[quiescentfury]

In my county in Ohio the meetings are every three months. They are called SAR (semi annual review, even thought they are now quarterly) Attendees -Parents, foster parents, social worker, SW supervisor, representative for the parents (our girls mom had her counselor with her) SW from our private agency, and then the SW that ran the meeting who was not involved with the case (this was to give an unbiased opinion of the case plan) The independant SW led the meeting and had forms to fill out that they did while we spoke. She went over doc appts, schooling, visits, counseling, kids activities, and how parents were progressing with their plan. All kids over 14 were required to come. Younger kids could come to the office, but were sent to the childcare room. I always wrote up 1 -2 pages on each girl and had copies for everyone. I would break it down by topic and have a list of all doc appts, how kids were responding to visits, how they were doing in school, greades, what activites tehy were involved in, their behavior, counseling and I would also include a picture. While this is not required I did it and the SWs loved it. Parents got to take it home and they liked knowing wwhat was going on, though I know they did not like hearing things that happened negatively because of their actions, like missing a visit with out telling the girls. While they did not like hearing it and seeing it in writing it really helped them to have a better understanding of how their children were dealing with being in foster care and really ended up helping in our case.

ALWAYS go if you can. You will not get better info on the direction of the case then in those meetings. We found out so much. The SWs found out so much. Somethings the SWs did not even know until we were all sitting in the meeting.