Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Hearing Rescheduled

So this afternoon was to be the TPR hearing. It was going to address both parents. Gary has been anxious about it. I told students that I would be unavailable to help them on their papers even though they are due at the end of the week. Roland arranged to leave work early. Agency worker made plans to pick Gary up at school for lunch and then to the court.


And did I mention that Gary has been stressed?

If I ask him if he is okay, he says he is fine, but he doesn't look fine. He looks like he hasn't had a good night's sleep in a week.

Yesterday I got an email from the state worker telling me that because of Will's (Gary's father) new involvement with DSS, they have a good address for him. So the state worker will be sending Will a letter. Future tense. As in had not yet sent the letter even though it was the day before the hearing. So I emailed back asking how that could be possible. Had the hearing been rescheduled?

This morning I got a call from the agency worker saying she had JUST been told that the hearing today was vacated. A hearing on his father's rights will be next week and a hearing on his mother's will be at the end of March. She wanted to know if anyone had told me. I said no.

Three hours before the hearing I got an email from the state worker telling me that he just called someone or other and confirmed that the hearing for today has been vacated.

Uh huh, that's his way of avoiding confessing that he should have told me about this a week ago.

I am so very glad I don't have to work with the state very often.

I have this whole email that I am writing in my head. I'm not sure if it will be to the social worker and copied to his supervisor or the other way around. I have various versions of it, some nicer than others. An hour ago I decided not to send it until I had an hour to cool down, which hasn't helped. Now I've decided that I am going to wait until I get home and check the unopened mail and the phone answering machine.

I'm pretty sure there won't be anything because the state worker always communicates with me by email, but I will check.

Did I say that I was angry? I'm stressed. We all thought there was a very good chance that it would be finished today. Now it will be another six weeks minimum.

3 comments:

  1. Anonymous12:35 PM

    How frustrating! I am so sorry.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sadly- I doubt you will get any improvement from the letter- the state is just tough to work with. If you and I worked as inefficiently as they do- we would be fired. But somehow they continue to get by without reprocussions from anything. I am out of fostering now for a couple years and I still get angry when I think of what I went through. hang in there.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Julie, You know, I didn't even consider that sending the email would make things better. It MIGHT result in the social worker remembering to tell us about hearings/cancellations a little sooner, but I wouldn't count on it. In six months Gary is 18. We will still be with the private agency, but not with the state. I look forward to that.

    ReplyDelete

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