A Shitty Day

It would have to be a Monday, too...

Started off this morning at work, when one of my most valuable employees gave me his two weeks' notice...

I can't fault him, because he's wanted to go back home, and the opportunity availed itself. I wish him well, and know that he's going to treated far better by the corporate entity he's going to versus the one we currently work for.

Then, I received a phone call from my wife later in the morning. Our little five-year old has taken to increasingly violent and destructive behaviors, and nothing seems to help. It doesn't help that the social services system in this state is completely screwed up.

(I'm about to go on a major rant now)

So, when we decided to go into foster care, we knew that we were getting into something very deep. So, we wanted to set ourselves up for only receiving one child, in order to ease ourselves into this new world.

Our agency persuaded us to get approved for two, telling us that it would be very difficult to get it changed later. I still have my doubts about that, considering they wanted to send us a third after a short time with two. (the only thing saving us at that point was the state regulation that temporary licenses, of which we had at the time, did not allow us such an exemption...where a permanent license would)

So, without getting into details, the five-year old had serious issues with the amount of attention the infant was getting (since infants require more attention by nature). But it was hard for us to know which behaviors were normal for five-year olds, and which were as a result of tying to garner attention.

So, we asked our case worker for assistance...and she gave us a CRAP video that had to have been filmed in the late 70s. Not only did this NOT help in teaching us normal 5-year old behaviors, but it serious made us wonder whether anyone was even paying attention to our cries for help.

So, we continued on the way we were doing things, with zero help from any of the parties involved. The only thing they wanted from us was to sign up as an adoption resource. If we weren't going to help them with their ultimate plans, it seemed as though we were on our own.

An incident occurred recently which required our case worker to step in, mainly because the behaviors increased in severity, and no one was there to help us. We were directed in a specific fashion how we were to react to any behaviors the five-year old had.

The very next day, my wife called the case worker to ask for assistance on how to deal with a particular behavior. The case worker came and retrieved the child, presumably to watch her for the afternoon.

When the child was returned that evening, we were told the children were being removed. No advance warning, nothing.

Personally, I have to wonder if those in the social services system actually get their jollies ripping people's hearts out after driving the horse into the lake themselves.

Add on top of that, the entire time we were gathering the kids' belongings and trying to place them in their case worker's car (another post for another day, the need for a bloated system where 2 children require around 8-10 workers), we were in the middle of a torrential downpour that lasted for probably an hour.

All in all, a shitty day.