[one-lucky-mom]

Hi everyone!

Quick question -- FD's maternal grandma told me at the foster care review board meeting today that the caseworker had approached her & FD's dad to get a pretty lengthy family history. She said the caseworker had told her it was mandatory and it had something to do with genealogy.

I haven't had a chance to ask the CW -- but why would they need this information 3 months after FD came into custody? Wouldn't they have asked for that upfront when she came into care? They did get a brief medical history, but that's it. Grandma thinks they may be trying to "adopt her out". This is a first for me.

Any thoughts?? Thanks!

[RobinKay]

Originally Posted by one-lucky-mom

Hi everyone!

Quick question -- FD's maternal grandma told me at the foster care review board meeting today that the caseworker had approached her & FD's dad to get a pretty lengthy family history. She said the caseworker had told her it was mandatory and it had something to do with genealogy.

I haven't had a chance to ask the CW -- but why would they need this information 3 months after FD came into custody? Wouldn't they have asked for that upfront when she came into care? They did get a brief medical history, but that's it. Grandma thinks they may be trying to "adopt her out". This is a first for me.

Any thoughts?? Thanks!

A "Structured Family History" is part of many of our special education comprehensive evaluations, especially for preschool and K students. I have read on another site about doing a family tree kind of thing to assess the level of support in a family--it can help determine how much support parents have to care for their children. I forget what it the term is for this-it was very enlightening, it was like a graphic organizer and showed he connections between and among all family members and assgined a value to each relationship, positive or negative. There was a thread talking about this a few weeks back if you want to search the archives a bit.

Them's my thoughts-

[hunterfamily]

In florida all kids in care have to have a comprehensive evaluation. It can take a couple months to get done. The look into everything. It is too help determine the needs of the child, based on past history, current needs and situations.

[RobinKay]

Originally Posted by hunterfamily

In florida all kids in care have to have a comprehensive evaluation. It can take a couple months to get done. The look into everything. It is too help determine the needs of the child, based on past history, current needs and situations.

Yes, I remember now a long, multipage report about everything to do with my son and the family. Our son was in foster care in Florida.

It was also missing a page--oddly enough, my husband and I were not mentioned as relatives.

[onhazier]

In RobinKay's first post, I think she's referring to an eco-gram, a diagram which shows a family's environment and its support structure, and a genogram, a diagram which shows a family tree three generations deep and the relationships between each person. Both diagrams can show positive, negative and stressful relationships.

If those are the diagrams she's referring to, I don't know that the biofamily has these drafted on them. We, as a family wanting to foster/adopt, did these diagrams as part of our training and home study process.

[one-lucky-mom]

Thanks everyone for your responses.

Yep, in the foster parent training classes did the eco-map. We also had to go into detail about our extended family too so I thought that maybe grandma was referring to this. But I didn't know bio families had to do the same -- especially when they're not an approved home for our FD to go to (and will never be an option due to abuse allegations in the past).

It just didn't make much sense and I haven't had a chance to talk with the CW yet. Grandma sure did give me an earful about these genealogy questions though... so I can't wait to hear what CW says about it.

[ranoutofnames]

Our state tries to get the family history, including medical, as soon as possible. Sometimes it can take several months before all the necessary people are located. There is also the issue of time the cw has to sit down with the family to fill it out.

We also get this information when TPR is being considered.