We have two regular ad litums for our kids in this county. One of them is very committed to what she does and spends a lot of time getting to know the kids and spending time with them in their environment. She is right on top of things that are going on in her cases. She is a full time attorney ad litum. The other, which happens to be the ad litum in this case, is in private practice and acts as ad litum for kids on the side. She has almost no contact with the kids except for a few minutes prior to the hearings. She is not familiar with a lot of the history in most of these cases and she has no day in and day out interaction with the kids, the parents, the foster parents, the schools, the therapists, etc. Then she goes in and makes recommendations that totally throws the case off track...in the WRONG direction. Just really p*sses me off. Our attorney spent the better part of 2 hours diffusing me yesterday...and that was after I took a Xanax.
When I am making my recommendations to the court, I give a lot of weight to others' opinions in a case when I feel they either have more knowledge of the history, or the kids, or that they are more qualified in a specific area, for whatever reason. I have no problem with deferring to the judgement of someone else if they are able to make a reasonable case for their position. But in this case, the two people (not counting the parents' attorney) who know the least about the case are the ones that had the greatest influence on yesterday's outcome, and that was just not a good decision.
So sorry, Libby... I wonder what could be done differently in the system? What would you recommend, how could things get changed for the better? Is there any way to do that? Sounds like that attorney who is not familiar with the kids really screws things up. Can't someone do something about that?