It's been two months since the girls have left. And at the same time it feels like they were never here, and that they just left yesterday. We cleaned out everything but kept some mementos. Unfortunately you can't clean out your brain so easily. For a week and a half after they left Jerry would wake up looking for the baby, and I would open my eyes and see Skipper waiting for his breakfast instead of the toddler waiting for her milk. We both had dreams for a long time - we still do but not as much. We tried to find out how they were doing, but for 'confidentiality' reasons they couldn't tell us. I find it hard to believe that they can't just say they are doing well or something, but after all they put us through nothing surprises me.
Its such a strange and indescribable feeling to come out on the other side of something that was not supposed to end. Both of us have suffered loss and pain in the past but this felt worse because it was so wrapped up in hope. Hope can make you believe in the unimaginable - and well, that is sometimes the problem.
Not that we are not hopeful. Of course we are. But we trust in God and tie our camel to the tree, so we have written to the Inspector General for DCFS. I'm not sure I expect anything to happen, but I think it's important that they know this did happen. Especially in light of UCAN's recent phone call to me.
Its been two month since the girls left and we have heard absolutely nothing from UCAN. We had considered moving our license but then just decided to make no decisions until we were ready. I had registered with AdoptUSkids months ago, and they finally called me last week. They had called UCAN to verify my license status and were led to believe my file was somehow incomplete. I laughed. I just had a placement! How could my file be incomplete?
Five days later UCAN calls me and played the most beautiful blame game song I had ever heard. I suppose most people would be supremely annoyed or offended, but as a student and teacher of bureaucratic politics I have a morbid appreciation for the extent to which government apparatus can dysfunctionally function. The new licensing agent in so few words blamed just about everything on the previous one, leading me to believe that this previous agent could have single-handedly brought down the one of the largest foster agencies in the state. And then began the baiting for information - "I don't know what she told you..." New Agent would say, and then trail off waiting for me to finish. "Old Agent may have made it seem like X..." she would continue, "...but it is clear that if Old Agent told you X or even Y or Z, she was clearly violating policy and the law." Not the law! A thing of beauty it were.
I kept quiet. There were many things she said that made it appear I was listed under some "Team Old Agent" hit list that was targeted for re-education camp. But at the end of the conversation, I learned that while my license was in order, my home study was not. I had an adoption home study, done at the agency I started with, that should be a foster home study. When I transferred from LCFS to UCAN, it was supposed to have been rewritten on the appropriate form but because of Old Agent, it was not. I don't believe for a second that the entire crux of my home study relies on a form, yet I totally do because that would make perfect sense in bureaucratic-speak. New Agent said transferred home studies are a complete mess, and she would much rather write a new one than transfer. Thanks, but I didn't ask.
New agent also informed me of what a child welfare agency does - that is, to take care of the child and not to go out and find children for people to adopt. Part of me felt like she was again implying that the situation with the girls was my fault, for not being clear enough with what I wanted and for not understanding what "child welfare" agencies do. At that point I couldn't bite my tongue any longer and I informed her that I was aware of that, that I was not trying to steal someone else's kids or ask King Solomon to cut the baby in half. I get it. And no matter what, I reminded her, we were and are good foster parents who advocated for the children in our care.
At this point they want to rewrite the homestudy. And I get that this lady is doing her job; picking up where someone else left off is never easy no matter what the circumstances. I suppose if she didn't spend 50% of the conversation blaming all troubles/problems/issues/concerns/etc on Old Agent, I would have felt better about it. In the end, she doesn't care about me as a foster parent, she cares about cleaning up a mess that she feels someone else left so her agency doesn't get hosed.
So we are not done with foster care, but we are definitely taking a nice long break and re-evaluating things. I still believe that with all the heartache and headache I would do it all over again. But for now the next baby I will be fretting over is that of my preliminary exams, and as my professor says, that is one ugly baby!
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