Wrinkled Thoughts

Okay, so you already know I have ZERO love for the messed up Foster Care system Utah pretends is a "National Model" for everyone to follow. Well, this article in today's Salt Lake Tribune pretty much sums it all up… and is another reason we have signed up to do short term shelter care instead long term foster parenting.

You ever heard the phrase: "The head of the fish stinks first" - This describes the head of DCFS… Read on.

Children removed from homes going to shelters because of a legal snafu

By Kirsten Stewart
The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated: 09/04/2007 11:28:42 PM MDT

Utah's misinterpretation of a federal law meant to protect abused children may be causing them more harm.

Children who are removed from their homes by the Utah Division of Children and Family Services (DCFS) are being parked in temporary shelters - sometimes for six weeks, or longer - when they could be staying with a family member, like a grandparent, or a friend of the family.

The practice grew from the Adam Walsh Child Protection And Safety Act of 2006, which requires that all adoptive or foster parents, including a child's kin, undergo thorough criminal screenings conducted by the FBI.
   
Nowhere does the law say background checks must be completed before children are placed, but that's how Utah understood it. The resulting practice has caused a backlog at shelters and could have dire consequences for thousands of foster children, says a child welfare reform advocate.

"To deprive a child of a loving grandparent for seven weeks for no reason other than agency foul-ups is bureaucratic child abuse at its worst," said Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform in Alexandria, Va. "I know of no other jurisdiction in the country that interpreted the law this way."

Duane Betournay, DCFS director, acknowledged, ''In hindsight, I can say, we may have gone too far."

But there's little Betournay can do to immediately correct the mistake.

Based on legal advice from the Utah Attorney General's Office and legislative counsel, Betournay swayed legislators last year to change Utah law to comply with the agency's interpretation of the Adam Walsh Act.

Betournay said he will ask lawmakers to correct the statute during the 2008 Legislative session, which begins in January. To help shelters with their backlog in the meantime, Betournay spent about $200,000 purchasing machines that help process fingerprints to hasten criminal screenings.

"Instead of waiting six to eight weeks, we can get them back in less than 72 hours, as long as it's a clear background," said Betournay.

But a staff member at a children's shelter in Salt Lake County, who asked not to be named for fear of losing her job, said Tuesday that criminal screenings are still taking up to eight weeks.
   
The same staffer said some caseworkers have discouraged use of another stopgap - moving children out of the shelter to short-term foster homes until a kinship placement is approved.

Doing so would increase Utah's average number of foster placements, a measure used to gauge states' child welfare performance.

Citing the Adam Walsh act, Utah also told shelters to prohibit overnight visits with relatives, unless a court orders it, or the family member is a licensed foster parent.

Wexler calls the "forced institutionalization" of Utah's foster children an "outrage."

Youth in shelters "are being treated like inmates for whom visitation is a privilege instead of children for whom the chance to visit loved ones should be a right," he said.

Wexler, who first alerted Utah officials to the misstep five months ago, suspects Utah's rush to change the law signals a hostility toward kinship placements.

Utah acted despite a January 2007 directive from the federal Administration for Children and Families, explicitly telling states Adam Walsh does not mandate background checks prior to placement.

The administration cautioned, however, states could lose federal funding for foster placements absent a background check.

At risk are tens of millions of dollars, said Betournay. "We were going on the best information we had."

Utah has among the nation's lowest rates of kinship placements, though it outperforms other states when it comes to placing foster children for adoption.

But Betournay denies Utah is biased against kinship, and said the state is working to improve its track record. Further, he said Utah joined other states in lobbying against the Adam Walsh Act.

A decade of research has shown kinship placements are more stable and less disruptive for children than placing them with strangers. In Utah, 56 percent of kinship placements fail, an unusual result that has prodded DCFS to better train families, said Betournay.

Still, Wexler wishes there were more urgency to correct Utah law.

"For a young child, being torn from everyone they know and love, even if that removal is necessary, feels like a kidnapping, and can be just as emotionally devastating," said Wexler. "Placing a child with a loving relative is the best way to cushion that blow."

Hurt by the law
  
* What happened: Congress passed the Adam Walsh Child Protection And Safety Act of 2006, which requires that all adoptive or foster parents, including a child's kin, undergo a thorough background check by the FBI.
* Fallout: Utah misunderstood the law to mean background checks must be done even before temporarily placing an abused child in the home of a grandparent or other relative. Utah law was changed to reflect this.
* What's next: Child welfare officials have promised to correct state law at the next legislative session in January. Meanwhile, thousands of kids are stuck in shelters.

This is just a quick post/rant about my former employer: First Magnus Financial. They abruptly closed up shop and filed for bankruptcy last week leaving MANY employees WITHOUT their last PROMISED paycheck - me included.

My partner and I have setup a website where FMFC employees can sign up to be apart of a class action lawsuit against them. If you are interested, please visit www.suefmfc.com right now. 

Okay… this rant is about tournament rules for breaking a tie between two teams.

Here's the story. This week (the same week Maya was born) we had another soccer tourney. After two games we were 1-1 and tied with another team as far as points went… and we were about to play that team. The winner had a ticket to the championship game on Saturday (today). The team we were about to play had beaten us in 3 prior tournaments, and this tournament was being played on their home turf. Sounds like we were primed for an upset right? Kind of…

We played them to a 3-3 tie after regulation time. We were stoked. We had them up against the ropes and they were tired. We were going to take it to them in overtime. WRONG! I come to find out that the tournament rules only allow over time periods and shoot-outs after 5 different sets of criteria are met that keep the two teams in a tie. We already met the first criteria by being tied with points in the standings. The second and third criteria is where I have issues and the whole reason for this rant.

"Goal differential" … that is the magic phrase. And I could live with with that phrase if this particular tournament understood what it meant. Tie Breaker Rule #2 gave the win to the team with the least number of goals scored against them throughout the tourney. If the teams were still tied, then Tie Breaker Rule #3 kicked in which gave the win to the team with the most goals scored on the other teams during the tourney. What's the difference here? And why do "defensive" goals (rule 2) outweigh "offensive" goals (rule 3)? Shouldn't a TRUE goal differential take into account BOTH equally?

For instance… we LOST our game because the other team had 2 less goals scored against them than we did. However… if you throw in the number of goals WE scored against other teams, we scored 3 MORE goals during the tourney than they did! The TRUE goal differential gives our team a +1 advantage in goals against vs goals for. Does that make sense to the rest of the world like it makes sense to me?

I guess that's what you get when you go play a tournament in po-dunk "Hooper" Utah. Rant over. Please comment and tell me I'm not crazy.

On a happier note… if we would have played in the championship today, I would have missed taking Maya home from the hospital. So I guess things work out for a reason. :) 

There isn't anything WORSE in the world than playing a soccer game against a team with 12 men… the 12th being the referee. 

Without going into details, I was the recipient of one of the worst calls I have ever seen in my 30+ years of playing and coaching soccer (and even reffing myself). So, today, I got a little chuckle when my TEN YEAR-OLD SON Avery collected his first yellow card in a tournament game today.

I have a theory… I think most bad refs come from people who never played the game - or sucked so bad they gave up and started reffing. Most of them get roped into it because the league needed "volunteers" from the parents of the kids. Don't get me wrong, we need those parents to step up… However… There is a double standard going on. Let me explain.

In EVERY coaches clinic/class I have ever participated in, the instructor ALWAYS tells us coaches to go and get certified to be a referee because "you will get a whole different understanding of the game and will better understand the reasons referees make the calls they do". This may be so… and I recommend every coach becoming a ref. BUT! I have yet to sit through a ref class that suggested to GO OUT AND PLAY THE GAME. How is a ref supposed to know what it is like to be a player - and what is going through a player's mind - if they have never actually played the game in any capacity?

So here's what happens… You either get a really GOOD ref (one who has played/coached/reffed) or a really BAD ref. There isn't much in between. Good or Bad, black or white. The funniest thing about the bad refs is that they KNOW THE RULES of the game and can usually quote them to you… they know them better than anyone. The PROBLEM is their lack of GAME EXPERIENCE as a PLAYER.

Case in point: Avery collected a yellow card today because he was attacking the opponent's goal by dribbling full speed near the top of the goal area… the defender came to intercept him. When he did so, he got between the ball and Avery and turned his back to Avery so the ball was "shielded" from Avery. It was a good defensive move. Well, Avery was at full speed when the maneuver happened and in his attempt to get the ball back, ran into the defender knocking him to the ground. Was it a foul? YES. Was it worth a yellow card? HELL NO! Avery didn't deliberately push the kid down. There was no maliciousness to the foul… it WASN'T EVEN ON PURPOSE. A referee who had spent anytime on the field as a player would have realized this and given Avery a verbal warning to be a little more careful.

Heck, if he would have thought about it for TWO SECONDS he would have remembers these kids are only 9 and  10 years old… not 16 and 17. 

Moral of the story and the reason I'm ranting about it. Tournaments are run by a point system. You get 6 points for a win and up to three more points for every goal you score. You get another point for a shut out. If you win 3-0 you get 10 points. Point standings determine the seeds for the semifinal games and final games. The problem is, you also get a point taken AWAY for every yellow card. So yes, we lost a point because of a clown ref.

Nuff said. 

I sent the following letter out as an email to my family regarding the HORRIBLE experience we just had with the Utah Foster Care system. Instead of rewriting it for my blog, I decided just to paste it in. Names have been changed to protect the innocent… especially the child who was in our care. That child's name has been changed  to "Monkey" because that was his nickname.

——————————————————— 

Family,
 
Some of you already know that Monkey is no longer with us… which is a good thing. We wanted him to transition to a home that was willing to adopt him. We wanted this process to start in September and be completed by now. It was supposed to be a slow healthy transition for him.
 
However, we have become more and more frustrated with the way the case has been handled. We have often felt strong-armed into adopting him and have never felt like they were working to transition him to a better home.
 
Turns out, our feelings were right.
 
In the following account, I say "the state" a lot. When I say "the state" I am merely generalizing and grouping the many case workers, managers and supervisors into one group. As much as we would like to place a little blame somewhere specific, the fact of the matter is that A LOT of bad communication between many different entities in the system lead to the circumstances I am describing below. Needless to say, everyone involved has learned a serious lesson about human feelings, emotions, passions and effectively communicating such human qualities.
 
After you were all here for Ethan's baptism Thanksgiving came and we took Monkey to Brent and Larry's. That 6 hour experience was absolutely terrible for me (Steve) and Monkey. It was a build up from all the stress he have been under the last month including everyone's visit etc. Friday after Thanksgiving, amidst the chaos in the house and the stress of getting the house and new deck prepared for winter (as well as lingering Christmas) I had come to the end of my rope. Sage, being the loving wife she is, could sense my frustration and decided to take advantage of the respite the state had offered us a few weeks prior.
 
I'm not sure if you recall, but Monkey spent the weekend prior to Ethan's baptism with a "prospective" adoptive family to take him for a "test drive". Little did we know, the state lied to us about that respite time. In no way shape or form was that family even considering adoption. In the mean time, leading up to the hearing today (more on that below) the state told us to give them a call if we needed another break. Sage quickly replied that it would have been a WONDERFUL thing to have some respite when you were all going to be here for the baptism. That would have been one less stress on us. However, the state was unable to get it together for that weekend, and so you all got to meet him.
 
When Sage called to ask for respite last Friday, she was requesting two nights. We wanted to pick him up after church on Sunday. However, the state called on Saturday and told us to wait until Monday before we went to pick him up, and that they would call us. 3:30pm on Monday, Sage finally calls the state to find out what the heck is going on, because on Tuesday Monkey had an appointment (in our home) to be tested to see if he could qualify for special services offered by the school districts. Sage was told to hold off on picking him up yet again.
 
By now we started to realize something was going wrong. I (Steve) had enough and called Monkey's case worker, who was surprised to hear that he was even in respite care. She said she would get to the bottom of it and assured us we would pick him up in time for his 2:00pm appointment on Tuesday. At 1:55pm on Tuesday, the evaluator from the school district shows up at our house. Sage was frantically running around making phone calls while this poor lady had to sit and wait to see if she was even going to have a chance to evaluate him. The state finally told Sage to take the evaluator to the place where Monkey was staying… and that Sage could take Monkey home after the evaluation. Sage had to jump in the car in the middle of a  snow storm and have the evaluator follow her to the respite provider's home The whole time, Sage was fielding phone calls on her cell phone from different people with the state telling her different things. At one point she was asked if she really wanted to keep Monkey. Her answer was of course, "Yes", but she then told the state to please call Monkey's personal therapist and get her opinion on the matter. Monkey's therapist is a wonderful lady who Monkey trusts and she is also one of very few people who are intimate with the case.
 
At the respite providers home… who incidentally, was only babysitting temporarily for the REAL respite provider, so now Monkey has been bounced between two different homes in three days… Anyway, the evaluator does her thing, and because Monkey is so freaked out and confused, he fails the tests and ends up qualifying for services with the school district. That is about the only bright spot in the story. Sage says Monkey had perked up with her presence there and he was happy and ready to come home. As soon as she started to gather his things, she got the final phone call from our RFC (Resource Family Consultant) telling her that Monkey is no longer our foster child and that she needs to leave him with the respite provider. Sage was told that the state had talked to his therapist and that they were making the decision based off of what she said. Now, "on the fly" Sage was forced to consol Monkey, say good-bye and try to tell him he was getting a new mommy - all in a stranger's home. Needless to say, that little boy got DESTROYED when he realized he wasn't coming home. He was so upset he was uncontrollably shaking and crying.
 
One other thing our RFC told Sage was that we were supposed to go to Monkey's scheduled therapy appointment at 2:00pm the following day (Wednesday) with his wonderful therapist so we could give him all of his things and have a "good-bye session" with him for closure. We were skeptical.
 
We spent all of Tuesday night putting together a binder with all the photos we had of him. We wrote captions explaining everything that was going on in the photos. We wrote him a good-bye letter that he could read when he gets a little older. I put all the video we shot of him and all of his photos onto a DVD with music and the whole nine yards. We gathered the rest of his clothes, tricycle, car seat and toys so we could give them to him on  Wednesday. I was sick and tired of the emotional mis-communicating phone calls and wrote the first of several scathing emails (to put everything in black and white - not to mention creating a paper trail) to everyone involved with the case. We didn't sleep.
 
Sage and I both went to the therapy appointment to say good-bye. We were waiting in the lobby for the therapist when the respite provider showed up with him. She didn't know why she was there other than she was told to do so. Monkey acted like he hated us. He clung to her like a baby monkey. Being is foster parents for so long, we knew why he was acting that way… we was just destroyed by Sage the night before. We found out he didn't sleep Tuesday night, and he looked it. He was in a terrible state. Finally, his therapist walked into the lobby and sat down next to us and watched the interaction between all of us… not saying a word. Finally, after about 10 minutes, she asked us, "Why are you here?".
 
It turns out, there was a message from the state on her voicemail that she hadn't had time to check yet. Regardless, the state lied to us when they said they acted on HER RECOMMENDATION. When she came out to meet us she HAD NO IDEA what had transpired and certainly wasn't prepared to have a "good-bye" closure session with us. You should have heard the gasps and see the faces of not only the respite provider, but of the ladies behind the desk of The Children's Center where all of his therapy takes place. We attempted to have a "session" with them, but ended up leaving because Sage was so upset at seeing the pain Monkey was in. Later that the day Monkey's therapist called to let us know how WRONGED Monkey had been and that he should have never been removed from our care.
 
I wrote a couple more *nice* emails and even received some ridiculous replies from the state. These replies weren't answering any of our questions and forced us to pull out the "Foster Parents Due Process" card. To read about what our rights are as foster parents in regards to Monkey's removal, please read this website: http://www.rules.utah.gov/publicat/code/r512/r512-031.htm - it enlightened us.
 
That brings us to the "permanency hearing" today. This hearing was scheduled to let a judge decide if the state's case is strong enough to go ahead with the "termination hearing". We already had such a hearing back in September and the case was postponed until today. Well, today we found out that the state's case is an ABSOLUTE JOKE. The judge ordered the termination hearing for February 1st, BUT ALSO ordered a different type of hearing (I forget the name) to be combined with the termination hearing so the defense can rebut the state's evidence (or lack thereof) and even submit more evidence. Then the judge also ordered a "formal kinship report" for Monkey's aunt because the state messed up the first one. That report has to be filed by mid-December. Basically, that means Monkey's aunt gets a second chance at fostering/adopting the kids because the state didn't handle it right the first time around.
 
The kicker about today's hearing is the fact that Sage and I have been saying all along that this case wasn't going to be decided today - November 30th… but EVERYONE we have talked to with the state has ADAMANTLY said, "Oh, the parent's will definitely get their rights severed on the 30th". In fact, after the first hearing in September is when we finally decided we couldn't adopt Monkey… and the number one reason was that this case was FUBAR and it was going to continue to be FUBAR no matter what the state said. They all thought, we didn't want to adopt him because of his behavior. That had something to do with it, but it was far down the list of reasons.
 
Now that I have all your blood pressures at above normal levels, here's what is going to happen… or at least what we hope is going to happen.
 
We wanted Monkey to move on… that was no secret. We are just severely sad at how he was removed… not sad for us, but for him. This isn't how it was supposed to go down. On the other hand, we are GLAD he was removed because we were right… this case is going to drag on for months, maybe even years… and there is no way we could have survived him that long. Our goal was to have him transitioned by Christmas… well, we got that wish.
 
However, because we are so passionate about the injustice that occurred, we aren't giving up on him. If you read the "Foster Parents Due Process" law, you know we have the right to some repercussion. We have offered the state a way to resolve this without having to go through the painful process of "Due Process". The ball is in their court. The great thing about our right to due process is the fact the we don't want to push the issue for OUR SAKES. We don't want him back. If we end up going through the whole process it will be as a voice for Monkey. His story will be recorded as part of the process for the betterment of future foster children, foster parents, and the people who work for the state. It will take his case to an administrative level ABOVE the managing fiasco we saw this week. Let's hope the state steps up. We will be fine either way… as long as the state fesses up to the way Monkey was wrongly disrupted and actually does something about it - to our satisfaction.
 
This story is far from over… we are waiting to see what action the state takes.
 
Oh, and incase you think this story is crazy, out of the ordinary, or even extreme… This is a NORMAL OCCURRENCE in foster care. It happens all the time. It sucks, and we aim to make it better.
  
… Now bring on that baby girl!
 
Love, Steve and Sage