Foster Parent paperwork

The meeting last night wasn't too bad, mostly a list of how to be nice to foster kids. And the start of the paperwork.

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Paperwork Part 1 won't be too bad, easily knocked out by the weekend. Mr. Handsome is getting his fingerprints taken tonight, I get mine on Friday. Once those, and some other paperwork are turned in, THEN we get the Big Packet of Paperwork to complete.

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No worries about our San Diego trip getting in the way!

Morning in court

Here's what we know:

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Not knowing AJ's paternity is an issue (no surprise). The court will compel Peggy to reveal his identity or provide a list of possibilities at another juvenile court pretrial on March 27.

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Child Protective Services has opted to let the criminal charges play themselves out before they go forward with terminating her parental rights.

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Peggy has to deal with two courts: juvenile court at which CPS presents their evidence, makes recommendations as to the children's "best interest," and can request termination of parental rights; and criminal court at which she has to respond to the felony child abuse allegations and can end up in jail.

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She has her criminal pretrial hearing on Feb 24. She is facing two counts of felony child abuse: 1st degree (...if the person knowingly or intentionally causes serious physical or serious mental harm to a child,...punishable by imprisonment for not more than 15 years), and 2nd degree (...omission or reckless act causing serious physical harm, knowingly or unintentionally commit an act likely to cause serious harm regardless of whether harm results, or knowingly or intentionally commit an act that is cruel regardless of whether harm results; punishable by no less than 4 years). Our attorney friend has graciously offered to observe that trial also.

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Peggy didn't show at the trial this morning because she was "in custody" at the criminal court.

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The guardian ad litem (GAL) said AJ's doing well, is gaining weight, is wearing a foot brace, and that he recommends a psychological evaluation for Peggy.

Tomorrow

Well. There's a court date tomorrow at 9:30. I don't think it's the criminal abuse case, I think it's the juvenile abuse case--two separate issues. I believe tomorrow the court will begin the process of terminating Peggy's parental rights to one or all three of the children. A friend will be attending and taking notes for us. Despite how much I'd like to be there just to totally piss her off, it's just not the right thing to do. So I'll have my cell phone at the ready, waiting for the moment he calls.

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Don't know if she actually did turn herself in on Friday on the criminal charge, but I do know that she was out and updating her Facebook page by Friday night.

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My tummy's in knots.

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We have BabyGirl coverage for tomorrow from after school to after-karate-and-into-bed. We will begin the next mountain of paperwork and red tape. Thing is, after so many adoption placements, I'm not really too torqued up about yet another homestudy. That's good, I guess.

the Latest

I learned from CourtWoman last week that on Friday at 10am, Peggy was to have turned herself in to the police on a criminal child abuse warrant. I don't know if she did or didn't but I'm watching the local newspaper closely to see if they say anything about it.
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A friend will be attending Peggy's preliminary trial on Tuesday to take notes and report back.
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I also learned that the man she identified as AJ's father, has been proven by DNA to not be the father. This is the man who told her she "owed" him another baby because she "gave away this one." This is the man who denied paternity all along. This is the man who had an infant daughter with another woman the same time AJ was born. Well, at least that's one piece of the puzzle that we won't have to deal with.
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We begin our foster care licensing procedures on Tuesday night. We're both really mixed-up as to what we want to have the end result to be. Is the older daughter--the one who is abusive to AJ after watching it happen for so long and the one, frankly, I never liked from Day One--a deal-breaker if the kids are kept as a package? What about the father of the little one? He says he wants him, but does he or is he posturing? What if Chrysler goes bankrupt on Tuesday when they have to talk to the government again, and what if Mr. Handsome loses our only source of income? What then? What if AJ is damaged beyond repair? Are we really willing to take on that challenge? Are we really willing to take on both boys? A damaged 3.75-year-old and an infant? At our ages? What are we, nuts?
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What we do know is that we won't be allowed to make any choices or get any more information unless we've jumped through the foster care hoops. So we fill out the paperwork, get fingerprinted, and submit all kinds of legal documents, and we jump.

Roller Coaster

After speaking with the prosecutor last week, I was in despair because her recommendation was to get started with foster care licensing muy pronto since she couldn't even present our names to the court until we were licensed. All the places I called about getting licensed were not holding orientation meetings until March and state law prohibits letting them even give out applications prior to attending an orientation. I figured we were out of luck, once again this little boy's life screwed by The System.

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Today, though, I finally spoke with a Department of Public Health foster care licensing worker who told me she was holding an orientation on, you guessed it, Tuesday February 17, the day on which Peggy goes back to court. We will be at the orientation, get our paperwork that night, then start filling it out the next day. With luck and hard work, I can get it done by Thursday and the worker can come inspect the house on Friday so BabyGirl and I can fly to San Diego to be Nannies to our dearheart's Super Children. Wish us luck on surmounting the mountain of paperwork.

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Before I managed to talk to LicensingWorker, we started to update our old adoption paperwork, just in case that would be sufficient state approval for the prosecutor. Today, I learned it wouldn't be sufficient, so that's at least one mountain we don't have to climb.

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LicensingWorker said that expediency would be important, but that it didn't sound urgent; nonetheless, we're feeling pressure to do right by this little boy even if The System doesn't.

A glimmer

I emailed our old social worker (who no longer works at that agency) last week about the AJ situation. She suggested we get a transcript of the trial from four years ago and share it with the current prosecutor, so I spent some time on the phone trying to figure out how to do that.

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On my second phone call to the court system, after I introduced myself, the woman replied, "Oh, I hoped I'd hear from you!" Not only was CourtWoman familiar with the current issues, but she was also involved with our trial before. She'd kept track of Peggy since Peggy was involved in the juvenile court system herself as a young person. CourtWoman's disgusted with Peggy, and told me that any sane person who temporarily lost custody of her children would be out doing whatever she had to do to ensure the return of those children. But not Peggy. Nope, Peggy is out going to bars, hanging with various men, and possibly losing one of her two part-time jobs.

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Anyway, when I first got on the phone with CourtWoman and heard how she responded to my name, I started to cry and I got the shakes. I'm still shakey. It just seemed so nice to have her be glad that we were involved. She also said she and the head of our old agency did a little happy-dance together when AgencyLady reported to her that we'd been in contact with her.

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The CourtWoman was able to give me the names of the Child Protective Services caseworker AND the name of the prosecuting attorney, since the grandma wasn't comfortable with sharing any names. I have a message in to CPS, and am gearing up my courage to call the prosecuting attorney.

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CourtWoman told me that the people working the system are so fed up with Peggy that they're going to ask for her parental rights to be terminated at the first hearing on February 17.