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Some people will just never accept responsibility for their actions. In a case like that, you just have to focus on the kids. Fortuantely, it looks like we'll be able to get these boys out of the foster home and into a home placement with either a family member or a couple in the family's church. I'm working with the home studies tomorrow. Mom's going to be going away for probably at least a year, maybe longer. With her history, you'd think it would be longer, but I think it has something to do with there being someone else involved.

Yes, knowing that you've helped to improve the circumstances for the children must be a good feeling. I gather their mother is the only family member with a drug problem.

My husband used to work at a county clinic. You wouldn't believe the horror stories he had. He had been called to a meeting with the staff to decide how to "help" a woman who was HIV positive and kept having babies. She had several children, each one had a different father, and most of the children were HIV positive. She'd been counseled, to no avail. She continued to have sex with various men, and to have babies. My husband suggested that, at the very least, she be sterilized, so as not to bring any more HIV+ babies into the world.

Well.

He was asked to leave the meeting, in that he wasn't being "helpful". Can you imagine - an HIV+ woman, sleeping around and infecting who knows how many men, and producing HIV+ children, who are going to suffer and die, and the suggestion that sterilizing her isn't helpful? Of course, there probably isn't a legal way to sterilize her against her will, but isn't there a law against knowingly infecting your sex partners with HIV? I thought there was, but maybe California doesn't have such a law.