Can't make this stuff up...

Actually quotes....

Q So anyone with a CPS call on them can never be a foster parent?

A. No one with history. Believe it or not, there are tons of families without CPS history. It's NOT a right of passage.

Q Just because CPS has removed my children multiple times, it doesn't mean I'm a bad mom.

A. Actually, it does.

Wish I could have been the one to say it out loud.

And then you stitch them together...

High drama today....

Drunk mama fighting with drunk gramma at court.

A baby is born, and mamma has to decide whether to do a private adoption or the state will take custody.

And a teenager is thrilled to move back to her home town, for tonight anyway.

But I didn't quit today.

Things fall apart...

There are days (weeks, months, seasons) that are so tightly scheduled and so dependent on many people sticking to the plan that all it takes is one person calling in sick or one emergency to affect thing into next month. The Butterfly Effect of social services. One state senator sneezes and two hundred positions are lost. Etc.

I am posting from my personal phone out of utter frustration. I am supposed to be a "mobile" caseworker which means the expectation is that I am working in the field most of the time. And I have equipment that is designed to allow that.

But...

I think no one else got the memo. People expect me to be in the office at their convenience, answer phones and emails immediately, and meet all deadlines. Which is easy to do....from the office. Not so much from the drivers seat of a camry.

I may start a pool...pick the day I give my two weeks notice...

It's not my fault...

If law enforcement has to be called because of your actions, it is so not my fault if the children are traumatized, it is YOUR fault. Next time listen to what the judge says, it may not be what you want, but know what? Since you can't put me in jail and he can, he is the one I'm listening to....

I'm from the State, I'm here to help

Just a thought, but if a college graduate and professional bureaucrat cannot get a driver's license or State issued ID in less than three trips and five hours, how are our clients, especially those employed in jobs with no paid leave, supposed to do it?

Summer of Hell , part 1

Three years ago.

We called it the Summer of Hell. Our staff of six was suddenly a staff of 2. My caseload went from a capped caseload of about 19 to 39 in about three weeks. Did I mention that the "optimum" caseload is about 16?

Adding to my misery was the fact that about five of the cases involved children in Emergency Shelters. Emergency Shelters are placements that care for children that we can't find foster homes for. The may have some kind of behavioral issue, or they are a certain age or gender that is hard to place. Emergency Shelters do a job that is difficult at best and impossible most of the time. And they charge the State a whole lot more. But, while our children are in Emergency Shelters, we caseworkers are required to put our eyeballs on the child weekly. Which isn't a problem when they are in town, but most Emergency Shelters are at least two hours from our town. Summer of Hell. I have to rent a car whenever I have to drive over 150 miles. There were 11 rental cars a month that Summer of Hell.

The weekly visits were not convenient. But I talked to someone who had been a fos ter child. She said that she was left in an Emergency Shelter and no caseworker came by to see her for three months.  She was left in the shelter for three months with no one to tell her the plan for her life, what was happening with her parents or anything else. She cried when I told her that we saw shelter kids weekly and gave them our cell phone numbers.

I cried when I thought about how I was inconvenienced.

So, a bad day at court today...

photo © 2007 Matti Mattila | more info (via: Wylio)

Dear Editor,

I am 46 years old. Some of my friends say there is no Purgatory.  I know that if I see it in your paper, then it’s so. Please tell me the truth; is there a Purgatory?

The Unsocial Social Worker

Texas

Dear Unsocial,

Your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the optimism of an optimistic age. They believe that courts and communities want to do the best for all children. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their optimistic minds. All minds, Unsocial, whether they be men’s, or attorney’s, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an any, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world around him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Unsocial, there is a Purgatory. It exists as certainly as Permanent Managing Conservatorship, which allows parents to continually re-sue for custody each year, guaranteeing the child never really has a permanent home, and you know that this abounds to give to the attorneys’ and courts’ coffers their highest beauty and joy: more attorney’s fees and court costs. Alas, how dreary the world would be if there were no Permanent Managing Conservatorship. It would be as dreary as if there were no divorces, custody battles or supervised visitation centers.  There would be no unsecure placements, no wondering what will happen in court, no custody trials and no long term limbo for children.

Not believe in Purgatory? You might as well not believe in Santa Claus. You might get your papa to hire men to wach in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Clause coming down, what would that prove? But as long as children are not adoptable due to their parents still having some legal rights,( no matter how inappropriate they are, no matter what crimes they have committed, no matter what abuses they have committed towards other people’s children) there will be the legal limbo of Permanent Managing Conservatorship and cowardly people who choose it instead of making hard choices.