Purpose

For quite awhile people have been asking me to start a blog to chronicle my life as a foster mommy but I resisted. The memories were painful, the hurt was too raw and the anger was still foremost in my mind rendering me incapable of being objective about the way the system works....or doesn't work in some cases. Finally, I am ready to share our story- the good, the bad and the ugly.

I must add a disclaimer- all names and identifying details have been changed for privacy and confidentiality reasons but all the stories here are 100% true and accurate. If you are a social worker reading this blog and you happen to recognize yourself- well, I hope you learn from your mistakes! If you are looking for an inspirational, save the world blog- please turn around now cause this ain't it folks! I call it like I see it, I'm not anywhere close to being politically correct and I lack the ability to kiss ass. I am also a social worker and let me say that the system is so much more frustrating from a foster parents point of view. We don't foster through the same agency where I work however. I work on a specialized multi-county task force as a Forensic Sexual Abuse Investigator. I see the worst of the worst but I have decided that I will not be sharing any experiences as a social worker within this blog, this is only for sharing our story as foster parents within a dysfunctional system.

Now, let me start out by telling you that I was not JUST a foster mom. I had a lot more responsibilities than a typical foster parent. During the course of my years as a foster parent, I was certified to teach MAPP. I was also trained and certified to teach the new Shared Parenting module to both social workers and other foster parents. I was the foster parent liason for court- I supplied a report from the foster parents to the judge during case reviews. I also served on the agency review/case plan meetings as a foster parent representative. At our agency, the cases were reviewed every 90 days during a case plan meeting. The meeting consisted of several supervisors, the court coordinator, the GAL supervisor, the social worker assigned to the case, the birth parent, any mental health workers, the GAL, etc. The team would meet one Tuesday a month and review 20-40 cases in a 5 hour time period. Sometimes the foster parents would attend, sometimes not. My job was to speak with the foster parents before the meeting and determine if they were attending. If not, I would gather pertinent information from them that they felt the team needed to know about the foster child and I would present it during the agency review. Foster parents need a voice and I worked very hard to make sure I provided them with one. I also attended the MAPP panel nights where seasoned foster parents spoke to the families in the MAPP classes about what fostering was like and what to expect. I served on a panel for evaluating and implementing change within the foster care system, appointed by the director of the agency himself. I ran the support group once a month for foster parents to network, to commiserate and to share feelings that people outside the system would not understand.

I tell you all this so that later on when I share some of the stuff that happened to us while fostering, you will understand my anger. The agency brought me into these roles, they asked me to take on these responsibilities and I rose to the challenge. I enjoyed taking an active role in the foster care system, it's what I loved. Integrating myself into the system proved to be a bad decision, one that came back to haunt me later on.