I am not sure if this should be called you have to cut your losses... or you can't put a square peg...etc.
When I was a young social worker I worked in Child and Family area and after a very short time ended up working with older children and many living in the farm area of Erie County. When you are trying to find a home, you have the ticking clock of trying to move someone into a home quickly and trying to find the right home. I often listened to the experienced long-term workers tell about their experiences and one who had the philosophy of just put the kid in the home, don't tell the new parent all of the issues and then don’t answer the phone for a few weeks. The plan was by that time, it will all work out. Teenagers, like a mature dog, are tough and they come with baggage and there are very very few families who can just take in another one and make it work. Even two-year-olds are not easy to place but 13-15 adolescents… if it is easy, something is wrong.
I remember one young boy who lived on a farm out in Lawton’s area of farmland. He had been at this home for a few years and had made a very good adjustment. The family had gotten him into 4H and he had a calf that he had successfully shown at the fair. Life changed. The foster father became very ill and the family was selling the farm and moving to another area. Now I was faced with finding a new family. I was lucky that I had some lead time. The boy did not do well in school – labeled a slow learner and he did his chores slowly. He had parents someplace and he often showed be a photo machine pictured of his father and another of his mother but had had no contact for years.
I went to neighbors and people the family knew but no one really wanted the boy except an older couple who lived in town. My supervisor and others in the office said… make it happen. I looked at the boy and we were about to take his only known “parents” away… all he had was his calf. I was a new worker, just out of college but this did not feel ok. One eccentric worker in the office supported me by not saying do it.
I went to the 4h leader and then to every family in 4h and finally found a family who lived about a mile away who would give the boy a try. I had a very serious talk with the boy about living with the family. It was a smaller farm, but they had a shed for the calf and would have a plan as it grew. There 4hr was off to AG college and they had a small extra room… I had to get them special certified for a home for this boy only… but I worked extra hard and fast and walked all the paperwork around to everyone who had to stamp off on it.
The first family had sold everything at the farm so they did not have a truck to move the boy… I had a Peugeot sedan… and no friends with calf moving equipment.. the farm was going in days… So, I got blankets and opened the trunk and the boy sat in the trunk with his legs hanging out. Next to him were two grocery bags with all he owned including the pictures of Mom and Dad and his 4h award… and behind the car tied with a rope was the calf… and we rolled down the highway for a mile or so. There was nothing in all of that that was agency policy and my supervisor just said, I am not going to ask how you did this. It was a good placement.. at least as far as I know the boy stayed there a long time and the family put a lot of effort into helping him learn and stay in school. I was transferred to another unit and my cases stayed.
The easy thing would have been to just put the boy in a good home but that would not have been good for him. Finding the right match is not simple. May foster placement workers don’t tell the new family everything they know.. like he is a bed wetter, prone to violence etc.. and hope it works out. You are never going to match the needs of every child…but you do a diagnostic diagnosis and pick the key things that are essential and do the best you can to match those… or help with the adjustment.
No comments:
Post a Comment