Wednesday, March 17, 2010

6 months foster care-land update

we had a home visit from the boys' worker last week and one with our social worker this week. according to everyone involved, not a whole lot has changed with the boys' case. their mom is doing pretty well according to R and P's worker. she has completed the out-patient drug treatment program but is still taking after-care classes one day a week. she is also about 5 weeks into her12 weeks of parenting classes. about 3 weeks ago or so, she even brought the boys their christmas gifts to their visit. R has been wanting a cell phone but after our fiasco a couple of months ago involving a cell phone, we decided against it. instead, R said that he would like an ipod touch. R loves playing games on our iphones so now it's fun that he can play the same games on his ipod. R and i have even been playing "words with friends" (aka - scrabble) quite a bit together. *ryan finds this game very annoying, but i'm just trying to help improve R's vocabulary* :)

P's dad is *not surprisingly* not doing as great as mom. up until last wednesday, he had been refusing to meet with the social worker for a few weeks. he has also not attended any of his required domestic violence classes, drug treatment classes, found a stable job or submitted to any recent drug tests. due to his noncompliance, he has not had any visits with P since his visitation was taken away at the February 4th court date. it has now been 7 weeks since he has seen little P, so i gave the social worker some pictures of P for his dad. i hope seeing pictures of his precious little guy may motivate him to get the ball rolling on his very necessary life changes. don't worry, i'm not holding my breath though! the boys' worker has told us pretty emphatically that their case plan status of "return to parent" mostly just means returning them to their mom at this point.

the next court date is still set for may 6th, which is less than 7 weeks away. ugh, that makes me want to cry, even though i have no clue what that day will hold! my gut is telling me that since mom should be done with her after-care classes and parenting classes, she will begin getting unsupervised visits and then overnight visits shortly after. truthfully, this terrifies me. i know they try to ease the children back into the home so it is less stressful on the parent and the child, but i don't get it. i think it is going to be super confusing for P especially. we have now had him in our home longer than he was with his mom. he is so attached and we are to him too! i wonder if he will think that we are the ones who have abandoned him, not his mom...

also, i think about how this phasing out process will effect R. he has made so much progress, especially when it comes to social interaction, manners, and confidence. however, after every visit with his mom, it's usually one step backwards for a few hours. i also wonder about whether R will still be with us when school starts back up next fall and where he'll actually end up going for 7th grade. his current school is not our home school but we would definitely like to keep him there if possible. although it's not the best middle school in our district, the teachers and school staff are aware of his situation and a few have really been investing in him. if he's back with his mom, he will most likely be switched to a different school since their mom has moved since having the boys removed. i worry that at a new school he'll just get lost in the crowd again and easily fall behind again.

anyways, i obviously have no idea what the future holds for our little family of 4 but i'm so glad that the Lord does. we're still just trying to stick to our policy of "one day at a time" and walk the path we're given as faithfully as possible. it's definitely not always easy, and we're by no means perfect, but we're enjoying the journey!

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