Jacquelyn's Space

After I posted my UnHappy Camper Part 1 the other day my stepson’s mother called him– he had been a day late on this truck payment. My stepson actually had to go to his mother’s house to get bitched out (I guess). Not that it did any good. He went out quite a bit this week, and I am fairly certain (don’t ask me how I know–lets just say I have insider information) that he went to the Adult Entertainment establishment on Dort Hwy –AHEM AKA the titty bar– at least one this past week, if not more. He is still blowing his money and not paying his bills. And I wonder if his mother knows her son doesn’t have insurance on their truck.

UnHappy Camper Part 2

What can I say? I guess I wasn’t meant to have kids…or at least to be a pseudo-mother to other people’s children. Being a foster parent has not been rewarding, in fact it has been one of the hardest things I have done (even harder than being a stepmom, but only by a smidge). It is not that I don’t love my nephews– I do. I just can’t deal with all their BS on top of dealing with the BS my brother (their father) and the  BS state (which feels like a damn betrayal) dishes out. It is all super disheartening and exhausting. I constantly feel like I have no support, no one backing me up…well except for the boys school; they–Gaines Elementary– have been wonderful.

I knew my nephews would be a handful; I knew they had behavior problems. What I wasn’t prepared for was how inept the system is at dealing with kids with behavior problems– how much help IS NOT out there. All my nephews have mild forms of Asperger’s; two have ADHD. This on top of too lax parenting that let the boys run wild and not meet certain benchmarks. They also had not attended school regularly or were in any kind of counseling or services. Right away, as soon as I got the boys, their case worker said I should look into getting respite care. Okay, where? No respite care to be found– not through the foster care agency, not through any other program–at least not that I could access. Even the boys counselor (once I got them into counseling close to home) said I needed respite care, that caring for these boys was too much for any one person (the first foster home the boys were in filed notice that they could/would not care for them after a month). She tried, through her clinic, to get me respite care, but she and the clinic were unsuccessful. Nobody cared ultimately, and I had to give up trying after numerous emails and phone calls because it made me too damn angry.

Our system is horribly flawed. And that is one little piece of what I’ve been through.

But all that is the past. Somehow I was able to take care of the boys, and do it fairly well, despite our challenges.

The boys’ mom has all but abandoned them. She hasn’t seen them since July 10, 2013. She is doing her thing in Flint, Michigan. You can look her up on Craigslist and Flint’s Backpage. Naughty Nikki and Bella– escorts, massages, etc. They will work on trade.

Okay, so now the boys are supposed to be going ‘home’, except that they don’t really have a home. They do have a dad that has worked to get them back…he has a house…but he doesn’t live there and doesn’t want to. There is no ‘HOME’. Their dad, my brother, works out of state a lot and likes to stay down in the Detroit area; he has been living with a girlfriend. The foster care worker knows all this– if he doesn’t he certainly should because I have made no bones about telling him. But he insists that the boys are to be returned ‘home’. See the plan was that I would still take care of the boys while my brother workers, and my brother would pay me. Except that the boys and I can’t live on promises, excuses, and apologies; we can’t eat those. I refuse to ask my husband to support me AND my 3 nephews. I have told everybody that. So then the plan was that the boys’ dad would give the boys’ Social Security (SS) money in order for me to take care of them (the two older boys get Social Security). But in order for that to happen, dad would have to go to the SS office and get the payment straightened out and preferably before foster care monies were cut off (so there’d be no gap in fundage). It took me forever for the foster care worker to understand that you can’t just turn SS payments on in the middle of the month; it may take months. There were too many unknowns. Finally he understood. Then he gave dad the responsibility of getting SS squared away. Of course my brother put it off until the last minute, of course.

Also, my brother, the boys’ father was given the task of scheduling the boys (and himself) with counseling since the boys’ counselor retired in April. That responsibility was taken out of my hands. These boys and their father need counseling. Do you think their dad made an effort to call and make a counseling appointment over the 5 months he was given chance after chance to do so? NO, he did not. Even though I reminded him and gave him info on counseling offices. Even though I asked the foster care worker time after time (he just kept saying he’d give my brother another week, a few more days–all of a sudden 5 months had gone by–total BS). Finally I had to complain to the boys’ lawyer. Once I did so the foster care worker got on my brother’s ass…so his solution was to lie about calling and making an appointment. A lie I uncovored with one fucking phone call in 5 fucking minutes. I had to call because my youngest nephew was having behavioral problems in school– 5 write ups in September and the principal telling me he was going to be kicked out of school. A first grader!!

So those things–SS and counseling my brother was to have done before the boys were returned ‘home’. Neither done and the dumb caseworker was returning the boys home anyway. All the while I still had/have the boys. Total BS.

I called the boys’ counseling clinic and got the ball rolling for appointments. My brother did finally get SS taken care of, or so he says. The boys were released from foster care and returned ‘home’ (even though they are still with me) without the sanction of the DHS monitor overseeing the case. Then the people that are supposed to help my brother with transitioning his family from foster care to HOME are not at all happy with his house (which he has not been living it); it doesn’t looked lived it– the grass is a mile high, the fridge wasn’t on, he had no furniture. This house that passed the foster care workers inspection, mind you. These transitioning people, called Families First, aren’t really going to work with my brother until he has his house in order. He can’t understand why he is being so persecuted; I can’t understand how the foster care worker can even imagine it is in the best interests of my nephews to be returned ‘home’.

Went to court today…everybody was confused and unhappy. Me most of all though.

So yes, I am unhappy, depressed in fact. All my hard work with the boys for naught. At the same time I wish they could go home and I could have my house back to myself– peaceful.