[RobinKay]

I am starting this thread to discuss reunification with birth family, especially relatives. We adopted our nephew and he is now our son. He is a wonderful blessing not just to us, but to our entire family. He was very happy to come home to his family.

Our ason was almost 5 when taken into care from his birth parents. The story is a familiar one—parents were drug and alcohol abusers and frequently in trouble with the law. Our ason was in care with two families until he was 6 ½ and placed with us, adopted one month and six days after placement. The judge waived the waiting period for us. Everyone involved in the case was very pleased for our ason.

The reason I read this site and post occasionally is the experience we had with the foster family. The last foster family that cared for him had him for about a year. We were waiting for an ICPC to be completed as we live in Hawaii and our ason was in Florida at the time, where most of the birth family is living. During this year-long period, there was no plan to terminate parental rights. The goal was always reunification and later changed to placement with relatives (us).

The day came for the hearing to place him with us and let us take him home to family. At that hearing, we found out the foster parents had heavily influenced the (new to the case) GAL against us. The social worker had not arranged for everyone to be there (like the therapist), and the judge decided to defer her decision for 20 days. We were very hurt and confused.

We were left to arrange our own transition visits—the judge said go ahead with the visits, etc. as the answer wasn’t no to placement with us. The foster parents were very rude and possessive of our ason (nephew at the time). The first words out of the fmom’s mouth were “he is a member of our family, we consider him a member of our family”. It went downhill from there. They were very blunt and open about their intention to adopt this child and constantly made negative comments about our ason’s bfamily. The first phone call we were told to NOT share the number with the sister as they did not want bmother to get the number.

We got through it all, and he was placed with us. That day in court they were just crushed when he was placed with us—the GAL’s office just embarrassed themselves so badly—did not even know who we were or what our relationship was to ason—thought we were the paternal grandparents! The therapist came in strongly for us and that certainly helped. I was just overwhelmed by the drama, and we had to wait outside the courtroom for the decision. We had an attorney, and the attorney was in there, thank goodness.

Our ason’s birthsister also spoke to the judge prior to the hearing and told the judge that the foster parents had done nothing to help maintain the relationship between her and her brother (she was 18 at the time). Fparents had not made a single effort to get to know her or facilitate the visits. All the sibling visits were shared visits with (crazy) birthmother. Kids never got to be together just for their own visits, although social worker and therapist tried to arrange family-type social events to help foster parents get to know the birth sister.

Overall, the picture they presented of themselves as a caring family for this child, looking out for his best interests, was actually their agenda to begin a family as they could not have children of their own. They mentioned that to us over and over—as though we were supposed to realize it was “their turn” since we had raised two sons already.

They had this great, healthy kid, and decided they wanted him regardless of what the social services plan stated.

That is the heart of my anger and resentment towards this couple—and it hurts to feel this way because I am a nice person, I always believe the best of people. I felt betrayed by the system, judged by these foster parents, and criticized for wanting to provide a home and good life for a minor child who was a much-loved relative. Our family does not give away children, we did not want him to grow up wondering why no one in his family wanted him.

We were blamed for the long time it took for the ICPC when it was not our fault, and the social worker would not facilitate contact until it was done. Then we were criticized for not having contact. When we asked about it afterwards, we were told that contact would not have been possible because the foster parents “weren’t open to it”. Yeah, now I see why after reading posts. The longer a child has no or little contact with bfamily, the better the chances the foster family has to keep the child.

I thank everyone who has shared on this site—I realize that most foster parents are the caring, altruistic people I imagined and I felt so much healing. I look forward to hearing from folks with reunification stories or with thoughts on reunification.