Gary has reservations about guardianship too

Yesterday Gary said he wanted to have a chat. He had been talking to the job services people and working out a plan to achieve his career goals (professional MMA fighter or physical therapist). He realized how much college he would need and he wanted to know if he could leave the state but not the agency.

I said no, but that we wouldn't take guardianship of him unless we were sure he would still qualify for the post high school education/job training programs. He was anxious about that until I told him that I was pretty sure the agency's rule was that if you were in the program for 1 year you qualified, period. One option was just for us not to do anything until June.

And he was concerned about driving. The job services people have come up with some options for a job for him. One is in a town 5-10 minutes from here, and not on the bus route. He doesn't want to ask us to drive him, so he wanted to know if he could drive. If he stayed with the state, he really couldn't right?

So we talked about that one too. There is just no short path to driving for him. If I had guardianship right now AND we had $500 we could sign him up for a private class. He could take the class, and then drive with us for the minimum time, and get his day-time-only-license in 6 months. In a year, he could drive after dark. So if he really doesn't want to depend upon us for rides, then he has to get a job he can get to without driving. Monday he and the job services guy are going to apply for jobs in Our Small Town, including back at the Y. He is okay with the idea that we would pick him up from work in really bad weather or after dark. He just doesn't want for us to be his main source of transportation for work.

It also occurs to him that he might not qualify for the job services program if he isn't a foster kid anymore, so maybe we shouldn't go too quickly because of that.

He also wants to go to a super big, really incredible MMA competition this summer very, very far from here. If he stays in the agency they might be willing to help pay for it, although they also might not give him permission to fight in it. (I think they probably will. Minors have to wear quite a bit of protective gear. It is unlikely that he would get seriously injured. Probably.)

He has a really difficult time with the idea that he might not qualify for Medicaid anymore. He has been in Medicaid "forever." I keep telling him that he would be on our insurance, but that just doesn't quite make sense. I understand. The year he lived with his aunt he was not a foster kid. She had legal guardianship and he was on Medicaid. Of course she was too.

I learned about one other difficulty about being in guardianship and college. If he is still a foster kid then filling out the financial aid forms is easy. He just declares that he is a ward of the state. No parental information is required. If he is in guardianship, nothing is so easy. He is not required to declare our income, which is good because he will qualify for more that way, but there isn't an easy way out. He would need to get social workers and probably the probation officer to write letters to each school he applied to explaining why it was not possible for him to get information from his father.

We talked about this and I told him that we would definitely do what was in his best interests, and that it was difficult to be sure what that was. Leaving foster care for guardianship was good. It meant that we could sign forms, and some things would be simpler, but he would lose services. He would have to get a job to pay for certain things himself.

Anyway, he seems to still really want to do this, but he is also thinking carefully about his own interests and about what really is best for him.

We haven't had more conversations with the agency. We won't until after the next permanency hearing.