-January at the soonest. So we're looking forward to a low key holiday season while we make those changes to the house and then sitting down and doing some hard analysis of our lives and what we have going on.

Here's the reality- foster kids are difficult. TFC foster kids are nearly 3 times more difficult. TFC fostering in the city means kids who have long term patterns of behavior and family dynamic that are not always healthy. It really is a full time job, and maybe not one we're able to take on right now. We have to get Leonard through school and me where I want to be.

But there's a lot we can do. We can do respite, which is desperately needed, and we can help agencies such as CASA. We can volunteer and advocate.

In the mean time, we can take a big, deep, breath.

Sweet Sixteen

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Last Sunday was Grace's birthday. We offered to host a party for her, and I made a cake. It was the first time she'd had a birthday party. Despite telling her all week to invite friends, the only people who came were her Mom and her sister, Jill. Grace did leave to got and meet a friend, but the friend never showed up to meet her.

All in all it was sweet and intimate, but for someone as social as Grace it was clear that it didn't fulfill her fantasy of a birthday party. After the pizza, cake and presents, Jill and I were talking, Mom was playing Candy Crush Saga, and Grace was watching Vampire Diaries. 

After they all left, Leonard and I were talking about the emotional train wreck that was unfolding in front of us. While I don't doubt that Mom loves her kids, she is pretty incapable of keeping her addiction and other issues under control. Generally parents of foster kids fall into two groups- involved and making an effort or too wrapped up in their problems to be able to make it work. Their mom is an unfortunate combination of the two- just involved enough and just loving enough to really mess with the kids' heads, but not involved enough to make hard changes in her life. 

The good news (sort of) is that Jill was very friendly and very chatty. We talked about paperwork and getting her board extension filed. While she's not technically our responsibility, it seems that the home she is in is giving her minimal support. That makes sense on one level... why put a ton of effort into a kid who's only with you for 2 months? But apparently her grandfather is pushing her to get the board extension and at least have the option when she turns 18. I think she's still holding out hope that by the end of January Mom will have it together and get a house. 

Court is this Friday. We have no idea how it's going to go. I've written an impassioned appeal to her service team (made up of DHS and agency workers and the attorney) to try to keep her out of a group home. We saw with Joan that sometimes the court just makes a decision and that's that. So we just have to keep our fingers crossed and hope for the best outcome for everyone. On some level, we're still not sure what the best outcome would actually be...

Real Rap

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Real Rap, yo...

In the last three weeks, Grace has been AWOL twice to where we had to call and file a police report in the middle of the night, skipped school three times and come home high a few other times. We have few disciplinary tools at our disposal. We don’t have a long term sway over her as she has decided not to ask to stay with us. We aren’t going to lock her in her room (immoral and illegal) and we’re not going to beat her for leaving the house. She’s already stopped doing chores or anything around the house to earn allowance, so that’s not something we can hold over her.

What’s really interesting to me from a psychological perspective is what’s encouraging her to act this way. Why does she think it’s o.k. to do these things? Because she’s been told by everyone that she’s worthless, and now this place that was supposed to be a rock for her has also slipped out from under her. I get it.

I found this on a Georgia foster agency website. Either they are particularly useless at expressing themselves, or there really aren’t any benefits besides warm fuzzies to do what we’ve been doing since April:

Why foster a Teen or Sibling group?

5 reasons to foster a teenager

1. Teens help you stay up to date on the latest fashions, trends and technology.
2. Teens benefit by learning from your experiences
3. Teens are fun and interactive which keeps you young at heart!
4. Teens benefit from living in nurturing and stable family environments where they can focus on school, building meaningful relationships and all things teen!

5.     Teens can decipher instant messaging codes and teach you even more ways

A lot of the talk in foster parenting land is to hang on and believe in these kids no matter what. When I mentioned about some of the troubles that we were having at home because of the issues the girls were having, I was told by one person that their reactions were “totally understandable” and then lectured about all the myriad factors and societal influences that are making them behave like this. More than one person has said “Well, what did you expect?”

I felt totally patronized by that reaction. That reaction, and the implied reaction behind the disappointed looks I’ve gotten from people that I’ve told about our situation, is that we need to keep hanging on as if we can save these girls.

We can’t. There are limits to tolerance and limits to what we can deal with. My job is on the line because I’ve spent too many sleepless nights worrying about them and too little time trying to keep my sanity. Our relationship is strained. Home has become a source of stress for both of us. If I lose my job, we can’t take care of our own family and will be disqualified to be foster parents anyway.

It took 15 years of bad parenting to get her to this point. We’re not going to change her life in 7 months.

We have just had to file another report on her tonight. She’s a kid who is lost and upset and totally abandoned by the world. The problem is that foster parenting, because of its inherently transient nature, isn’t the place to help someone form a healthier perspective. The stated goal of foster parenting is to reunite families, or to adopt if a family is too unstable. The problem is that with older kids it just isn’t that cut and dry. When you get a kid who has been habitually mistreated, it’s going to be nearly impossible to find a perfect fit. We were maybe about as perfect as it can get. We certainly were going to give her our everything.

It’s just that our everything wasn’t enough.

No Easy Answers

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After the last post, things have plummeted downwards. Jill proclaimed loudly and absolutely that she was not going to return to us. As she's about to turn 18 and the home she's in is good, we decided to go ahead and comply with that. She's officially not our responsibility anymore.

I have mixed feelings about this. From a personal perspective, I'm glad to have more space and time and less stress. From a maternal instinct perspective, I'm worried sick about her.

The home she's in is really great, though. The foster mom has been at this for a long time and is no nonsense and kind at the same time. We talked with her a little bit about what's been going on, and she is very understanding. What was even better was that she reassured us that we have not somehow fucked up really badly. According to her, we've been very patient with the girls.

About a week and a half ago, we had a family therapy session with just Grace. It went fairly well. Then later that night, things got really bad. When I asked her (in a very restrained and quiet voice) to go upstairs, she really let me have it. She then called Jill, and sat next to me with Jill on speakerphone and mocked me. Some pretty unforgivable things were said then.

The cussing and the attitude continued right up until tonight. There have been a few periods that were marginally better, but tonight was Old Grace. She calmly asked us why her phone had been turned off and listened while I explained about the way the billing worked. She talked about working on her homework, and what her plan was to get back on track with her grades. She was joking around and hugging on us. We were able to talk about what happened that night and talk a little bit about why she's been awful to us for almost 3 weeks now.

We kind of think being the only kid in the house is not a good setting for her. She's very sociable and friendly, and has 10 siblings. She's never been in a room by herself. The transition was always going to be hard on her.

But the conversation we need to have is what is fair to us. How long do we have to wait for her to have another episode like this, where she's going AWOL and we have to file a missing person's report on her? When will she flip out and say the next inexcusable thing to us? At what point do we stop being able to help her, and are just enabling an abusive cycle of behavior?

From some things she mentioned during the course of the conversation, I got the sense that her mom told her that we were going to give her up because of the way she's been acting. I wonder if that was resonating with her. Somewhere deep down inside she knows we'd be within our rights to. 

This is all exacerbated by her worker being on vacation. The girls are lucky to have such a competent worker on their case, but I'm really missing her right now.

Most of the seasoned professionals we've talked to have told us that we've given them far too many chances, and that it's amazing we haven't kicked them out sooner. While it's entirely understandable that a kid from their situation would behave angrily, violently and inappropriately, it's not fair to think we'll just sit by and let it roll all over us.

This is where being a true foster parent becomes difficult. From some of the things Grace said tonight, I suspect that their mom was telling her today that we're going to give her up. This isn't a conversation we're ready to have with her at this time, but she asked me if we were going to "give her up" about 5 times tonight. I asked her how she'd feel if we did, and she said she'd be mad. So despite treating us like toe rags for the last 3 weeks, she wants to stay with us.

My biggest fear in this process is hurting her any more that is necessary or reasonable. We love this kid, and I think she truly loves us back. It makes decision making very difficult. Though I will say that in the last 2 weeks, since Leonard and I detached some, I think we've been better parents. Maybe that's the key- detachment. These kids are, after all, not ours. Finding a balance where you can love a kid, be open with a kid, but maintain a sense of distance with that kid is very, very hard.

Enough is Enough

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This weekend we ended up putting Jill in respite at another foster home. She has really been behaving badly, mostly against herself. Last week she missed 2 days of school, and she has thrown away all of her medication. Our big concern is for her health- she is risking stomach surgery if she can’t/won’t take medication. She has also missed follow up doctor appointments, which are every two weeks now that she’s not taking her meds.

The tension from her end has been getting worse and worse. For the first week or two, it was just her and Grace was fine. Then last week, Grace started acting oddly as well. She would be fine for a while, and then suddenly turn belligerent, demanding and aggressive. It culminated in a fight on Saturday morning, where I finally confronted Jill about all the things she’d been muttering under her breath in my presence, or things she would say about us while on the phone with other people. She’s been telling everyone who will sit still long enough that she hates us and doesn’t want to stay with us, so after the confrontation on Saturday, I called the agency to request respite. Well, more like demanded respite. It was abundantly clear that I was making her angrier, and that she had really gotten under my skin.
This is why I’d make a bad therapist. I don’t know how to detach properly, and there’s a point with foster care that you need to detach. It’s virtually impossible to remember that when it’s in your home.

They left the house, but Grace came back by herself and wanted to talk about the fight. She tried to say that it had gone down a certain way, but when I challenged her perceptions on that she smiled awkwardly and admitted that she had been trying to stir the pot with us. She was very worried about why I had called the agency. She’s been in juvie facilities before, and is constantly concerned that she’s heading in that direction.

Though we were kind of looking forward to a week by ourselves, we decided to give Grace a choice. When we talked about it, Leonard and I, we determined that the main issue here is with Jill. Her total inability and unwillingness to talk to us makes it difficult to have anything more than a perfunctory relationship with her. That is not helpful to anyone, and a break would do us good.

Jill did not think it was a good idea. Despite complaining vociferously about our home, our food, our choice in radio programs and TV shows, when the worker arrived to take her to respite it took nearly an hour of cursing and thumping to get her ready to go. The worker who came to pick her up was lovely and patiently endured her verbal abuse. They left, but only after Jill very obviously and pointedly threw her medication in the trash.

We're going to all have to sit down next weekend and discuss our options. Is it healthy for Jill to come back to our house? Is her behavior going to change, or will she just do the same spiral and end up in the same place? Ultimately, as we keep telling her, she gets to make a choice. At some point we have to let that choice happen.

In the mean time, we're dealing with an odd form of empty nest. After having 3, then 2 and now 1 foster kid, when Leonard and I finally took an hour today to just sit down together and hang out, we thought for sure we were forgetting to do something. After the 6 months we've had, one teen foster kids hardly seems like we're doing much at all!

Parentification

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I didn’t post last week because I had a mild concussion after hitting my head with a bike rack. It was fairly undignified.

It’s been an up and down week. Two weeks, actually. Grace has been going through medication changes as well as religion changes. She had a rough patch at school and we had to go in for a parent teacher meeting today. It seems that she has dramatic acting out behaviors in her English classes. It doesn't take a psychologist to know that if she’s acting out in her English/Language Arts classes, there might be some kind of issue with the subject matter.

In fact, she is incredibly self-conscious about her reading and writing abilities. She’s actually a fantastic poet with a lot of raw talent, but she thinks she’s stupid. So she acts out in the hope of getting kicked out of class. So far, it’s working.

The real Topic this week is Jill. We’re dealing with an incredible downward spiral with her. For a while, she was receiving in-home intensive therapy, but that stopped after 3 months. At first she was just stable, neither better nor worse. Now she’s rapidly spiraling out of control and mimicking some of the behavior we saw from Joan over the summer.

The big issue is her parentification issues. Parentification happens when roles are reversed, and the child becomes the parent. Many, many people go through this, and it is especially common when parents have some sort of mental illness or addiction problems. The parent puts responsibility on the child for support: emotional, physical or even financial. In Jill’s case, their mom would leave for days or weeks at a time, leaving teen-aged Jill in charge of all the younger siblings. She is also expected to validate or uphold her mother’s emotional needs, sometimes to the exclusion of the other children (especially Grace). This turns into their mother being like a “best friend” person to Jill, pulling her in as a peer rather than a child. This is a very, very confusing role for a teenager.

We recognized the signs straight off, and have made some clear boundaries around what we expect as far as babysitting, caring for Gloria, her role as a child in the house, etc. On the flip side, we expect her to communicate with us, to answer our phone calls when she’s out and to tell us where she’s going and when she’ll be home. These may seem like minimal things, but this is a 17 year old who is used to acting like another adult in the family.

We’ve been informed that her mom has taken every opportunity to tell her that the only reason we want her to stay in foster care is so we can continue to get a check for her. This is, of course, ridiculous. Foster parenting is not a profitable gig. But anyway, that’s what she’s telling Jill, while Grace is saying that she thinks the only reason her mom wants her back is for the same reason- the checks that come with under 18 year old kids. We're doing our best to make non-committal noises whenever this comes up and generally trying to not get sucked into the drama. 

The other half of that is the long standing family dynamic between Jill and Grace is that Grace is the “dumb one” and the “crazy one” and it’s safe to blame all mishaps or broken dishes on her. Grace has actually been left behind when the family have gone on trips. She is laughed at, ridiculed, teased and told that she is a “bad kid” by her family. They have all learned that she is the one to make fun of.

But here that’s all changed. They are both getting support and love.  This is a role change that Jill is having difficulty with.

Jill, on the other hand, has mostly locked herself in her room. She has developed actual hypochondria and won’t take any of the medication for a significant health problem she has developed. In the last month she went from being sulky to being downright hostile towards us.

She has been offered a Board Extension  which would ostensibly extend her time in foster care to age 21. She would be eligible for an Independent Living Program, and would get support for school and job placement. She can stay with us or get signed up for another living arrangement. But to get it, she needs to write a letter stating that she wants it and why.

She is stating that she wants to hurry up and finish High School and then go back to live with her mom. So far the most compelling reason I’ve heard for that is she’ll get her own room. She also claims that we favor Grace and “give her whatever she wants and whatever she asks for.” Jill is too depressed and too wrapped in her own drama to see that we do not, in fact, give Grace whatever she wants.

What are the costs of this kind of neglect and abuse? Apparently, rather steep. I try not to project too much on what’s going to happen, but if Jill decides to leave us when she’s 18, there are very few positive outcomes. She is already showing the symptoms of a parentification problem such as a sudden temper and an inability to connect with people in a meaningful way and a total inability to discuss or share her emotions. She’s hoping to go back to the role that she is comfortable in as the sole caretaker for her family, including all her siblings and her mother. There she can be made to feel valued and important, above all others. At the same time, she will be frustrated knowing that she has the potential to do so much more.

Ultimately the decision is hers. We are trying to balance compassion and understanding for her plight with doing what is necessary to keep our home emotionally safe. The art to foster parenting is finding the place where you can support, love, encourage but not get too burned out yourself. I think this is why so many people prefer to foster-to-adopt. It makes sense. It's definitely our next plan. 

We just hope that in a few years, someone will be writing an article like this NY Times article about Jill. 

Other people's kids

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We’re looking at a pretty rocky next few days. A pattern of behavior has been unfolding, and I’ve been holding off on writing this post because I wanted to see how it played out.

Whenever you take in siblings, you’re also taking in all their baggage and embedded family dynamics. Agencies try to keep siblings together, because there is evidence that children do better when they can stay connected to their family on a daily basis. A bit of the familiar. If you watched the ABC Family show "The Fosters", you got to see how important the siblings of the two sibling groups in that family were to each other. That idea generally makes sense, and I understand the psychology behind that.

But as with many things we've seen with these girls, I’m not sure that conventional wisdom holds true in this specific case. Jill and Grace are about as similar as apples and oranges. They don’t like the same music beyond a few pop hits, they don’t wear the same clothes, they talk differently, one likes to read and the other has read maybe 3 books in her life, one is thoughtful and introspective and the other is purely a physical and emotionally reactive being.

However, Jill has always been the “parentified” one, as the oldest girl. Grace, who is only a year younger, has played the role of “the bad one” in their family. To say that they have been treated differently is an understatement. Please check out the embedded links of parentification- the effects can be pretty gruesome in the long term on the psyche of a child. 

Interestingly, the way that plays out between them is that Jill can’t stand seeing Grace get any kind of positive attention or any kind of praise. She goes nuts. She needs to have all of that positive attention on herself, like it's a zero-sum game. This goes for how they see the tension between whether they want to be with us or be with their mom. We try to tell them that it's not either/or, but rather both. 

Tonight in therapy we're going to address this need of Jill's to tear Grace down. Now, there's a secondary issue, which is that Grace is going through some medication management issues, and we had a melt-down with her last night. 

Interestingly, as soon as Grace was in trouble, Jill started being "nice". She really can't fathom that both girls can be in our good graces at the same time. 

It's worth noting that we don't see this kind of competition coming from Grace. She is used to being "the bad one" and the one who gets blamed for anything that goes wrong, so when she's in trouble, it's just normal. When she's not in trouble, she kind of has an emotional freak out, and often then either gloms on and texts us all day, every day, or she has the exact opposite reaction and needs to get us mad at her again. 

So when you take in siblings, you take in years and years of their family dynamics. You need to be ready for a roller coaster of an experience, and learn how to not take it personally. That's my challenge... how can I keep their emotional issues from affecting our core triad of me, Leonard and Ziggy? How can you care about someone a lot, but at the same time recognize what is and is not in your power to control?

Stay tuned...

UPDATE-
It went surprisingly well. Grace stormed out at some point, but since coming home things have been fine. Jill stayed and listened as the therapist and us explained how they can have both us and their biological family in their lives. I think she heard it. I hope she did. 

The emotional made physical

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I'm totally exhausted and cramming lovely, gingery carbs in my mouth like my life depends on it. It very well might. My ridiculous son will wake me up in about 6 hours, because he doesn't understand about sleeping in. I rode the GIANT cargo bike all over town today.

This is a cargo bike:

Ok, so I wasn't moving furniture, but the baby FEELS like he's as heavy as furniture.

Essentially, it's a bike that can haul a lot of cargo around. This is mainly practical, because we don't have a car. At this point, we don't have a car because of finances more than anything. Try grocery shopping for 5 people on a bus. The bike is better.

I rode all over town (including to one of Philadelphia's finest gems, Smith Memorial Playground) because today was the day that Leonard and our friend Dustin built our deck. This is one of the goals of our fundraiser, which we are running in an effort to make our lives a little more manageable. 

One of the things we didn't really think about before the girls came to live with us was the practical layout and space of our home. We had the bikes living inside, as is common for people in our sub-section of the West Philadelphia community. We have a woodstove that provides most of our heat and a nice, comfy couch that has seen a few too many dogs on it to be totally comfortable. 

Now we suddenly have two extra people who have their own needs, their own space demands, and the kinds of houses that they are accustomed to. This is another reason to consider being a respite parent for a while. You need to suss out what the kids in the age range you're interested in need, and what your home can provide. If you're used to living with your own kids, or maybe you're empty nesters, you'll want to go through a few respite placements just to figure out where the toy box goes or where the couch can expand to to accommodate teenagers and their friends. We knew we were in trouble when we had to figure out where to put their bikes. 

So today was the second step in that process: the deck. 

Before! What the back looked like when we left

After! The amazing transformation when we came home

The big foster parenting thing this weekend was about the battle between the girls. 

In total, there are 9 siblings that share the same mother and father in Jill and Graces' sibling group. There are also 4 additional siblings that share one parent or the other. All of the kids are either in foster care or are now grown and creating children of their own. One of the younger siblings comes to stay with us from time to time for respite because she and her foster mom don't get along. She is trying to stay there because she wants to stay with the even younger twins. So we give everyone a break, and it's usually good. Tara is a generally polite kid, at least in small doses. We've seen things that lead us to believe she can hold her own in the Holy Terror category. 

Because all three of the girls were here, their mom wanted to see them. This is generally something that the girls set up and coordinate on their own, and we know little to nothing about it. This time, however, we got to hear all about it because Grace was furious last night because of some hurtful things her mom said. This is the second time in a row, and about the 20th time altogether that we've heard this from her. 

This leads me to the thing that's been weighing heavily on me. What is the split/balance between foster parent and therapist? While our agency is taking it's sweet time getting her a therapist, I'm walking around with her at night for 2 hours while she dumps on me all of her issues. On the one hand I want to say "I'm happy to do it. I'd love to help her out" while on the other hand, my heart is screaming "noooooo! i need more bleeping time to myself!"

Either way, I ended up walking her around and we got incredibly expensive popsicles. They were delicious. All day she's been really on the ball, really helpful and thoughtful. 

Then we had this conversation:

G: Kitty, I talked to my mom tonight. See, Jill had talked to her and asked her to tell me to call. 

K: Really? Ah. I see. 

G: So I talked to her. I didn't want to at first, and first when she started talking I didn't say nothin. 

K. Mmmmhmmm. 

G. So she said "why you tellin them that I been mean to you. i ain't been mean to you, and i been sad all day". But Kitty, I don't believe her. I don't think she tellin the truth. 

THere was more. She told me the whole conversation, but it goes around in circles. Basically, Grace was looking to me to show her a reaction. How to respond, behave in this situation. I think she handled it very well, actually, by not saying anything and giving the phone back to her sister. 

She was looking at me with her big, brown, innocent eyes. It's remarkable to me sometimes how childlike she can really be. So I told her the truth. 

The truth was that right then, I didn't know what I could or could not say. As a foster parent, I have to keep my own emotions, biases and feelings out of the game there. Clearly, I am upset when I see the girls upset. I obviously have biases that lead me to judge their mom. I try not to, and I try to offset my judging by finding the positive things the girls learned from her and repeating them, almost like a rosary. 

So I told Grace that. I said "I am not saying anything right now because I don't know what to say. I have to be careful, because I don't want what I say to be played into a war between you and your mom. I am going to trust you to do what your instincts tell you is the right thing to do. Last night you had a lot of examples of behaviors that made you feel one way about your mom, but maybe tomorrow you will have a different list. Ultimately the decision is up to you. I trust you to make a good one." 

She stared at her toes for a bit, but I think it made sense to her. And it's all true. I also stated to her that I trust her to make the right decision, and hopefully implied that I'm here to help her if needed. 

I wish I could pass along a similar message to Jill, but I'm afraid she's in a place where she can be the adult to her mom. I think it makes her feel good to provide worldliness to their mom. This almost automatically makes me the bad guy. But i'm honestly fine with that... She'll figure it out soon. 

I'm now so tired I can barely see to spell check. I will try to do a mid-week post this week! 

Cautious optimisim

Last Friday was a low point. We were all so heartbroken, and were whisked away to the magic land of central New Hampshire for revitalization. This week has been by far the best week we've had yet. I've been enjoying the heck out of all three kids, really getting into hanging out with them.

I called Jill's school today. She's going to an alternative high school where they work half days in the classroom and then can work independently at home using an online curriculum. I have to say, I'm kind of impressed. The staff person I talked to today said all the right things. They have a high graduation rate, a caring staff, and are used to working with kids who are emotional and have issues with authority. Apparently all the staff really like Jill. She mentioned today that staff that she's never talked to have stopped her in the halls to ask how she's doing. It's encouraging to me to hear her talk about wanting to be a studious person again. Before things went sour for them, she was a straight-A student and loved school. I'm starting to see that come about again. We've been talking about trying to set up some college visits in the Spring.

And she told me with great pride that she got 100% on the history test she took the other day. Apparently my hour-long synopsis of the Civil War was a great help to her in taking that test.

Grace's school is also giving me reason to be optimistic. In a school district beleaguered by massive budget cuts and endless stories about how horrible the outlook is for everyone, they seem to have a Special Education director who is earning her paycheck (and a few other people's paychecks, truth be told). Tonight Grace sat down and actually did her homework. She complained the whole time, but it's done and ready to be handed in.

Grace's story from last school year is especially bad. She has an IEP (Individualized Education Plan) that calls for emotional support in the classroom as well as remedial work in core subjects. She's clearly intelligent enough, but she's been moved so many times that her special education services have been severely disrupted. Her reading level is at least 4 grade levels behind right now. Last year, when going to The School From Hell (TSFH for short), she was inexplicably placed in a classroom that is designed for students who are not likely to ever be able to be gainfully employed because of their mental and emotional disabilities.

This has only added to her already pretty significant trauma around school and institutions. She is convinced that she's stupid, and that she's good for  nothing but getting on welfare and SSI. Though her school is being supportive, they were not able to count any credits from last year since her classes consisted of things like "wear clean clothes". She basically spent a year languishing in this crappy classroom. Now she's re-entering school as a freshman, which is always demoralizing.

At TSFH, the staff often provoked or otherwise exacerbated her attitude. There was a lot of yelling and belligerency, but it seems that is not the culture at her new school. TSFH was also over an hour away, and the new one is all of 4 blocks. These things all add up to a significant improvement.

This week has been awesome, but I am sort of bracing myself for the inevitable blow up. Eventually they will both be fed up, too tired to get up, pissed about some element of the program or otherwise unwilling to go to school/do homework, etc. I hope that Leonard and I can keep our cool and weather the storm.

The other thing causing me some cautious optimism is the renewed buy-in that they seem to have with us. After court on Friday I was worried that they would explode on us, but it seems the road trip did some great therapeutic work there. I can't wait for us to be able to buy a car so we can take these road trips whenever we need to. There are so many places we want to take them, and so man places they want to go.

All of us are pretty excited about the home improvement projects that are finally underway. To get the bikes out of the house and improve the counter space/layout of the kitchen will be like dreams come true. And next summer- bbq on the deck!

Right now we're on an upswing. I hope and pray and want it to last as long as possible.

Fostering permanency

Tomorrow we find out the fate of our family for the next few years, at least. The girls have a hearing in front of a judge tomorrow, and on the agenda is for them to ask (or not ask) for PLC.

"PLC" stands for "Permanent Legal Custody", which is neither permanent nor full custody. It means that instead of going through an agency to provide their care, we're solely responsible ourselves.  This has many benefits; We can choose their doctors, therapists, schools, sign off for medical procedures and move. We don't have to put up with DHS and agency workers needing to access our home or coordinating with us multiple times per week. We can set incentives and do discipline in a way that makes sense to us without sending pages long emails whenever something happens. However, unlike adoption, the girls' parents are still legally considered their parents. Their rights have not been terminated, and if things straighten out with them the girls can go live with them again with a minimum of legal headache. However, if things don't work out there, the stipend continues until they are 21, which gives us the financial support needed to help them get their adult lives started.

To be honest, we have mixed feelings about this. We love these girls, and they are nice to have around much of the time. But they are undeniably a lot of work and take up a lot of emotional and physical resources. There are some issues that sometimes make life in our house incredibly stressful, and those issues won't go away with permanency. There are reasons these girls have gotten to mid-late teens and still in the system. There's a lot of emotional trauma to address, and problems to work through. Being foster parents on top of biological parents, an employee and a student has taken a toll on our relationship as well.

But when you care so much about a young person, you love them and see their potential, you want to help. Without PLC, Jill will be cut loose from "The System" in January when she turns 18. She will have to rely on family help and public assistance, and will probably not get all of the supports that she needs in order to live up to her potential. She has a lot of potential. She's one of the most intelligent young people I've ever met, but she has not had the advantage of museum visits, music lessons or academic support. Grace is one of the most emotionally intelligent people I've ever met with a near psychic ability to pick up on the moods of the people around her. She loves working with children, and wants to get into Early Childhood Education.

It's that fantasy that keeps us slogging down this path and working through the issues as we encounter them. I want to see Jill finish High School and get a job somewhere that expands her horizons. I want to see her around good people who won't disappoint or hurt her. I want to see her get into music lessons. I want her to make friends, friends who will support her and encourage her to grow into her curiosity and passions. I want to see Grace learn how to control her anger long enough to make friends with the "nerdy people" that she really wants to hang out with. She has expressed a desire to become a good student, and I think in a different environment she would have learned those skills already. I want to see her get her ECE certs and use her immense capacity to love and be compassionate to nurture and care for little ones. She has an incredible affinity with animals as well, and as soon as she turns 16 she wants to start volunteering with the SPCA.

It's hard to hang on to that fantasy when Grace is cussing us out or Jill is storming upstairs slamming the door. I know that my fantasy has a statistically high chance of not being fulfilled.

But it's worth a shot... right?

We'll find out tomorrow if the girls themselves and the courts think it is worth the effort.

Then we're off to New Hampshire for wedding and camping!

Fostering Facts #2

Fostering Facts #2

What to expect

Much like starting your own biological family, you are never really ready to be a foster parent. Each kid is different. Each situation is different. You can’t just say “oh, I have 3 rooms, I’ll take 3 kids”. They might not like each other. One of them might need more care and attention than you expected. Or they might all be amazing, and willing to step out of their comfort zone and fit in with your family seamlessly. They might love the food you eat or hate it. You might always have to re-negotiate chores, or not. Things that you never considered might come up. Do you like to have a glass of wine with dinner? Well, maybe one of your foster kids comes from an alcoholic home and seeing you sip that wine or smelling alcohol on your breath triggers them. We’ve had to do months of trust building around that with our two girls, modeling for them what a healthy relationship to alcohol looks like.

The biggest job you can do to prepare for being a foster parent is to set up your support network. If you’re taking in younger kids, who do you have that is willing to get clearances so they can babysit? If you’re taking in older kids, who do you know that can point you in the direction of good after school or summer programs to enrich their lives? If you’re taking in kids from a different race/religious background, who do you know who can talk you through what is expected or needed? You will need people to help you in ways you can’t even imagine, even if it’s just being willing to sit with you and let you vent. Sit down and take inventory. Do these people live close by? Do you know anyone with experience with the system? Start asking. You may be surprised to find that you know someone who was in foster care, or adopted, or had a cousin who was. These people will be worth their weight in gold.

Make sure your support network is diverse. You can’t put all your hopes in your Christian church community only to find that the child you’re bringing into your home is, say, a Hindu. That will feel alienating and disarming to the child. Even if you don’t have any Hindu friends, ensuring that your child is meeting people from a variety of backgrounds will help them to feel less alienated, less obviously an "other." Actively seeking help from their home community is also important. If you don’t know ahead of time what their background is, be willing to put in the time in the first week or two to finding out. You will be thanked.

When we got our girls, we abruptly realized we had no hair care stuff AT ALL in the house. I have a hair brush, which essentially the end of my hair care routine. While I was familiar with the hair needs of African American girls, we weren’t prepared for weave care right out of the box. Fortunately my partner’s sister is mixed race and has a daughter. She quickly threw all of their extra creams, gels, sprays, flat irons, blow dryers and combs into a bag and brought it over. With everything else we were trying to coordinate on top of getting to know these two new people, that was a lifesaver (not to mention a money saver).

Day 1

The training process and clearance process is different from state to state. You’ll have to find that out based on where you are. Essentially, you have to be trained (anywhere from 23 to 40 hours), you have to be legally cleared, and you have to be certified. The agency will delve into every aspect of your life. We had to give letters of reference from family, friends and neighbors to back our claim, and we had to give over our financial statements and tax records. Ostensibly this is to cut down on the number of people who are in it just for the money, but I’m not convinced it works.

When you get a chil through regular foster care, you won’t know ahead of time who’s coming. It’s hard to prepare. You have to just be ready to roll with the punches.

When the child is “placed”, that means they have been put into the care of the state. This can be for a variety of reasons, which I will attempt to tackle in a future post.

In Philadelphia, the agencies are on a rotation. On any given day, different agencies are “on rotation”. The agency at the top of the list has an hour to place a child once the state calls them. They frantically start calling down their list of available parents and you have to answer *right then and there*.

If you have specific criteria, stick to your guns. If you’re doing respite, hold out for respite. If you want girls, don’t be convinced to take a boy. If you want younger kids and they offer you someone a few years above your upper limit, say no. The person calling you will try to talk you into it, and they’ll say all kinds of things to appeal to your better nature. Remember, the agency is only paid by the state depending on the number of kids they have. You, however, are the one who has to live with the kid. 

From there you’re just waiting. It could take them a half an hour or four hours, or even eight or ten hours to move the child. There is usually someone from the state who will bring them to your door. They need to make a visual inspection of the home and confirm that the children are being dropped into a safe environment. If you have a dog, be ready to put them out back and introduce them slowly once the initial chaos is over.

Don’t be surprised if the child wants to spend their first day holed up in their room. They are probably some kind of terrified. Offer them food, invite them to come down and watch TV, but don’t pressure them. Don’t try to make them do anything for at least the first 24 hours.

You may never know about their situation before they came to your house. A lot of that is not disclosed to foster parents for obvious reasons unless it looks like the home will become more permanent.

In our training they recommended not giving them house rules all at once. Saying one or two things like “we always take our shoes off at the door” and “don’t feed the dog from the table” are a good starting point. You can slowly fold out your house rules as you get used to each other. Try to get them to share what they want to eat, and do a few things right off to make them feel comfortable. Do they want to add anything to a grocery list? What kind of movies do they like? Do they play a sport?

Be supportive, but be clear about what you want and don’t want. If your house is one that has a lot of home made meals and lots of healthy fruit and vegetables, get them used to the idea that they won’t be eating processed food everyday. But you have to give in as well- negotiate what kinds of foods you’re willing to let them have on hand, and see if there’s anything that they want to eat that they can make themselves. We have figured out how to make corn dogs, water ice and fried chicken at home. It’s not the ideal of health that I would prefer, but it helps the girls feel more comfortable.

Next installment will talk about the longer term expectations.

Fostering Facts #1

Fostering Facts #1                                                                

A lot of people get a glazed over look when I launch on an explanation of what we’re doing, why we’re doing it and who we’re doing it with. I say things like: “The respite provider wasn’t TFC certified so they didn’t know how to de-escalate in a therapeutic way…” and they look at me like I just broke out into song.

I’m going to spend the next few posts explaining foster care. It’s a system that most people are unfamiliar with, many people are intimidated by and a very few understand. I don’t really understand it. But I do have a working knowledge of what’s going on.

This is long. If you just want to read an update about our family, I’ll do that tomorrow. 

The way it works in PA is relatively similar to how it works in the rest of the country. Different states have different names for the processes or procedures, but for the most part it’s all similar.

System-wide management structure

Currently, each state manages their own child welfare system. They may call it Child Protective Services, or Department of Human Services, or Family Services or any number of other similar titles. I'll just call it "The State". This is a state and federally funded agency that is tasked with caring for the children who are identified as being “in the system”. Depending on how well or how poorly your state runs its agencies, your particular agency will work efficiently or not. In our case, we’re in PA so it runs very inefficiently.

Because the day to day management of something like this is time consuming and very costly, that aspect is distributed out to different agencies. Many of these agencies have some religious affiliation. All of them are non-profits. They may be state-wide, they may operate only in a certain geographical area, they may have alliances with agencies in near-by states. They may be well run or poorly run. If you are looking to become a foster parent, it will be up to you to figure out the best agency. It’s best to ask around and find out what experiences other families have had with different agencies.

Role of the Agency

Because these agencies are not run by The State, they get to do whatever they want to within the parameters that the state system sets. These parameters are by necessity kind of loose. The agencies basically need to make sure that the families they certify are a) stable (financially and emotionally) and b) willing and c) haven’t been charged with child endangerment in the past. These guidelines are VERY LOOSE. That is how you get foster families that are really just in it for the money. If your agency is no good, they’re not going to follow up with the families to make sure that what’s going on is in the best interest of the child placed there.

The agencies manage all aspects of the day to day of the child. They will coordinate with the foster family to get school registrations done, medical visits scheduled, getting emotional support or therapeutic services taken care of, etc. As a foster parent, you don’t have the right to change their doctor, change their school or do anything that has a long term effect on the child’s life. The social worker from the agency can, with the express permission of the DHS worker assigned to the case.

Generally you will have this team of people:

Agency social worker

That social worker’s supervisor

Department social worker

That social worker’s supervisor

Therapeutic/psychological services staff

Any of these people need to be able to have access to your child at any time they need it. That means that if you have multiple children who are not on the same “case” (generally those who are not coming from the same home) or if you have children who have higher levels of need, you may have a different worker in your home every day of the week.

Role of the foster family

Your primary responsibility as a foster parent is to keep the children in your care safe. This includes keeping them fed, clothed, in school, going to appointments and keeping them away from dangerous situations. For that purpose, anyone in your house may be subjected to a criminal background check.  In PA that goes by age, so anyone over the age of 14 who will spend more than a cumulative 2 weeks sleeping in your home needs to be checked. That includes State and Federal background checks. The agency should pay for those, and if they don’t, that’s a sign you need to get a different agency.

Medical insurance is paid by the state. In PA, foster children are totally covered at 100%.

Levels of foster care

There are different levels of care. Most children are just “regular” foster care. They may have some issues, and the agency will either have a therapy team on staff or will help you get them into therapy. Anything more than that, and you may be dealing with a “Therapeutic Foster Care” situation. The acronym TFC is used in a lot of states and may have different words attached to them, but basically means the same thing. TFC placement homes require more training and are expected to do more. A child may be TFC for medical reasons or emotional/behavior reasons. It generally means that you have to do considerably more work, and do more one on one work. In PA, they don’t put more than 2 TFC children in a home together, and that’s only if they are siblings or otherwise emotionally connected. It is nearly impossible to be an effective TFC home if all adults are working full time or if you have multiple children in the house.

A very common kind of care is called “Kinship” care. This means that the child has a previous connection to the family. You don’t have to be biologically related, though they do look for a family placement first. In the last 10 years or so there has been a huge push to keep children in their biological families and in their home environments. In the past, many foster situations ended up putting children in homes that were dramatically different than what they were used to, which caused certain kinds of trauma. With kinship, many of the rules get bent. You can have more TFC children in the home if there is kinship. You can have the child placed before you finish your training in kinship care. The rules about what kinds of sleeping arrangements are needed can be waived or bent for kinship care. That is up to each state, and can even be different from worker to worker.

A respite care provider is actually (in my opinion) a great place to start on the foster care journey. Respite providers have homes available for foster children while their foster families go on vacation or just need a break. It can be tricky bringing children out of state, so respite providers are like pure gold. It is also a great way for new foster families to give it a whirl because you can work out some of the kinks, like chore expectations, travel coordination, socializing the rest of your family, etc. It can also be fun because if you have a kid for the weekend, you get a chance to spoil them a little bit. Take ‘em to the zoo. Go get their hair done. It’s all good. As a respite provider, you still get paid the daily rate for their care.

Next installment will talk more about what you as a foster parent can expect right off the bat.