Grief and disappointment

[b_artsie]

As I sit here, tears literally pour down my face. For nearly two weeks I have been in a state of turmoil with tears ready to pour at a moments notice. My husband and I have been foster parents for a year. We decided to foster for the purpose of adoption, but knowing full well the first goal is always reunification we were aware of possible loss and heart ache. We recieved our first placement in March, a 2 1/2yr old little girl. She fit in perfectly and we all (extended family included) fell in love with her. We knew early on that we probably wouldn't get to adopt her, but of course there is always just a little hope. Anyway, through many months of supervised visits and then unsupervised visits and then no visits and then weekend visits(you all know what I mean, the visit situation seems ever changing) she began to change just a little. She began to realize when I was getting dressed to go to court and began to realize when I came home from court her life generally got interupted. Well, on the Wednesday before Christmas she began to act out uncontrollably as I was getting ready for yet another court date and I had to exercise "loving restraint". She ended up with two small bruises because of this, but I immediatly reported her behavior and the subsiquent bruises to the social worker. Well, let me tell you, I had a number of social workers involved in the case, the JO, the superviser of DFS, and the pediatrician all backing me telling me they had no doubts my actions were justafiable and they trusted me completely with my two placements. However, the judge decided we needed to go to court anyway. Now, bio mom is completely off her rocker. This little girl has been with us for 10months at this time and mom had messed up numerous times and never made any effort to change. But, this incident gave her the chance to turn everything around on me so the light of blame would be shielded from her. Bio dad was the one working for custody and he trusted me and had no problem with the little one staying with me. However, as they say, the sqweaky wheel gets the grease, bio mom was accusing me of all kinds of physical abuse and was accusing my husband of drug abuse(he is a paramedic and has random UAs at his job) and the social worker told me she was making such a stink the judge would most likely remove the child from my home and send her to another foster home and even if he didn't the bio mom would not give up and anytime there was any sort of mark on the child she would report it and it would have to be investigated. I don't know if it is this way in other states but in Missouri if there is a report of abuse all placements have to be placed in respite until the matter is settled. So essentially, bio mom would be able to disrupt both of my fd's lives and our lives as well just because she has a personal vendetta against me. So, finally, my husband and I made the very difficult decision to terminate placement with this little one in hopes to salvage the other placement we had that was looking good for adoption. I met the respite provider yesterday to give her all of the childs belongings and to say goodbye to her and when she saw me her eyes lit up and she started screaming "Mommy Mommy" she has never acted that excited to see her bio parents I really pray the court system will wise up someday before more children have to suffer in the interest of reunification.

There was not really a question here. I just needed to get this off my chest because as you all know, unless you have lived the foster system you just don't understand and I didn't have anyone else to vent to. I pray finding this website and learning there are others out there suffering as my husband and I are will help me to heal the wound of loss and the pain I feel because I let my little one down.

[hart]

Our hearts go out to you and your family. Sometimes we do the hardest things in the world when we try to care for the hurting.:(

[peggyb101]

That is so horrible, my heart goes out to you. Unfortunately, as foster parents we are judged so harshly. I have an adopted son (from the foster care system) that has many issues with attachment/bonding (diagnosed with Reactive Attachment Disorder). I went through some issues with him and the system as well, after he was adopted. He had been telling the principal at school that I was beating him with a belt if he got in trouble at school and then would come home and tell me the teacher couldn't control her class, etc. This caused a sort of "war" between the school and us which worked out perfectly for him.We would go in for meetings with the school and they had the info from his therapist (who he had been seeing since he was 3, he is 7 now) and letters from his behaviorial/developmental physician letting them know his history. They didn't take any of it in to account. Long story short he went to school last January with a thin red line on his neck and decided to tell the principal it was from me choking him with my hands...then he showed her by putting his hands around her neck and squeezing. I had no idea about any of this until a social worker showed up at my door telling me that I was being investigated for abuse. I had to take all of my kids, 2 adopted/2 foster to the agency to be interviewed and have them stripped down for a nurse practitioner to look for other bruises and such. He said he lied and the other kids didn't have anything to say as well. Then I was told I needed to be interviewed by the police, which scared me to death. Ends up it should have because it turned out to be 2 policeman playing good cop/ bad cop for 2 1/2 hours. This was probably the most terrifying, brutal, and frightening thing I have ever been through. Anyways, I made it through and they closed the case as unsubstantiated after 4 1/2 grueling months. All of my social workers stood by my side the entire time and I wouldnt have made it without them. I guess the reason I am telling you about my situation is to again say how harshly we are judged. The bio parents are not put half of what we are and that's when we aren't even guilty. The only part that really brought me down was the fact that the reason I was in this situation is because of a kid I adopted through their system. This kid, who I will never give up on, was a problem when we adopted him at 3, so I felt like they threw me to wolves after I was doing them the favor (for lack of a better word). I am bitter about the way I was treated but in the end the kids are worth it so we are carrying on and getting ready to go for adoption on the other 2 kids we had when the incident occurred (yeah!). I also wanted to tell you my story in case you haven't gone through the investigation yet, sort of a heads up. Keep your heads up and stay strong, you will make it! Keep us updated.