[newflew]

Hello all:
My husband and I have been going through the process of becoming foster parents. We were nearly done when the unthinkable happened. The I.A. worker doing our home study called and said that one of the questionaires that was returned from my husbands son had some very bad things to say about me. He has 4 children and this particular one is 18. I was shocked and very hurt. I thought that he and I had a very good relationship. The other children answered the questions honestly and they were nothing like that. My daughter wrote a "glowing" paper about us according to the worker. The stuff that he wrote, like, I am evil, is so untrue. He also wrote that I am ruining his sisters lives. It broke my heart to hear about this.. Why or rather how could they listen to one person and ignore all the things everyone else has said? I just don't get it. Now the dream I have had for so many years is gone because of one person. I don't know what to do.

[jackiesbooks]

Did the worker say this will be enough to stop you from getting your license?

[dl]

newflew ~ I'm very sorry that you have been subjected to this. IMO, I would think the social worker would be more aware of the problems and misconceptions that can occur in step-parenting. I have two step-children and at various times they have viewed me as their best friend and at other times considered me their worst enemy. To put so much emphasis on the word of an 18 year old step-son ~ who very likely could have his own issues dealing with his parents divorce and/or his own immaturity ~ is very short-sided on the part of the social worker. Can you ask for a review? Why would his word that you are "ruining his sisters lives" be considered more valid than their word?

Best of Luck, I would certainly pursue this before letting them just take the word of one person.

[Navy_RP_Wife]

Here in Hawaii, one bad reference is not enough to stop you from being able to adopt, however, all of them saying the same thing would be, obviously. We were told that if we got a bad one back, we would be able to send another one to a different person, so that they had more than one perspective on the situation. For example, our homestudy worker put in our report that we use physical disipline on our bio son and that he questioned my hubby's abilitity to not use physical disipline on the child in our placement (we are waitin for the call for foster adopt or at risk placement) and he also noted we said we would NOT use physical punishment on them. We were more than shocked to hear he had said that and it all came from a discussion about physically abused children and how they might push every button you have trying to get you to hit them because they equate hitting with love. All my DH said was that in a situation like that it would be hard to control your anger and not spank them. He didn't say he would spank, just that it would be hard not too. Thats a big difference. We were really concerned and our licensing worker said not to worry about it, that was the only real negative thing in the report and the state approved us anyways. I would wonder why the SW wanted a child to fill out a reference sheet, why didn't she just talk to him?? And it sounds like time for a serious father/son talk and the long lasting ramifications of saying such hateful things. It seems that his negative should be outweighed by the others glowing responses. Best of luck!