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"Do you have to deal with that foster mom this weekend?"

What happened was, early in the week, she came into the office to bring some paperwork when I was trying to find a placement for these kids and she offered to take them through the weekend. So I said fine, that would give us a couple more days to find someplace longer term. She called me back later and said that as long as I was trying hard to get these other 2 girls that she has of mine out, she would go ahead and keep the two new ones. I had already been working on that, so the agreement was made. She knew what kind of problems these kids had.

So then, the day I had to take the 4 kids down to the clinic in Little Rock, the plan was that she'd meet me down there since she was going to Little Rock for Thanksgiving anyway, and pick those 2 up. She calls the night before and tried telling me she couldn't handle it and wasn't going to be able to do it. Only problem was that I'd already told the people who were trying to help me find a placement that it was taken care of and they were all off doing whatever they had planned for the holidays, so I really didn't even know what ground had been covered. Finally, she said she'd go ahead and keep them through the weekend, but I had to bring them back here to her when I got back from Little Rock, which was fine. This morning she calls and asks me what I'm going to do about the kids and that she couldn't keep them thrugh the weekend. Mind you, foster parents are supposed to give at least 2 weeks notice if they want a child removed. She wanted me to get them today. So I spent a fair amount of the day trying to find a placement for them. I finally lined somebody up that was willing to take them through the Christmas holidays, but because they already had 8 kids, I could only get the placement approved through the weekend, so on Monday, I'm right back where I started. Never mind my other 16 or 17 cases.

So anyway, I just got back from picking the kids up and taking them to Harrison, about an hour away.

I don't mean to be complaining so much, but it just gets really frustrating. It's bad enough trying to parent kids and THEIR parents, without having to parent foster parents who are supposed to be taking up the slack. Actually, most of them are pretty good, and most are overloaded, but this one is driving me nuts.