Foster/Adoption Training -- Day 12

Jeff and I debated not going to foster/adoption training tonight b/c of Henry being sick. But Grandma pointed out that she has had plenty of experience taking care of vomit and could handle it. Henry only had one small episode when we got back from Dr. Bianchi's office. The biggest thing is that we still aren't giving him goat's milk, although we ended up giving him about 50 mls of breast milk in the late afternoon to see if he could stomach it. He did.

I think that we were on class number 12 tonight for our foster/adoption training. Phyllis was back as our trainer. We had a good class on "disruption" and what the circumstances that would merit a "disruption" (meaning a removal of a child from a foster home). Basically, the agency doesn't want foster families "shopping" for kids. If a family just doesn't want to deal with a child anymore, then the family won't be asked to foster anymore UNLESS the "returned" child is causing a safety problem for the family. If the child is clearly causing problems, there should be a paper trail of "incident" reports leading up to the request for removal. Why? Because every time a child is removed for a home, it isn't good for the child's sense of worth. It is harmful to their psyche. It tells them that they are unwanted, and it is all their fault. So again, it is much better for us to refuse a child's initial placement than it is to "try on" the child for fit. We also went over scenarios that would merit incident reports after the child comes back to the foster home from a biological home visit. Saw a video of a foster mother and a biological mother being interviewed. We discussed the video as a class. I think that our class uniformly agreed that the biological mother didn't seem quite right (drug mom), but the ever-so-attentive justice system decided that she was ready to have her biological kids back. Oddly, even though the state does home inspections for foster parents, they don't appear to do the same home inspections for biological parents wanting their children back. Does that make sense?

Henry was sound asleep on Grammy when we arrived to pick him up. He'd been asleep since 8PM. Grandpa taught Henry to say the word "Kyl" in response to the question "Who is your U.S. Senator?" because he wants to keep Henry's politicians list ideologically balanced. Henry also read books and had a few bites of mashed potatoes.

I'm going to stay home with Henry tomorrow. And what of my work? Guess I'll be staying up late for the next two weeks to try to crawl out from under the very deep hole that I'm in. Alright. I'm signing off.