Wednesday, August 23, 2006

ARRRRGGH!!!

What do you do with a problem like Maria our caseworker???

Yesterday was Niblet's first overnight with her dad. She was gone from yesterday morning until noon today. Except that, last night, we picked up a message from the secretary saying that the dad's caseworker won't be available to drop off the baby at noon, so it would have to be 10:30am or 1:00pm. Did they call our cell? No. So fostermama calls this morning and leaves a message saying that she'd be glad to pick up Niblet at 12:00pm.

The secretary calls back. Nope. The dad has some kind of appointment so can't bring the baby at 12:00. After some confusion, it turns out it's some kind of CPS appointment that he only found out about yesterday, so it's not like he made an appointment during his visit on purpose. Fine. So fostermama will pick up the baby at 1pm.

Now it's 1:25pm and she calls me and says:
"The appointment today was Court."

Meaning, the court hearing where the judge could take Niblet out of foster care, speed up her transition, or any number of other things. We were told it could happen quickly, but we were also told that they'd CALL US AND TELL US ABOUT IT. Because we have a RIGHT to be present at the proceedings.

The person I'm pissed at is the baby's caseworker. She's the one who would have first found out about the court date. She's the one who has ALL our phone numbers. And she's the one who has been so f'ing rude to us for months on end for no good reason.

Fostermama was told that the judge "continued Niblet in foster care for 6 months". Fortunately, the One Good Person happened to be in the office at the time and explained that that's a technicality and that the transition plan is still on course and she should be back with her dad within the same timeline we'd originally thought - within a month.

To top it off, the baby wasn't there to be picked up because the dad's caseworker was on her way to drop her off at our house! They just arrived back at the office when I got off the phone with fostermama.

We did a really good job of not getting too upset about Niblet not being at home last night. We actually enjoyed ourselves and saw a movie. We were looking forward to finding out how the visit went, how did she overnight, etc. Now, since the dad's already gone home, fostermama won't get to talk to him about it, and we have this added fun of dealing with the fact that we were cut out of the court date.

The upshot, it seems, is that nothing has changed. Which is good.

I just didn't need this added f'ing stress!!!!

1 comment:

Julie said...

Cw's make us CRAZY!!! They don't begin to understand what we go through with these children. grrrrr. I am sorry for your stress! Glad to hear nothing changed. I hope the visit went well.