Words from my wife Tammy July 18, 2012:

My wife's comments:

     I always share the bad, and try my best to share the good. Here's some good in the form of small victories that will have big impact on the children.

1. Lil’ man (my wife calls my 6 year old son this and I love it) was "discharged" by his therapist, stating that "he had no issues"... cough cough bullshit! I live with this little boy, and he's NOWHERE near ready to be discharged from therapy. First of all, he's still in foster care, jackhole! Secondly, he's being poisoned, emotionally, every week by his mother on visits. Being told, "You'll never see Paul and Tammy again when I get you" and "I have to live alone and be sad because you live with them". 

     At a recent CFT (child and family team meeting) I chimed in and said, "I'm not a therapist, but I am a mother, and I live with him. He needs to have this avenue to discuss things that he is emotional about, and family therapy is not enough. He cannot discuss his mother right in front of her."

     So today I received an email that he will be taken back into individual therapy. WOOHOO! Finally, I've been heard on something (There is a lot of back story that will support the “WOOHOO”).

2. The bio father recently married the woman he disfigured a few months ago, and they are fighting for custody of the wee ones (2 are his bio children) to add to the 5 children they already have in their home. The bio mother and he have started fighting during family visits (they shared them up until now) and CPS informed me that they would have to split the visits up (give them each 2 visits per week) meaning that the kids would be at office buildings for family visits 4 days out of every week instead of 2. This was very disheartening to me for several reasons. First, they feed them nasty junk food every time they go on a visit. Second, their schedule has just finally gotten settled, and this would uproot everything once again. Third, we would never see them until bedtime every day. CPS assured me that they were trying their best to get the visits back-to-back, so that they would still only be 2 days a week. 

     Today I found out that the court backed up CPS and gave them each only 1 visit each week (since they are both refusing to follow the case plan) and the kids will still only have 2 visits a week (one with dad, one with mom). Yay! They didn't need more upset in their lives.

3. The organization that was SUPPOSED to offer therapy to lil’ lady called me to set up an IN-HOME evaluation for her. THAT ONLY TOOK 3 MONTHS TO ACCOMPLISH! She's much better now, but I won't turn down anything offered that will benefit the children.

     Yay again! I won a few battles, and I'm going on vacation where I can bask in the glory of ADVOCATING for the kids while they are safe in the home of their respite providers (trained foster parents).

My comments on my wife’s hard work:

     My loving wife is the best when it comes to advocating for the children. She wants them to be successful members of society and tries to get in as many benefits from the system as is possible to promote a productive and positive future for these kids. 

     Our licensing agent praises her even if CPS thinks she is bothersome. CPS is overloaded with work, so when more is laid upon them they cannot properly deal with issues as needed. This causes them to try and stop the extra responsibilities coming their way. Once the stopping of avocation for the children occurred in the form of threatening to take the kids from our home (as I have mentioned in the past). 

     This happened after promises were made for the two year old to receive therapy and then nothing became of it. My wife went above the CPS worker's head, and after discussing it with her supervisor who said she would address it, this superior asked to be taken off of my wife’s email list. Hey wait a minute! Why don’t you just do your job or stop telling foster parents to advocate for the children? There will be more on this story later...