I was asked to provide my story for some mom's trying to push a law through the Senate to hold DPS accountable for not following their own laws today. In the end, I decided it would double quite well as a blog post. It's long, it's depressing, and it's all true. Enjoy?
Heyla,
I was told you need stories of things that have happened with court cases involving foster care, kinship placement, etc. Well, these are mine:
My sister tried to get her kids back for THREE YEARS via the court system in North Carolina, despite the fact that at every meeting, they declared if she didn't do X they would terminate rights and places the children up for adoption. My understanding is that a court case is required to be resolved within a year. This tortuous case was more harmful for my oldest niece, who I now have custody of than it was for her mother, who their were actually prosecuting. I'll get to that in a minute. I am not protesting that they did not return my nieces and nephew to her. I am protesting the constant threats without delivery. My sister tried, but she is an unfit mother. I am frankly insulted however, that the deadbeat FATHER who did NOTHING that court ordered has the SAME visitation and rights as my sister who at least tried, and did everything she could. The sickening thing is that two of the children are with his parents, so he actually gets regular visitation whereas they won't even allow a phone call from my sister to her children.
Now for the foster system: I recognize that my niece is a hellion, first and foremost. She is not easy to handle, and we all know it. She has never however, deserved to be hit by a foster parent. Nor has she deserved to be pitted against a foster sister, and forced to fight each other for the foster parent's amusement. She also assures me that one foster parent tried to stab a hole through her hand because she accidentally hurt the foster mom. I would like to state that all of these were different foster parents. At least 3 of the 12 homes she lived in were unfit for children by my standards. You understand, some families just aren't suited for coexisting. This is possibly the case for a few placements. But in two years, she lived in 12 different homes, and this has left in incredibly horrible experience/trauma in her. She has insecurities I could never have imagined her developing when she was a child, and that was DESPITE her having been molested as a toddler by my sister's boyfriend! The last year of the court case, she lived with me, 9 months after our application to take her, which we applied to do a week after my sister admitted she didn't think she could get her back.
I would have gladly taken my niece from the start if I was able, but I was 22 when she was taken, and still in college. I didn't have a job, I wasn't stable, and my sister was confident she could get her back. After a year and half, she wasn't as confident, I was married, my husband and I were living in Texas, and my husband was reluctant. When she admitted she didn't think she could get her back, and court had refused to give my niece to her maternal grandma because of issues between biomother and grandma, there wasn't any other option. I didn't give my husband a lot of choice, but once he met her, we knew she needed help and she needed us. We went for it. We've had her for well over a year now and she's stabilizing. She's over-sexualized, she believes she's a slut, she had anger outbursts to rival the Hulk, she's careless and infuriating on a regular basis, but it was the relief of our life when court closed her case and gave custody to us. If it wouldn't have severely hurt my sister and niece we would have applied for adoption. We're still considering it, simply to escape my sister hanging a 'You have to let me do this, it's ordered!' over our heads.
It's worth it to have her, but the only assistance we ever had was medicaid. And we don't even have that right now because NC is taking forever to give us coverage for her since we've moved here. We don't even qualify for respite, food stamps, or any other assistance my sister regularly got from the state. In fact, we couldn't claim her on our taxes because we only had her for 5 months last year. That's a LOT of day care we can't get any help paying for.
I'm not sure what points you're trying to push through the Senate right now, but I hope that helps. Thanks for reading to the end.
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