Warning about Fostering. What was at the back of my mind.

I have talked about fostering before.  I wanted to give a warning to those who may be considering it as an option.  This may be treading over ground that I have gone over before.  If it is, sorry.  As a foster parent, you have responsibilities when a child comes into your house.  You have to bring them to the doctor within 24 to 48 hours.  This is so they can document things like cuts and bruises.  This is very hard to do with the insurance they have.  Not only that, if you are a working parent, does your employer give flexibility to your schedule?  The reason you want this documented is because people out in society might see these "red flags".  They are trained to call in an investigation if they see them.

An investigation is not fun.  The department has to take all outside complaints and investigate them.  The funny thing is that it does not go both ways.  We had a child that we thought the parent was abusing during visitation.  We talked to her social worker and they said that we can not file a complaint.  Those same parents called in about 4 to 5 complaints on us.  Every time the investigator would come to the door, I would just laugh and point them towards the child.  We tried to complain about it, but the investigator said they had to investigate all claims.

One thing that always concerned me was older children.  They usually have been in the system for some time.  They have learned the ins and outs of the system.  I was waiting for the day when one of them would come up and ask for something and say that they will file a complaint if we did not give them what they wanted.  I believe that if they did call in a complaint that it would be a guilty until proven innocent situation.  We generally stuck to younger children.

As I said above, professionals are trained  to look for red flags: signs of abuse, etc.  Well we had that happen once.  A child we had had emotional issues.  She was constantly beating up my wife.  Police would come out and she would go to the hospital and then be transferred to a short term behavioral center.  One of the visits to the hospital ended in an investigation.  The nurse and doctor called in a complaint against us.  They claimed Munchhausen disorder.  They thought we were bringing in the child for attention.  That is even after she would beat them up also.  The investigator came to our house at 3:00 am.  She started to ask us questions and even had to wake the younger children in the house.  I was getting mad with her questioning.  She was asking leading questions.  I started to get angry.  In these situations, you have to be careful because it can go in the report.  She seemed to have it out for us.  After many months, we found out that the investigation had been dropped.

Although we went through a lot, I feel it did benefit us.  We have been prepared for anything and are willing to take in children that have special needs.  I know that I will never do it again.