undestructable

The trifecta of scary-crazy; our caseworker experiences

I’m not going to re-hash our entire CPS nightmare, no need to do that.  I do, however, read quite a few blogs and websites that specifically deal with those sharing their CPS related experiences and I notice a recurring theme:  that is, the caseworker with apparent untreated mental illness.

Of course, I am not here to tell you that ALL caseworkers are XYZ.  Any more than I’d say all POLICE are brutes, all judges corrupt, all politicians liars (oops, wait, take that last one back!).  Kidding.  

Anyway, I just wanted to briefly share a little of what we witnessed in our dealings with three separate caseworkers over a period of two years.

Original case:  This one didn’t reveal her dark side until the investigation was well under way, and everything had gone along smoothly.  To refresh memories; this investigation was regarding my child but no allegations were against us as parents.  We had the caseworker coming in regularly, a home therapist, etc.  We never had any issues with her until one day when she came by and we weren’t home.  It was an unannounced visit.

Our neighbor calls us on our cell phone to say that some lady is aggressively beating on our door and yelling.  We were at a loss.  When we arrived home a little while later and listened to our answering machine, there were repeated calls from the caseworker, and because she was calling from her cell, while standing right outside the door, the machine recorded her message along with her yelling and beating on the door!  It was frightening. 

She, apparently, believed we were home.  I don’t know if she heard the neighbor or what, but she believed with zero doubts that we were in there and “hiding” from her.  Of course we’d never “hidden” from her or avoided her or given her any reason to behave this way and at this point we’d known her for a couple months with no issues, but she lost it.   Yelling “I know you are in there!  You had better come to the door or you’ll be sorry!!” and so forth for a good ten minutes, while calling us repeatedly.  We were truly frightened when we reviewed the messages.  It was disturbing to see how quickly she could “turn” like this, but when we contacted her and told her we hadn’t been home, she was sweet and calm again. 

The child-stealer:    More disturbing than the above mentioned behavior was the chilling lack of humanity shown by the caseworker who made the decisions leading to our daughter’s abduction.  Her case seemed to be an issue of refusing to ever be “wrong”, no matter what the costs.  After dealing with all of the drug testing and allegations of abandonment with her and getting nowhere, the most wicked thing she said was her warning that I needed to back off and be concerned about the other children.   Her warning was clearly a threat that if I didn’t stop “making noise”, she would find a reason to remove the other kids.  I remember the terror of that time.  We secured legal guardianships for the others, set up “emergency plans” with relatives, and lived in absolute terror.   During that same issue she also made it clear that our daughter would go to foster care if we caused trouble.  Clearly, she had the “best interests” of the children in mind, and would never ever use them to get us to behave the way she wanted! 

The Fisherwoman:    This caseworker became involved in our lives, briefly, due to a ridiculously false hotline call.   So named because she had nothing real to be investigating so she kept trying to ‘fish’ for things to turn into problems and kept coming up empty handed.  The caseworker visited the house when we weren’t home, but my teen son was.   She banged on his window after he refused to open the door.  She tried to get him to open the window so she could hand him a card with her number on it.  She told him that if he did not talk to her, she would go to a judge and have him taken from his mother!

He kept telling her that she’d just have to wait and talk to me and that he wasn’t allowed to open the door to strangers.   She threatened and frightened relentlessly in an attempt to get him to cooperate, then finally gave up.   Again, she clearly had the BEST INTERESTS of my kid in mind, and terrorizing and traumatizing him was just part of what she needed to do to protect him.

This case was ruled out easily but before she was through, she tried to get us to submit to drug tests we’d already submitted to, by demanding them again a month later and saying there was a “problem” with the initial test.  She made lots of threats when we refused.   Such a nice person. Every single issue she tried to bring up was refuted and often with proof (for example, a claim that the kids weren’t fed was easily refuted just by looking at them but also by providing her with our $700 a month grocery receipts).

And so, there are my three anecdotal experiences with three different CPS caseworkers.  And yes, I know, they aren’t “all bad”… but again, what are the odds that we would encounter three who behaved in what could be described as psychotic and unbalanced ways?  Three in one city? 

I am not being flip when I say that I truly believe that each of these women is really, seriously in need of some psychiatric help, but instead they will be left in charge of making life-changing decisions for families.  One of the three is now a supervisor making $47,000 a year. And she has had a child.  May she NEVER know the terror and heartbreak she inflicted upon our children and our family.

Scary stuff.

Successfully made it through a school event, and getting evaluated soon too!

Well, tonight was a Fall Festival type event at our children’s school and it went pretty well.   Our (most likely) RAD kid behaved herself for the most part.   There was a five minute panic when she wandered off from her 19 year old brother, and soon had both moms, both brothers, and four friends of the brothers swarming the parking lot (where the event was set up) looking for her.  It was a horrible five minutes.  She had  noticed a classmate and wandered off to talk to him…  without saying a word, and of course she knows better.  We did well in not overreacting though, I think, and honestly, even with that, it was a good night.

And as a point of plain old mommy pride, I was told her costume (put together with thrift store finds and household stuff and some scissors) looked like a “thirty dollar store bought costume”.  Go me. :)

Another interesting moment in the evening was when an acquaintance (who knows our child) commented that she had “gotten better” about excessively hugging anyone and everyone. 

Wow.  Why wow?  Because, NO ONE ever seems to get that this is not “cute” and not normal.   This person (a friend of a friend of my oldest son’s) gets it and had noticed a change, and she only knows our child from mutual acquaintances and a handful of interactions.

She then commented that she “used to be the same way” as a child due to “attachment issues” and I was blown away.  This, from a woman of about 20, yet I talk until I am blue in the face sometimes to others, those who would presumably be much wiser (due to education, age, professions) and who just can’t grasp her issues. 

I was impressed.

Unfortunately we didn’t get a chance to talk more in detail.

Now, from earlier news of the week, we started the process for a full evaluation from the Special Ed department at her school.  We had her teacher fill out forms and wow, tons of information detailing what she sees on a daily basis and in many ways reflecting what we see at home.  For example, the teacher commented that she asks our child questions, and gets an intent stare in return, but cannot get her to say anything or do much more than shrug her shoulders.  Yeah, exactly!

We are glad she has been so forthcoming and detailed on the forms but the saddest thing I think I ever had to read were the words, on the section about peers, “generally isn’t well-liked by others”.   Heartbreaking. 

At any rate, we talked with the Educational Psychologist, whom we’ve known for a while with the oldest kid needing special accommodations years ago, and we told him what we’d been dealing with, what is behind it all, and he assured us he is going to do whatever he can to get her in for the evaluation as soon as possible.

So, we are still kind of scared by all of it but it seems like a step in the right direction.  Still waiting to hear back from the highly recommended therapist who is 90 miles away and would have to work her in.

NPR report on South Dakota DSS is enormously validating

On October 25, 2011, NPR released a three part report resulting from a year long investigation into how SD DSS handles child removal.   It can be viewed here:

http://www.npr.org/2011/10/25/141672992/native-foster-care-lost-children-shattered-families

The stories are heartbreaking.  Some of the comments are infuriating.  Still, on the whole, I think that this coverage is very important.   Honestly, how many times do you read news stories that cover the wrongful removal of children and the damage it causes to families?  That’s right.  Almost never.   You can find individual tales and blogs, but never anything OFFICIAL. 

One of the greatest obstacles parents who have suffered through CPS related disruption of their families face is the doubting general public.

Coverage like this, from a well known and respected news source, can go a long way to educate the public, since most CPS related news stories only cover those cases where a child clearly should have been removed and wasn’t. Of course, those stories should be covered, but they tend to have the effect of making the general public believe that workers should “err on the side of safety” in all cases, and perpetuate the myth that improper removal is not harmful.

http://www.peterhaiman.com/articles/effectsOfSeparationOnYoungChildren.shtml

Anyone with even the most rudimentary educational background in psychology understands, or should understand, how separation from primary caregivers is traumatic and damaging.  Still, the family courts and social service workers make decisions to remove children without appearing to give this much thought.

Some of the comments on the NPR story were from people you would expect;  defensive child service workers, former workers, lawyers in the system, etc., and they spouted the typical and predictable apologist points of view.   Most commonly, I see a tendency to list policies and procedures and laws as a means of claiming that this sort of thing “could not have happened”, “doesn’t happen”, or “rarely happens”.  

How can those statements stand true, if so many out there have stories to the contrary?  We can’t all be liars, can we?

Other commenters wanted to point out that in this or that case, the child removal was justified, and maybe they are right, but that doesn’t erase the reality of removals where there is NO just cause.

If, in our case, the CPS worker had actually followed CPS’ own procedures and policies and had handled our case “by the book”, our child would never have ended up hidden away from us for a year of her young life.  And that’s a fact.  The regulations for CPS in my state are available online to anyone who wants to read them.  I have read them extensively, in those days years ago, in a naive attempt to “force” the worker to do what she was supposed to do.

If the courts had done what was legal and right, my spouse would have been allowed to speak in court, and instead she was silenced by the judge.

If procedure had been followed, the CASA worker would have talked to my spouse and to our child, but that didn’t happen either.

I don’t know what it will take to finally get people to understand that bad things like this can happen to good parents, but I hope that the NPR report is part of a trend in the right direction. 

Even so, it seems that many who read the report seem to think this is a problem limited to Native American children in South Dakota, and that the issue at hand is the Indian Child Welfare Act being ignored and violated, and there is still a failure to realize that this problem goes way beyond that issue.  

What, exactly, is the “general public” so afraid of?  I don’t know.  I would guess that it is frightening to really believe that this sort of thing could happen to you or your neighbor, and the notion is so terrifying that people must continue to convince themselves that it is something that only happens to bad parents, or only results from racism or persecution of certain groups.

I saw one comment about removing the “bounty” from the Native American children.  The NPR story talked about the federal dollars incentives that exist and cause a tendency to remove children instead of working towards reunification… but what is not understood is that this “bounty” has no real racial or ethnic preference.  It is a concern that ALL parents should share. 

It’s way beyond just the CPS issues…

There is so much more to “our story” than CPS.  There is the issue of “parental abduction”, a term that seems to try and soften the reality of kidnapping.  There are all of the residual effects of trauma, behavior problems and deep emotional stuff now compounded. If anything, our story is proof of the issue of money and how it relates to justice.  We had none, so our family is forever changed.

What amazes me is how much attention is given to the subject of “parental kidnapping” but almost nothing is said to address the issues of what happens AFTER an abducted child returns home. TV and movies show happy reunions and give the general public that it all ends there, and everyone lives happily ever after.

Lately I have been reading a lot of blogs and discussion forums about Reactive Attachment Disorder and they are almost all geared toward, or originated by parents of adopted children.  I understand why, and these resources have been valuable, but because parental kidnapping is such a problem, I wonder, where are the other parents like us?

Very seldom is it mentioned that parents of biological children can be dealing with these same attachment and trauma issues.  It’s lonely.

Anyone parenting a child with a traumatic past is likely to be experiencing the same sort of issues.   The difference is, I think, that for us there is a definite sense of grief for what we’ve lost.   We knew her “before” and we see her now “after” and that is very, very painful.  There is a continuing feeling that our child was stolen, even though she is right here and has been for a few years now.

For anyone reading who does not know what exactly Reactive Attachment Disorder is, here are a couple of links to give you an overview:

http://www.radkid.org/

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/reactive-attachment-disorder/DS00988

Our child does not have an official diagnosis, yet.  The nature of her problems necessitates very specific therapy, and a very experienced therapist, and we are working on getting that all organized, transportation arranged, but we won’t be too surprised with the diagnoses she receives, but suspect there may be more than one.

We are thankful and hopeful because it does seem like she has a more mild to moderate form of these problems.   Here is a little about how it translates into everyday problems:

• Food issues;  hoarding food, sneaking and hiding food, gorging, no sense of hunger cues, eating unusual food items (instant tea, sauce mix)
• Lying about anything and everything, regardless of how obvious  Example: being caught with a marker, and a marked-up wall, and insisting she didn’t mark on the wall… she has actually told us that an item must have walked off by itself!
• Indiscriminate affection:  she will hug and hang on any adult, even someone she has just met, try to sit on their laps, want to draw pictures for strangers
• Superficially charming and polite
• Freeze response when questioned about anything, or any time she thinks she is “in trouble”.  She will simply freeze and not answer, or repeat “I don’t know” in response to questions
• Destruction of property; sneaking scissors and cutting up clothes, bedding; marking or writing on walls, books, furniture; breaking toys, electronics; flushing inappropriate things down the toilet (my contact lenses, for example)
• Zero respect for other people’s property; taking things without permission and lying when asked if she has seen them, handling / touching anything in sight, in stores, in other people’s homes
• Hygiene issues;  doesn’t thoroughly bathe unless she is observed, wetting (peeing) on clothes but hiding them in her room (thankfully this hasn’t happened in about a year now!)
• No sense of personal safety / danger risks:  will handle dangerous things no matter how often she is warned of the danger, (cleaning supplies, shaving razors, same with something unsanitary)
• No cause and effect thinking;  she repeats behaviors over and over that she knows will bring about a negative consequence
• Chronic problems at school;  refuses to do work, disrupts the class, pesters the teacher and other students, gets into physical altercations and always blames the other child, has repeated a grade as a result of refusing to do work
• Triangulation of adults:  will tell the teacher she is unfairly treated at home, will tell us she is unfairly treated at school, will wait until one parent is out of the room to come and try and get a desired answer from the other parent
• will exaggerate any imagined slight or insult (example: her brother once tripped in the hallway and fell into her, knocking her down, and for a month she told everyone her brother had “pushed her into the wall on purpose”.  This one is especially challenging, due to our negative experience with CPS!
• Nonsense questions and pretending “not to hear”;  annoys others with questions that have obvious answers, answers everyone with “Huh?”, and claims not to know how to do things she has done hundreds of times before
• Mean to the animals. So far, not in a serious way, but enough minor incidents (tail pulling, etc) that she is never allowed to be alone with the pets for any length of time

What a long list!  But we do realize that it could be worse.  Many of her worst behaviors are passive-aggressive, and we don’t experience much “raging”.  However, sometimes I think it would be a nice change to see genuine emotion in our child, because we experience a lot of “phony” emotion and that’s something you really shouldn’t see in a child, ever.

It’s a long hard road ahead, that’s for sure.

Just the facts, mostly (part I)

I want to try and present this whole ordeal without too much ranting or side notes, but I am not sure how easy it will be to do that.  One thing is for sure though; regardless of how much I try to stick to just the details, it will be a long read.  I might need to post this in parts.  The worst stories, and the best, are always pretty long I guess.

A little background:   We are a same sex couple.  We met in 2002.  We are a blended family.  The youngest, biologically hers, was just four months old when we met.  Mine were 5 and 10.

For obvious reasons, their names aren’t going to be in this post.  I’ll use initials.  And there are some details that have to be left out but I will still try to explain enough so that you have a thorough picture of the situation.  

Our first encounter with CPS resulted from an issue that I can’t expound on (I will, however, talk about this privately with people I know personally)… but basically, so you have a proper understanding, there was a traumatic situation with one of the children requiring therapy, and it was not anything we did, but something that occurred from an external source that necessitated counseling, and resulted in a CPS report and investigation.

We were cooperating fully with the investigation and service plan and the kids had a home based therapist as well.   I mention this because it is important later to remember that CPS workers were in our home for regular visits, a therapist was in our home weekly, and we were never accused of abuse or neglect in any way.

When this investigation was nearing it’s end, we had a falling out with a friend who happened to be our neighbor.  We had some words over money that they owed us, several hundred dollars in fact, that we’d loaned them when they were in danger of eviction.  They were angry with us for holding them to their promise to pay, as illogical as that sounds.  There had been some other conflict prior to this, general disagreements, and they were planning to move out.  At that point we weren’t on speaking terms.

They knew that the CPS investigation we were dealing with was causing us anxiety and that we just wanted the whole thing over with.  In what we think was an attempt to keep the case open, they made an anonymous hotline call full of false allegations.   They claimed that we didn’t feed the kids, we left them alone for hours at a time, that we did drugs and that we had animal feces all over the house.

Their attempt failed, because when two new CPS workers showed up to investigate, it happened to be on a day that our “regular” caseworker was there, and she clearly set the record straight about all of the crazy allegations.  The case was closed immediately and it was apparent to all that it was a frivolous call… but these cases stay on record in a file.  

What some don’t realize is this: every time someone calls with a false allegation, no matter how ridiculous, it is on record.  After a time, a CPS worker looks at the file and will become suspicious;  if so many people are calling it can either mean someone is making petty calls, or there really is a problem.

So even obvious fake calls can hurt your family later on.  That’s my point.

Continue Reading — Part II