#PermanencyforSandy

[fosterwee]

Fosterwee Update, 2017

Hi Friends.  Quick update from the Harlem home of Fosterwee.

Blitzen, Carrie and I officially adopted each other in September, 2016, nearly 10 years after Blitzen entered the foster care system.  Blitzen has grown into a brilliant, fierce and fashionable teenager with remarkable talents and wonderful friendships.  To know her is to be smitten.

Blitzen’s youngest sister moved out of our home in 2016, and is permanently with her father.  (Yay for permanency!)  Her oldest sister Dancer, 17, has been in our care since October, 2016.  Three of Blitzen’s siblings are beginning their 11th year in foster care with no permanency in site.

Carrie and I remain passionate about creating a child welfare system that works for kids, parents and communities.  We believe that public policy should support families.  We believe that undoing institutional racism would lead to better outcomes.   We believe that permanency is essential for the health of children. 

We believe in #PermanencyforSandy. We love Rebecca, Sandy and Clementine and miss the Fosterhood blog, which was a huge inspiration for us.

Two active blogs we appreciate are AdoptiveBlackMom and The (Foster) Moms Must Be Crazy.

I’m addicted to Twitter: andrewhume

Carrie and I sincerely appreciate all the virtual love and support we’ve received over the last 5+ years, thanks to the potent combination of Blitzen’s inimitable spirit and Carrie’s ability to capture it in prose.  We’re thinking about jumping back into blogging someday.  Meanwhile, we’re delighted to connect with folks advocating for a humane, equitable child welfare system.

Peace, Andrew

[poofgonebyebyesolong]

The answer is that I’m not doing it well. Sure, the basics are being covered, the girls are getting to their appointments, receiving services and hugs and snuggles from me. But there’s so much more to parenting that I just can’t get to yet.

Our lives are on hold. We’re living in crisis survival mode, and have been for almost 4 years. This is what I don’t think the powers that be truly comprehend. It’s why permanency matters.

[poofgonebyebyesolong]

I have taken 22 unpaid days off work to appear in court for Sandy’s case

Now that I have the transcripts I can count the exact dates I appeared.  Friday it will be 23 days.  That’s a whole month off (or paid), plus.  And this is for court only.  Not the twice weekly visits, or all of the agency meetings, home visits or extra doctor’s appointments that are asked.  If it was just 23 days, maybe I wouldn’t be so bothered, but there 

is

no 

end

in

sight.

[poofgonebyebyesolong]

Court Summary: Guest Post by Andrew of Fosterwee

“I’ve attended Blitzen’s permanency hearings for 4.5 years but don’t understand the legalities around them.  I especially don’t understand Sandy’s case or what happened in court yesterday, but won’t let that stop me from sharing my muddled perspective.

Act One was the typical Kafkaesque learned helplessness absurdity that defines family court.   The sworn permanency report was entered into the official record.  Rebecca’s lawyer noted that most of the information in the permanency report was factually wrong, including listing the wrong judge and all the wrong case workers.

Nobody seemed surprised by this.

The judge asked the agency case worker who submitted the report to take the stand.  Rebecca’s lawyer questioned her under oath.  The case worker agreed that the report she had submitted into evidence was largely inaccurate.  The reason that it was inaccurate is that many (most?) of the fields are automatically filled in through an online ACS database called Connections.  The case workers aren’t able to edit the auto-filled fields so they knowingly submit inaccurate information.

I was stunned.  Nobody else in the courtroom seemed at all surprised.

Rebecca’s lawyer went through the permanency report section by section pointing out errors.  The case worker, new on the job almost by definition, acknowledged that she didn’t know much about the case but agreed that most of the listed information was both auto-filled and wrong.

Nobody suggested that any of the data be corrected or that the submission of correct data to the court was either preferable or possible.

(Quick learned helpless tangent.  I was recently in the tiny office of a family court lawyer and it was sweltering.  The court lawyer was complaining about the heat and said that she’d been miserably hot in that office every day for three years and that nothing could be done about it.  Our lawyer noticed a thermostat in the office and suggested that the court lawyer turn it to a lower temperature.  Impossible, said that court lawyer, those thermostats don’t work.   My lawyer tried the thermostat. Cool air immediately flooded the room. Court lawyer was ecstatic and called it life-changing.  In three years she had never actually tried the thermostat.  Nobody in Rebecca’s courtroom had ever tried to edit a permanency report in Connections; they exist in a world where nothing works.)

Act Two was about Sandy’s permanency goal.  The judge announced the continued goal of adoption. All parties agreed.  As an afterthought, the attorney for birth mom suggested that the goal also be listed as return to parent.  The judge agreed that return to parent was also Sandy’s goal.   ACS lawyer said fine, concurrent planning, as long as the record reflects that the real permanency goal is adoption.  Everyone affirmed again that Sandy’s real permanency goal is adoption, but that reunification was also a goal

This was one of several parts of the hearing that I’m confused about.   What does it mean to have two diametrically opposite permanency goals? Isn’t that similar to having no permanency goal?  Noncurrent planning, as Carrie calls it.

Act Three was where things got surreal and depressing. The judge asked if anyone wanted to make a motion to change visitation plan.   Nobody did – not birth mom, Rebecca, Sandy’s law guardian, the agency or ACS.  It looked like the hearing was over.

Then the judge made a speech and said that she was changing the visitation schedule anyway and that Sandy should have unsupervised community visits with birth mom.  The judge called them sandwich visits, meaning either they’d begin and end at the agency or that Sandy will live forever sandwiched between worlds and never be able to attach to the bread.  

The moment the judge uttered the word “unsupervised,” three lawyers leapt up with shocked looks and began to lawyer-scream at the judge.

The ACS attorney was stunned, adamant and fierce.  She said this was unheard of and couldn’t happen.  She mentioned the parallel hearing taking place and suggested the judge should listen to that testimony first.  She talked about evidence the judge should read, with experts saying that unsupervised visits were a bad idea.

Rebecca’s attorney was passionate and focused her arguments on Sandy’s safety.  She and Rebecca are fully knowledgeable about the history of the case and she cited many reasons why unsupervised visits would fly in the face of the established facts.    

Sandy’s attorney argued that it didn’t make sense to switch Sandy’s schedule now and gently-but-firmly offered the compromise of holding the visitation change in abeyance pending the result of the other hearing.

I felt sure that the combination of the three attorney’s powerful arguments would convince the judge to postpone her plan.   But no. The judge insisted that unsupervised community visits begin now, for the first time in Sandy’s life, over the objections of ACS, the agency, the foster parent and the law guardian.

Stunningly, the judge seemed to base her decision on a sentence in the permanency report that suggested that birth mom visits at the agency were going well.  Yes, that’s the discredited permanency report riddled with inaccuracies, written by the new case worker with help from auto-fill.

The judge also noted that this case would go on for a long time, seemingly tipping her hand to some of her upcoming rulings.  

Rebecca, through her attorney, asked the judge what this meant in the big picture.  Is the goal still adoption?  How long will her life and Sandy’s life remain on hold?  I didn’t hear an answer, or any acknowledgement that permanency matters in the life of a child or a foster parent.

I’m devastated and furious that Sandy has spent all 1200 of her days in foster care.    I don’t see a path out for years to come.  I believe that Sandy will spend her fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh birthdays without permanency or security which will have long-term consequences for her developing brain.

Sandy is a powerless three year-old whose fate is in the hands of judges she’ll never meet.  We, Rebecca’s Fosterhood community, have experience, relative power and a collection of privileges.  How can we activate to support Sandy, Blitzen’s siblings and the children, parents and foster parents trapped in a system that damages all of us?”

[poofgonebyebyesolong]

i’m going to bed now with dreams that

I wake up to a butt load of reposts and tons of New Yorkers will dig into their storage during the blizzard, pull out a piece of luggage, tag it “Permanency for Sandy”, take a photo of it to blog and commit to sharing the burden of foster care by hauling the piece of luggage every day to work or school.  Say, if 1,000 people sign on it’s a go?

*permanency is the politically correct way of saying that you don’t care if the child is adopted or goes back home to her family, you just want her out of the system and with a ‘permanent’ family.

(How cool would it be if even the case workers, attorneys and child welfare workers who feel so powerless started lugging their suitcases around- even into the court room? - like, never mind my big Hello Kitty duffel bag I’m gonna set of here while we get nothing done )