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Just rejected from being a foster parent
bluejeans
Posts: 30
I am so upset right now. I just got a letter stating I was rejected from becoming a foster parent with this one agency. I feel like I've completely wasted so much time, energy, and even money and I have no idea what the problem is. They have been pushing and pushing for a Home Study from just a week after I went to an information session, which is when the classes started. Frankly, I have no family or friends helping me, work full time, and have limited energy that I am getting back from my long illness. They pushed to schedule a Home Study 4 weeks ago, which is barely 5 weeks after going to the information session. I had to postpone until last Wed. I got a nasty sinus and ear infection, so I've been tired and dizzy and didn't get everything done I needed to, so I should've called to postpone and explain to them that due to work implementing a new computer system, I wasn't going to be able to take any more time off until July 1, which is completely out of my control since I have 7 weeks of vacation time sitting there I cannot touch until then. The lady showed up and I still had boxes sitting in my living room, but everything is clean, I just didn't get this stuff out to the storage unit I just rented because I have a small house with no attic or basement, but just one spare bedroom that had to be cleared out. I told her I had an ear infection and was feeling a bit dizzy, so she asked if it would be better to reschedule, which I agreed to, so she told me to call her when I wasn't sick. Then she got out of here in 2 seconds. I was told I was the perfect candidate to be a foster parent, encouraged to buy bunkbeds (which I did), that having pets wasn't a problem (so sorry the kittens clawed up the litter box liner, I don't really want to declaw them just because of that), that working full time wasn't a problem, that having just one extra bedroom wasn't a problem, so I don't understand why I got this letter, dated 2 days after this potential Home Study. I'm so sorry I live in a small 16 year old home that is actually lived in and not a museum. I can see if they would only want to let me have just one or two children and not three, but to be totally rejected is quite a blow.
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No advice, as I'm still figuring out how I want to move forward, but I just wanted to let you know that you're not alone. I really think it's all about the individual case worker. My first worker really wasn't judgmental, and she said she had cats of her own, so she wasn't bothered by my cats. The second worker admitted that she didn't have pets, and she really seemed bothered by the cats.
Perhaps they simply recognized that now is not the time for you?
FYI, I was rejected as an adoptive parent because I'm single, too white, and I work. In the same breath the social worker recommended I explore being a foster parent. Sometimes the system is just plain stupid and decisions are made without any application of logic.
example: when i was working in daycare, there was a foster mom who was pretty bad. abusive? no, but she didn't really give a rat's azz about the kids in her care. they were dirty. they didn't have the appropriate attire for the season. they didn't come with enough diapers or food. we had to make special highlighted notes on her take-home sheets telling her instructions to bring this or that. when that didn't work, we had to start making a point to tell her in person every time she came to pick the kids up. when that didn't work, we had to start calling her to tell her. she didn't have a job. foster parenting was her job. still, she couldn't do it well.
on the other hand, one of my best friends had the three foster kids in her care taken away from her. she lives in a nice house with a in-ground pool in the back yard. very clean. she had zoo passes, took them to the state fairs several hours away, took them to get their portraits made and photos taken with the easter bunny, santa, etc. she loved them so much she wanted to adopt them, and it was looking like she might be able to do that. she grew very attached. all of a sudden, the kids were taken away from her for abuse and neglect charges that were made by the daycare center the kids attended. her husband had rubbed one of the workers the wrong way, and the daycare worker reported them for the toddler having bruises on her back (from throwing a fit during bathtimes and slamming her back into the back of the baby bathtub, which was explained to the caseworker) and having a runny nose that chapped her upper lip (for which they supplied the daycare center with neosporin with pain relief). not only did they get the blow of having those kids taken from them, though (which was tough enough, since they loved the kids like family and my friend can't have kids of her own), but this remained on their records, so that she had her nursing license taken away from her and it took them literally years to have that expunged from their records in court so that she could practice nursing again. anyway, my point is, it's kind of nuts how the system works.
TTC No. 2 since Aug. 2014; IVF #1 - Cxld; IVF #2 - BFN
With that said, private agencies have more strict guidelines than the local state agencies. I was single, active duty navy living in a one bedroom apartment working rotating night and day shifts when I got approved. I doubt the problem was your living arrangements.
Take this time to find a support system...friends, church, neighbors, ect. Once you have children you cannot say that I can't take time off until a certain date because the children won't wait to get sick until then...you need an approved back up plan or two. Sick days were always my biggest stressor.
I don't mean to sound negative. I wish you the best in your journey!
Honestly, the more you are trying to defend yourself, the more frustrated I am getting. As a professional who works with kids with a trauma history and kids in foster care, I feel that you are missing a very huge point. It's not about you. It's not about what's going on for you, or how stressed you are, or what support you are missing right now. It's about these kids and what they have been through and what they need. I think if you aren't able to step back and see how your stress level would absolutely not be helpful for a child right now, that in fact it could be harmful, you really aren't ready to be a foster parent right now. It is not at all even remotely similar to parenting your own child. It really and truly isn't.
I totally get the stress of preparing for a home study. It's awful! For the record, I passed my home study with a wine rack full of unopened bottles in the kitchen.
This whole entire time, I was led on. I was told it was a long process, that takes many months, not 1 month. I was told I would be in line to get a medically needy child over an abused child since I have a medical background, which is fine with me, I would take anyone except one with a wheelchair since I have stairs and the bedrooms are upstairs. There is some sort of strange double standard going on. I might email the other single lady in the group and see if they approved her. She told me since she is from the Midwest and moved here a year or so ago, she only lives in a one bedroom apartment and they are letting her have time to find a house to buy. It takes time to buy a house, much longer than just finding one to rent. If she is given this time and I am not, I see a double standard here. They let the guy who just got married and combined households with his new wife extra time because they had just moved into a new house. My fault is NOT asking how long I would have and if they had other classes I could wait to take later in the year. I had no idea there were going to be classes in my town in April. I was only told about the classes that started a week later and a month later in a town an hour away. These are things I didn't know to ask. I was the ONLY person in my information session. The others had went to the one on Monday night, which was the wrong time for me since I would've been late getting there from work. Every single thing I asked or told this head trainer (he knew about my Grandma, he understood), he said it was ok, that it was a long process. I just don't like being led on and my time wasted. There were classes I went to when I really wanted to be 4 hours away with my Grandma instead of listening to this trainer spew completely false medical information.
I grew up with abuse. I was emotionally abused by my own mother, who tried to kill me when I was 15 because I just wasn't the child she wanted. My brother has tried to kill me repeatedly in the last 5 years (he has since been in treatment and takes medication, but I still get freaked out by him, like when he called me right before Christmas telling me he wanted to take me out shooting, um, no). My mother's entire family are alcoholics. She grew up in terror, watching her parents trying to kill each other with butcher knives. I've seen her father beat the hell out of my uncles and cousins when he was drunk. I've seen things a child should never see, but I know I didn't have it as bad as a lot of these foster kids. I wanted to give a set of siblings a chance to be a kid, something I never really got because I had to grow up really quick due to my family situation and my medical problems, then I was just given my baby brother at 12 and told I had to raise him, which I did until he was 5 and I went off to college (I wanted out of there, you might understand why). My brother will forever be angry at me for abandoning him to "those people" who are his parents. I had no money, I couldn't bring a child with me to live in the dorms (a requirement), I had no car, I had nothing, but I am still to blame for all of his problems.
When I see the ads on TV asking people to become foster parents, they say it doesn't matter if you aren't perfect, just that you are there. I was told they match a child with similar likes and personality to you, so you aren't a couch potato matched with an outdoorsy or sporty kid. If they are giving kids to sketchy foster families and completely disqualifying regular people who would be fine, this is why we have problems in our country. And now I have to get ready for work and go diagnose cancer.
Grieve for as long as it takes. Then find another agency if fostering is your calling. In the long run you may be better off not working with this particular agency because if this is how they treat applicants, imagine how foster parents and the kids are treated.
In my journey I went on to become a foster parent after literally being told I was unfit to be an adoptive parent by my home study social worker. My disqualifying criteria? I'm single, employed, and too white. Good adoptive parents stay at home and while they might have a similar ethnic background they don't walk around in the skin tone I'm in.
My best qualities as a foster mom? I'm single and that helps some kids because I offer a quieter easier environment for just one or two kids. I'm employed at a business I own so I have the resources to work a flexible schedule. Many of my foster kids have a similar skin tone or look (which wasn't planned). The kids often remark that people can't automatically tell that they're foster kids and they like that. Also I have a varied background of personal and professional experience which makes me suited to providing a home setting for kids who have challenging behavior and are rated in our system the highest need.
I guess I'm saying that this decision might not have a thing to do with you. After you take time to process, put this in it's rightful place and move on to fulfilling your dreams.
Unfortunately, like blkbrd3 said, you may never get a reason. But in your posts you have expounded at length over all the things you need to deal with before you're ready for a placement. Work issues, health issues, boxes. The only thing you said that raised a red flag for me was "I have an old fat cat who likes to spray." Speaking off the cuff, an odor of urine or animal excrement will kill an application!
I was wondering if maybe they know the family across the street and just up the road one house, the mom is a crack head (I used to work with her daughter). I've only interacted with her when she'd come over to a yard sale, she likes to buy junk and leave it in front of her trailer to show everyone her "treasure". I don't know much about those people except that they are all related and keep to themselves. When I first moved here 16 years ago, the kids were annoying teens who liked to try to set the decks on fire and get tons of Halloween candy and not wear a costume. "Gimme candy". They are the reason I don't give out candy at Halloween now. I only really talked with the guy in the house directly across the street (they just tore that house down, he died, house started collapsing) and the guy with all the chickens who lives right behind me, all of them are related. They are nice to me, we all stay out of each other's business, if they don't park in my parking space, I'm ok with them. I checked the sex offender registry, no one listed in the immediate area, which wouldn't happen because I live within walking distance of the school.
Nope, I probably won't ever hear from this agency again. I just won't ever recommend them to anyone and if asked, will tell what I went through. I don't have the money to go to the only local adoption agency (who also has problems, I hear, no followup visits after adoption among other things), they are a bit pricey for just the Home Study, but they do a good job with international adoptions, I hear. If I ever find time to go, I can go to the Catholic Services adoption information session, 2 hour drive one way from here. My only hope of having money to do private adoption is to inherit money from my 92 year old Grandma, which is not guaranteed, but I have no doubt that she is a millionaire, one of those frugal ladies who grew up in the Depression and managed her money well, plus got a nice triple pension from when my Grandpa died 35 years ago. If only I could get my cousin to be a surrogate for me, then things would be looking up, but she has never wanted to have her own children, let alone be pregnant. Eh, I'm rambling.
I've worked like mad to get this damn cat to stop spraying, all the way from drugs to new litter boxes, just short of him going to psychotherapy. When he gets mad, he sprays, and he is fixed. I've cleaned everything in this house. I am about to rip up the carpets and just put down tile. He's actually been pretty good for the last year, he only targets the refrigerator for some reason (I put puppy pee pads down, which I did throw away and steam clean the kitchen floor & clean the fridge well before this lady got here, she never even got past my foyer). Only other thing I can do with him is kick him out of the house, which I've tried, he looks out the door, turns around, and goes back to his bed. He's angry about his BFF the dog dying a couple of years ago, then his brother kitty died last year. He's not been happy with the 2 new female kittens I got, who adore him, but he's tolerating them much better than even a few months ago. He's a crotchety old man, lol. He mumbles and mopes around all the time. He is a total sweetheart to me, however, the loudest purrer I've ever heard. He was my rock when my ex ran off with his assistant. He almost died last year, I've spent too much money on medications he wouldn't take and vet visits to just get rid of him now.
Honestly, the more you post about your situations, background, stressors, etc the more it seems to prove why they didn't approve you. Like many have said, you may be a great parent but it's very obvious that now is not the time for it. Like K&H said, fostering is about the needs of the child and apparently they did not think that you had the means to provide care of a child at this time. Get your life together and try again when you are in a better position.
for example, i currently am learning two new accounts for work. this is very stressful. i also am roommating with my sister, who has a court date coming up in may, dealing with my mentally-unstable brother's vicious attack on her two years ago. this is also stressful. but my children's lives have not been affected one iota by it. i maintain my cool. i maintain their routines. i am known by everyone i know as a very competent and loving mother.
on the other hand, one of my sister's co-workers has recently been approved for foster parenting. she already has a teenage daughter of her own. she has no life stressors right now. her family is there to support her. she has worked at the same job for years. but she has the maturity level of a teenager, herself. she takes out credit cards to buy her daughter $100+ dollar jeans and sperry shoes, etc., but she is driving a car that works one day and doesn't work the next day. the driver's seat of the car falls back on its own without warning (very dangerous). she boasts about how she doesn't eat vegetables, and she and her daughter haven't had a vegetable in years. she eats nothing but crap food, and she said she actually gagged on a tomato because it had been so long since she'd eaten a vegetable. she hangs out with her teenage daughter like she is a bff because they are basically on the same maturity level. but she has been deemed capable of foster parenting, probably in part due to the fact that she was coddled as a child and she doesn't have anything stressful going on in her life now.
One of my coworkers said that I should have a house party, we can drink my dusty bottles of wine, then they can sleep over in the bunkbeds. Sounds like a good idea.
I am all for socialize medicine. No one should have to choose between paying their bills or having health care. No one should have to use the emergency room as their only form of "preventative" medicine.
ETA: Obamacare certainly has its cons and IMO it does not go far enough. I wish we could take some lessons from Canada - both in socialized health care AND maternity leave! 12 weeks is just shameful.
right on.
you lost me on the obamacare rant. as a medical transcriptionist, i was recently informed by one company i work for that our workload is increasing because of the aca (more people with health insurance=more reports to type). that means more jobs for us, so that's great. i'm assuming the reason you are now doing seven jobs at once is because of that fact. well, that does suck for you, but an empathetic person might phrase the same facts differently, like "because of the aca, there is so much more work to do, which is great, but tough right now while the kinks are being ironed out." so many people are going to be able to seek healthcare now--PREVENTATIVE healthcare rather than "i'm on the brink of dying and i need emergency care" healthcare--because of the aca. that can only be a good thing.