Thursday, March 01, 2007

DSS - Creating attachment disorders in 3 easy steps!

1. Take a 13-month-old child from her mother and place her with foster parents with no transition at all.
Even though the county has been working with the mom for over a year and knew exactly when her due date is and probably knew a while ago that it would be a good idea for her to "voluntarily" place the child while she recovers from giving birth, they made no motions at finding foster parents until the due date. and then, once found, made no motions at any kind of transition.

2. Don't allow the mom and the foster parents to contact each other.
We told them to give her our phone number. We asked if we could call her in the hospital. We need to know her routines, her likes/dislikes. We need a picture of her for the baby to look at. The mom hasn't done anything wrong and should still be intimately involved in her daughter's life.

3. Don't set up a visit right away and delay doing so until it looks like the kid is going to go at least one full week without seeing her mom.
The mom asked, yesterday afternoon, when there would be a visit. The cw didn't just pick up her cell and call us. Instead she said she'd "call tomorrow", which most likely meant she'd call Friday. And I bet she'll want to be present at the visit, which is completely unnecessary, so it won't get to be until Monday or Tuesday.

This poor little munchkin, who I'll call "Joy" (because she's completely lacking any joy in her life, so I'd like to put a little bit into her via this blog), is in full-on baby depression. She doesn't eat, she doesn't smile, I haven't heard her laugh. She cries unless we're holding her and cries occasionally even if we are holding her. We had to put her in daycare part-time because we can't rearrange our schedules for such a sort period of time. She was fine at daycare yesterday, but cried when each child left. She doesn't understand what's going on and doesn't want anyone to leave her. Hopefully this won't scar her forever, but I don't know how long she (and we) can handle it.

6 comments:

Amanda said...

Poor thing! She must be *so* confused. I hope your visitations get straightened up soon.

MommyNay said...

wow, I am heartbroken.

Tricia said...

Yeeeessshh...

Julie said...

This is SOOOOOOO sad!!!!! I hope it gets better!!

Calico Sky said...

Awful, awful, awful!
Having been a foster mom it doesn't surprise me, but....
I had the opposite, create RAD by telling them over the phone that they are moving to be with biological family in a different country in 2 days (and no they don't speak the same language!).
Hang in there
(((BIG HUGS)))

Kerry said...

You need to add to your list of way to create RAD limiting physicial contact and no cosleeping.

I know of one foster mama who's little boy was climing into her bed every night. On the nights that they let him stay his behaviors were fine the next day. The State "Big Wig" told the caseworkers to let it go, provided that he slept at the foot of the bed or on the floor.