A Small Victory

Well, I've been hesitant to post about the court date we had in late July. Things did not go well at all and left me feeling so anxious and confused. I started questioning what we were doing and why.

This was the first court date that I was a party to and because our case worker doesn't stay on top of her job the way she probably should (understandably, she has a very busy schedule), she appeared unprepared in front of the judge which left her deferring a lot of her questions to me since I had "first hand knowledge of the girls."

I had NO issues offering an update on the children as they are in MY home and I am their full-time caregiver; however, at this court date, DHS had submitted a request to terminate all visitation between bio-mom and the girls from here forward. Ending visitation was not my idea but I think it was 'encouraged' when I let DHS know that I would no longer be comfortable supervising the visitation and that it would all need to take place at DHS with a caseworker supervising. So, even though this was NOT my idea (to end visits), the case worker deferred the question to me, leaving me to explain the behaviors that I'd seen during and after visitation, etc.

Three weeks prior to court, my older foster daughter made an allegation of sexual abuse against a family member and told us that her mother was aware of the abuse and did nothing to protect her sister or herself. Mom was NOT informed of the allegation because the girl's therapist, myself and caseworker were justifiably worried that she would try to 'talk' to the girls about it and wind up changing their story so that any investigation would come out so jumbled that nothing could be done about this allegation. However, because the case worker deferred the question to me, I had to explain the entire allegation to the court and listen to mom's wrath as she was furious that she had not been informed prior to the court date.

The judge wound up upholding her right to visitation and as we were leaving the court room, the bio-mom starts loudly (purposefully so I could hear her) stating to her lawyer that she would NOT let me adopt her girls because I stabbed her in the back, etc.

While I KNOW she has NO say in who gets to adopt her children, it really hurt because I didn't personally attack this woman or remove her children, etc. But I have to act in a way that is in their best interest and it seems, at this point in time, that the two are mutually exclusive.

After court, I started wondering if I'm going to have to be looking over my shoulder for the next 20 years and then started wondering if this was worth all the stress or not...I LOVE these girls but if I don't get some relief from the stress and anxiety that having regular contact with this family causes in our family, I'm not sure I can continue.

Well, during the court case, the judge recommended a CASA for us - which is always welcome news but because the trial is in September, they thought that perhaps it would be a waste of resources to assign someone for such a short time. I'm HAPPY to report that we have now had one of the head CASA supervisors attending visitation for the last two weeks and HAVE been assigned an actual CASA worker.

Today, at visitation the CASA supervisor pulled mom's boyfriend aside and told him that he was behaving completely inappropriately with the girls. THANK THE LORD!!! We have been saying that he is inappropriate all along but he's always so 'borderline' inappropriate that no one has felt like we could say anything for fear of setting off bio-mom again. When he told me that he had pulled him aside and set him straight, I SERIOUSLY could have kissed the man and I was SOOO glad that other people are seeing the same behaviors that we have and find them just as inappropriate.

So even though the girls' behavior has gotten MUCH worse and visitations are still going on, I feel like we're finally (maybe) getting the eyes on the case that we have been desperate to get.

I still don't like the idea of having to look over my shoulder for the next several years BUT I am starting to remember to live life "one day at a time" and today, we had a small victory~~~!