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Originally Posted By Pam

I could never go over ALL the things that the crazed social worker in Illinois said about us that were outright lies, but I am going to post a few things and tell you what, if anything, really happened. My purpose is to warn people that this can happen to anyone. It has happened to people besides us...people we know well. We hired a lawyer to fight these lies and found that it was not possible for us to get this false record erased nor could we really sue this agency and win (they have better, more expensive lawyers than we do and have been sued and investigated before...and they survived). I just want everyone to be a bit on guard. We weren't. Being naive hurt us badly. First of all, we did not know what was going on at our agency. The worker we had such a good relationship with, Marie, was not in favor with this agency, but we didn't know this. They brought in Julie to replace her, but they didn't tell us that. Instead, while training her, they made Julie the Licenser (sic?) of the agency. But she was the one really in charge of us, although we didn't know it at the time. We would call Marie for advice about what to do and get some, and we'd follow her advice,t hinking she was our social worker/representative. Julie would then call back the next day, literally telling us we had done everything wrong (although it was what Marie had told us to do). Little did we realize that a 27 yr. old recent grad, with a 5 1/2 month old baby (no other children), who came to our house one time for maybe 45 minutes, would be the person who was really in charge of us. We just thought she was inspecting our house, and we got a letter shortly after she came out to the house that stated that our house was in compliance. But that was BEFORE a few things happened. First of all, she scared us from Day One, and I'm not quite sure why, except that I am very perceptive about people. I called her Supervisor to nicely explain that I felt uncomfortable with her and would prefer to just deal with Marie. That enraged Julie, I heard. She called us back and tried to be reassuring and nice, but I could hear the bite behind her civilized words. Insiders later told us, she was livid...she is a very controlling person. After that, we were on her "list", but we didn't know or care because we thought Marie was t he one who mattered. She knew us. She visited us once a week. We talked to her almost every day. This newcomer didn't matter to us....we had no idea that she had so much clout. In March of the year we adopted Lucas, I went to an Adoption Fair, at the urging of Marie, to look for siblings to adopt. At the time, we were looking for a sib group to adopt after Lucas was finalized. I went alone. My husband had to work. I did not find any kids there, but I did find a list of available kids in The State of Illinois. Two little boys were in our age range, so I called their worker who was ecstatic. Right at the onset, she talked about how much she wanted us to adopt them and how they were her favorite kids. There WAS a catch. They weren't legally free yet. But that didn't stop her from telling us that we could adopt them. Before we even met them, she had it in her mind that we were going to adopt them and all but promised them that we would. It was very bizarre. Well, we met them over the July 4th weekend, and they were very wild, even with hub and teenager helping me. We figured it was the excitement, the change, and the holiday. They did not respond to firm reprimands, but that, too, didn't bother us that much then, although it did make us uneasy. Our next visit was one week later and was supposed to be for 11 days, which I thought was a LONG time for a second visit. It was clear by the fourth day that this adoption wasn't going to happen. The main problem was our son Lucas. He was, back then, unmedicated ADHD with so much energy that someone had to watch him all the time. The problem was, these boys needed to be watched just as closely. The 9 year old would talk off on anybody's bicycle, even a neighbor's, and disappear around the neighborhood (and we were responsible). He disappeared constantly. Once he took Lucas with him, which scared the daylights out of us as Lucas wasn't even 4 yet. The younger one, who was close to Lucas' age, kept running across the street and dodging cars. This was with us chasing him. He thought it was funny. In the meantime, Lucas was howling because he wanted to run across the street too, and my teenager had him by the hand while he fought to get away. They didn't sleep. We were very stern about how they had to quietly stay in bed, but they wouldn't. They were not left alone. They were in a room together on the main floor of the house and could see us. Naturally, that meant Lucas didn't sleep either. By Day Four, we were wrecks. I often ask myself if we could have parented these boys if we hadn't had Lucas and I think we could have. It was a moot point because we DID have Lucas. So we called marie and she came over and we spent hours telling her what was going on and crying and telling her that we didn't want to ruin the boy's lives. She was very firm and told us that we had to think about our family first and that the boys would NOT go without a home nor would they be ruined for life if we didn't go thru with an adoption. She told us that pre-placement was to see if the child would be a good match and that nobody would be angry with us if we said it would not. She also pointed out that the boys were not legally free, still saw their birthmom (although she was in and out of jail) and that this was going to be long and drawn out anyways, even if we did decide to try to adopt them. She saw for herself how uncontrollable things were. While I sat and talked to her, my hub and daughter tried to keep the kids safe, and while my hub was talking, me and my teenager tried to keep the kids safe. Marie's last message to us was, do what is best for your family. With a heavy heart, we called the boy's worker and said we couldn't adopt them. She flipped out on us and called Julie who called back to tell us that if we didn't keep them we would ruin them for life. We said we couldn't and tried to explain why. She told us we'd never EVER adopt a child again from the State of Illinois and hung up. Use your imagnation for the time between then and when the kids left...lots of crying and hugging and then getting yelled at by more Julie phone calls. She convinced the rest of her agency, not including Marie (who wasn't even included in this decision) that we were unfit, neglectful parents who would have our license revoked. When we got her certified letter,a copy of why our license should be revoked, we found that she had made things up and even gone back in time to when she hadn't been with the agency to fill things in, usually without dates and names, such as "Worker found sharp knife in the house that could hurt Lucas." Yeah? And which worker was that? And why weren't we told and warned? We read, in disbelief, "The agency they belonged to before they came to us took every single child they ever placed in their home away from them." THAT lie stuck out the most. First of all, our first agency, before them, had only given us two kids and one of them was Lucas and he was still there. Secondly, the other child had gone to her aunt. We have never had a child removed from our home from any agency. We called our old agency and they sent them a letter, with a copy to us, stating as much, but Julie still wouldn't take it out of her complaints about us. The agency was very arrogant. It took back nothing. Not even when we hired a lawyer. They said we had bugs in our house, medicine where Lucas could reach, dangerous things laying around...it was already generic and always "worker" claimed with no name or date. It certainly wasn't Marie. And what worker wouldn't write up a family that had these violations? We had no licensing violations. The fact was, Julie wanted to discredit us and, since Lucas was doing so well, she certainly couldn't say we were unfit parents, so she tried to make up things about our house. The tidbit about the other agency taking all the kids they placed with us away from us still puzzles me though. Did she think Lucas dropped out of the sky? Her agency hadn't placed Lucas with us. And the letter? It meant nothing? If we had been rich, we'd have hired a lawyer suing the agency for slander and lies and I am pretty sure we could have gotten them to revise our file. But we aren't rich. We couldn't afford that kind of money. And, luckily, our agency here seemed to pretty much disregard what they said. The vague "worker" with lack of dates puzzled them too as did the "all the kids were taken away." But not everyone is so lucky. A lot of agencies WOULD have believed this. A hell of a lot. You don't think so? I know people who have been thru what we have, and have not been as lucky as we were. I do not know how to tell anyone to avoid the sort of situation we got ourselves into. I don't know if there is any way. I just don't want anyone to be as naive as we were. We truly thought the agencies were in business to help needy kids. The last gem here is that, while Julie was trying to write up her secret little letter to get the state to revoke our license from us, she got a call about a 17 yr. old boy who needed a place to stay for a few days AND SHE CALLED US ABOUT HIM! We had him for a few days and it is NOT in our records, nor did we ever get a board check for him. Now we dont' CARE about the board check, but, the fact is, she must have placed him in our house without even telling the State he was here....a big error on her part. But since there is nothing in our file about him, we can't even prove he was ever in our house. My best first advice is to log everything. Journal all. Until the finalization keep records of everything. because we were trusting, we LAUGHED at this advice, but it is critical. Take pictures of every child placed in your house to prove the child was there. And don't think it can't happen to you, because we never dreamed this could happen to us. We had adopted two times already by the time we got to Lucas. Ok. Have a nice day RAYON IS COMING APRIL 20th and I have to run out and get our newest little boy a few things!!! ))