[Conservababe]

Libby, you can always rant to me or us. I once advised you to distance yourself from your children clients. I was naive. I did not realize that you had the children sitting in your own office until you found a placement for them. So, essentially, the system in your state makes you their foster Mom. And I understand how you cannot help but be affected by their pain.

For the record, I would like to tell you that I was in the same position as some of your kids, in my childhood...except without social service and the law to help.

[sweetliberty]

The lack of placement resources is just horrendous and caseworkers are not allowed to be foster parents. I guess they consider it a conflict of interests. Bottom line is it conflicts with the state's interest in preventing lawsuits. Of course, it's not that most of us would have the time to be regular foster parents anyway, but it seems to me to make sense to at least approve us as emergency caregivers. We are, after all, the ones with the legal authority over the children. If we are having to sleep in the office to take care of the children, it makes no sense at all not to allow us to have the children in our homes. It isn't like WE are the problem. To me, it seems itself abusive to have to keep children in an office environment. It may be better, certainly in this case, than leaving them in the home, but it is still terrible for everyone concerned, and the extra stress it creates for the worker makes it very difficult to manage other work.

The tension level is reaching saturation point in the office. We are down to 3 workers, and we all have too many cases. The investigator and investigative supervisor help when they can, but they don't do casework, then we have 2 aides. That's it. The aides are invaluable in helping with transportation, visitations and a lot of the detail kind of stuff like coordinating Christmas gift information and planning the Christmas party, distributing food at Thanksgiving, helping foster parents with paperwork, keeping track of doctor's appointments and things like that. I have talked to workers in other counties who have trouble managing 5-7 cases. I have the smallest caseload of the 3 of us, and I have 17 I believe (last time I had time to check).

I think the hardest part of this case is having to be civil to the parents, knowing what they have subjected these children to, and working towards reuniting them with the children. The guy is only father to the youngest child. The father of the oldest 2 is a registered sex offender, and she married him knowing that. I also learned today that the mom broke the 6 year old's leg when she was 9 months old. The baby (3 mos old) has 3 rib fractures and has to be taken back to Children's Hospital on Thursday for a head scan to check for possible bleeding.

I'm sorry to hear that you had some of those kinds of problems at home. I don't want to pry, but if you care to talk about it, you can FReepmail me.