Unprofessional

The adoption case worker was over for her third visit last week. I was telling her about the first home visit of the new mobile therapist for Chica Marie and how I was feeling so apathetic about the whole thing I wasn’t able to muster up enough energy to really help formulate a plan. Essentially, she admonished me for not being “professional” enough to at least tell the new mobile therapist I was feeling apathetic and explain why that might be, so I wouldn’t seem like I wasn’t interested in the services or unwilling to participate in whatever plans the MT cooked up. Sorry, I forgot I’m supposed to be a robot and show no emotions. I wasn’t rude to the mobile therapist but she kept asking me where we wanted to start and all I could say was I just didn’t want us to be where we are right now, I wanted us to be less adversarial. I’m sorry that I worked all day, came home to make dinner for children who refused to eat but the mobile therapist fed her ever-so healthy cheese curls (which she washed down with Red Bull and then forgot the can in the living room and Love Bug made sure he got the last drop!) so it’s all good. Never mind that I dealt with 3 toddler meltdowns in the first 15 minutes of the mobile therapist’s arrival and didn’t get to eat my own dinner until after the mobile therapist left. And, lest you forget, this is our third mobile therapist in a little over a year. This is the THIRD time we are starting over. Yes, I was an unprofessional foster parent or maybe I was just a tired momma – hard to tell the difference some days.

 

A few days after the dressing-down from the adoption therapist, I opened the trainings CHOR sent out only to see one of the two was talking about Foster Parents as Para-Professionals. What timing! The paperwork I read talked about how the foster parent should always act professionally and never allow emotions to cloud their judgment or enter the picture at all. It talked about setting boundaries with case workers and other professional staff and how to dress and act in court. Ok, I get it and I agree, to a certain extent. The thing is, I am a professional at my job in workforce development for the state and hey, guess what? I GET PAID TIME OFF! Do you know the last time I had time off from being a “para-professional foster parent?” Any guesses? Other than the one day when Chica Marie was watched by another foster family the second time she was suspended from school, the last time I had the kids in respite was when my sister got married, which was July 2016. So, essentially, I have had two days off in two years! Does that sound like any way to treat a para-professional? I think not.

 

So, I had planned on texting or calling the new mobile therapist to grovel and apologize for acting the way I did. But, when I read the material, it got my hackles up and I decided not to do it. I do everything that is asked of me as a foster parent, but dammit I AM A HUMAN. When the children entrusted to my care are in pain and have to keep suffering for a bureaucracy to get their head together – I will get upset and I will voice my displeasure on behalf of the children because I am their voice, their advocate. You can’t say in one breath say we are supposed to treat the child like our own and then in the other breath tell us we can’t get emotional when certain things happen to or with those same children. How does that even make sense?   I think of myself as rational and professional, but there are times I have cried in front of a case worker and there have been a few occasions when I’ve had words with a case worker because there are some situations warranting tears or anger. I never flew off the handle, I never made irrational declarations or anything like that. But, if you are telling me a little child who needs emergent medical attention and the case workers are fumbling around trying to get permission from an absent parent, I’m going to speak tersely and let them know in no uncertain terms this is not ok. Would you let your child sit and suffer in pain while you flounder around trying to rouse someone to permit the care? I think not. Still, I do try to keep a lot of my emotions inside and not emote all over the case workers. I try to be understanding of the limitations the system places on all of us, but I’m a fallible human and sometimes I’ve just not had a good day. So, call me unprofessional if I can’t muster up the song and dance routine for a new mobile therapist to start doing the same things that have been done before to little effect – I guess I’ll just have to live with it.