[sunnyandi13]

The children's caseworker, our home/resource worker and S's therapist were ALL in agreement that S needed immediate help. The therapist did say, though, that this healing process was going to be an extremely long one. He feels like we're beyond trying to restore her childhood and instead need to focus on getting her healthy enough that when she's 18 - 20 years old that she'll be able to lead a somewhat normal and productive life - talking about years of trauma to overcome and years of therapy to do so. But, when it came time for the "supervisors" to sign off on placing S in therapeutic care until we could get her diagnosed and medicated, the "talking heads" were the ones quoting policy and spouting off about forced disruption. We were the only ones sitting at that table that have known these kids for longer than 90 days. Their caseworker is brand new (had her about a month now) and we've experienced a revolving door with our own home workers.

We did appeal it yesterday, all the way up to the assistant administrator of the agency -with the same BS about policy!?! We were at the agency for over four hours meeting with one after the other. In fact, it was the assistant administrator himself who made the snide comment of "if you can't handle them as a 'basic' home". (Okay, and exactly how many kids have you adopted? Seems that's "beside the point"!) Short of a state-level ombudsman, I don't know where else to turn? My only hope is that the in-home therapist will see what we've seen - as I was told this in-home person and the current therapist could fight to have the final word in separation recommendation. But it sounds like policy is going to trump it all this time.

I do love S and had honestly thought if I could see some glimmer of hope and have support systems in place for the future, that we could go ahead and adopt them. Now, we're just holding our breath and trying to parent them both as best we can. All our family and friends are telling us to walk (no, actually, run) away from this situation - but my guilt is huge in being yet another person who's abandoned them!!! And this time, it's not even completely my choice anymore. I'm afraid that even if we did commit to both children, that by the time we get to the adoption, we'll have made such PITA's of ourselves that they'll move them from us anyway, just so they don't have to "deal with us" anymore...