Thursday, June 28, 2012

Not According to Plans

If this week has taught me anything, it is that nothing goes according to plans.  Especially in foster care.

First up was school and the associated before/after care.  If you will remember, we did quite a bit of research ahead of time about the different daycare centers in our area.  Since our preferred age range was 0-4, we didn't pay attention to anything related to school-age children.  Bad decision.  Now we have a rising kindergartener.  So like any other parent, we did our research and picked our top school, which also had our preferred before/after care program available at the school!  Awesome!  And it got better that daycare for the little guy was across the street!  How perfect!

Well, foster care doesn't do perfect.  After we were registered for kindergarten through the county (and those of you in Wake County know what a mess that is), we went to register for said before/after care.  Only to find out that the vouchers we recieve for the care are not accepted by this program!  Really? We were especially perturbed because we were told the exact opposite- that they would accept the vouchers! 

After a entire day of our social worker searching for acceptable care, us tapping every resource we know of to find care, and pleading for a scholarship for our preferred before/after care, we realized it was a lost cause.  That's right- there is no acceptable option for before/after care for a foster child at that school.  This still boggles my mind!  Now we are in the appeals process to get the school changed.  If this is approved, then we get to change daycares so that both boys can be at the same one.  I am not happy about this since it is yet another change for the boys and the current daycare has been so welcoming and accomodating.  But that's how it goes in foster care!

Then today we got a huge dose of things not going as planned.  The boys' birth mom called not only our house phone (and left a message using our full  names), but also called the hubby's cell phone!  Needless to say, we are not happy!  It is supposed to be the foster parents' decision about what information is released and when.  We have authorized no exchange of information at this point since everything is still so new.  And because we haven't even met the birth parents yet!  We are trying to figure out how this has happened, so that we can also know what other information they have. 

While I am quite livid, I also realize that this bell can't be unrung.  The mother was very polite and pleasant and seemed to have good intentions.  So I think all we can do at this point is make the best out of this non-ideal situation.  After all, isn't that what foster care is all about?


elissa

1 comment:

  1. just found you through TB and wanted to thank you for posting! my husband + I are in SoCal so different everything, but we are just wrapping up our foster training and preparing for our home study. we are planning to only foster 1 child at a time, 0-18 months of age (we have a bio son that is almost 3, so want to stay younger than him). anyway, love hearing what it's like for someone actually starting in this journey, since we don't know anyone personally that is a foster parent.

    thanks for being as open as you can, I'll definitely be following your adventure with the boys!

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