Reflections on Foster Care

Seth has been attending a small private alternative school for the last twelve months.  We chose the school for its small class sizes, individualised teaching and thematic and engaging approach to the curriculum.

I worried that it didn’t fit the recommended criteria for a classroom suited to kids with FASD, being fairly open and stimulating with a busy, flexible time table but I hoped that the very experienced and creative teaching would make up for that.  And in some ways it has.

Seth was homeschooled for half a year before attending this school after we pulled him from a state school. The state school just wasn’t meeting his needs and his self esteem and interest in school were definitely affected, but at that stage we didn’t have a diagnosis of FASD  (specifically ARND)  so we didn’t even understand what his needs were.

Our six months homeschooling was not all that successful as I had a lot of difficulty motivating Seth, keeping him on task and providing him with the peer socialisation he craved back at his old school with all the mates he’d known for five years. So this little school which two of our older children had attended happily for a few years seemed the answer to our problem. Seth settled in fairly happily, made friends, and started to develop a more positive self image and attitude to school.

But there have been some problems, mostly of a behavioural nature, and I’ve occasionally blogged about them. Seth, typically, is impulsive and not very aware of the appropriate nature of his actions. He’s not aggressive or violent, but he is a dare devil and an adventurer. He doesn’t see why he shouldn’t do things that are exciting even if they are inappropriate.  Being out-of-bounds, taking art supplies from the classroom, buying his friends drinks with money he shouldn’t have had, are just a few of the incidents he’s been involved with lately.

Nothing he did was done alone.  He always had other kids happy to join him, and maybe sometimes they even instigated the activities, but it seemed Seth was a common denominator.  What is more, once he was caught out Seth became quite angry and defensive and, if overwhelmed, he’d simply run.

The final straw occurred while he was away on a two night school camp.  We received a phone call on the second day asking us to come and pick up Seth as he’d got into a bit of trouble. He and another kid had been reported to “joke” about getting up in the night to damage a teacher’s car because she’d yelled at them.

Hubby picked him up.  Seth was upset and wouldn’t get out of the car once he arrived home, but I talked him round and he came inside but refused to talk about what had happened.  Over the next few days I tried to have quiet little discussions with Seth about all the incidents of the past few weeks. Some he told me about, others he denied, and some he just seemed to have forgotten!

On the Monday we had a lunchtime appointment with Seth’s teacher and the principal. It wasn’t good.

They won’t have Seth back as they feel his behaviours require too much teacher supervision and intervention and impacts on the other kids too much. In a very democratic and free school like this Seth is not a good fit.  I understood but I was devastated anyway.  Where to now?

We had hoped that Seth, who is actually due to move up to secondary school next year, might have had one extra year at primary school to help him learn a little more and be a little better prepared for the transition to a new school.  Given that is no longer an option we’ve decided to enrol him at our local secondary college for next year and fill in the next term and a half with homeschooling again.  There seems no point in searching out another school for just four months, so again I face the daunting task of teaching a child with significant learning difficulties, this time with a distracting toddler running around.

The local secondary college he will be attending has to apply for educational funding for Seth on the basis of the various assessments he’s had in the past eight months.  The more funding he gets, the more time he’ll have allocated with a teacher aide.  I know he can only work with the constant attendance of a patient adult, so I’m hoping our application gets a good response.

The school will also modify the program for Seth. Instead of a second language he will be in a small group for remedial English.  He will have his own maths curriculum to follow (probably based on the grade four program) and he will not be expected to participate in the whole grade activities, although he’ll still be in the classroom. I will put together a kit about Seth specifically, and FASD in general, and have been promised all teachers in contact with Seth will be advised to read and learn from these, so I hope that does really happen.

I’ve also asked that they build in some structure to his recess times, explaining that such free time is when he gets into strife.  They talk about directing him into the optional lunchtime activities, such as roller skating in the gym, juggling class, handball competitions, and library sessions.  They will also keep an eye on him and monitor the kids he hangs out with, knowing how easily influenced he is.

Seth himself knows that unstructured time is a danger to him.  He admits that having unsupervised time goes to his head, that he looks for interesting things to do and that he gives no thought to what will happen afterwards. On that basis I hope he is co-operative about having his time structured for him.

Meanwhile, he is home with me all day with twenty four hour supervision, so he isn’t getting into any trouble at all.  We run our classroom fairly loosely, basing our time table on Angel’s sleep times and access visits (for which he is picked up and returned home, so I don’t have to leave the house) .  During these times I give Seth specific instruction in language and maths while we are both able to focus (I’m certainly a lot more focused than he is!) and then the rest of the day while the toddler’s roaming about the place we do cooking, crafts, reading, board games, walking and some shopping and cleaning. On Wednesdays he comes to Playgroup with me and either reads in the car or plays with all the little kids.

He takes regular breaks throughout the day to do a bit of gymnastics (the mattresses from his bed stay permanently on the family room floor) or skateboarding out in the driveway.  We are renovating at the moment and his latest fun game is to skip about on top of the joists of the unfinished deck, throwing in the occasional handstand. He is happy and contented, relatively co-operative and enjoying his days with Angel and I. I don’t know if this relaxed school style will make it harder for him to transition to high school in five months time, but I’m not going to worry too much.  I’ll just relax too, and enjoy this extra time with my sweet boy.

Angel’s been with us over a year now, and the caseplan is still for reunification… but slowly.

Court was adjourned this week because Angel’s birthmum didn’t turn up, and Grandma arrived late.  We weren’t expecting any changes to be made at this point anyway as Grandma is travelling overseas during most of September and requested that the reunification plans be put on hold till she returns. So instead of starting unsupervised visits in August and overnighters in September, we’ll stick with the two hour supervised visits, two or three times weekly, until October.  So our little boy stays just a bit longer.

And he can come with us when we travel interstate for two weeks to visit my mum in September, during the next term break.  Oh joy - travelling over sixteen hours by car with a seventeen month old.

I’m keeping my eye out for small, cheap novel toys that might keep him amused, and I’ve arranged the trip so we travel mostly during his nap times with a long stretch from 7pm till around midnight.  This is so necessary as he really hates car travel after the first twenty minutes unless he’s sleeping, and his way of telling us he’s bored and restless and “get me out of this car seat” is to open his mouth and scream with a high pitched shriek that pierces our skulls!

Does any one have good ideas for how to keep a toddler happy in the car? If so please share them with me.

At present I get to meet and chat with Angel’s Grandma once a week when I pick him up from access.  We just talk about him, how he’s going and what he’s learning (he speaks a few simple words now, and can baby sign for ‘food’ , ‘milk’ and ‘more’ and he’s a very actively running and climbing).  We play and talk with Angel, sharing the joy and laughter that goes with a sweet playful toddler, and then I take him home.

They don’t talk about him coming home to stay, and they are pretty casual when he leaves, but I shouldn’t complain, because that makes it so much easier and more pleasant for both Angel and myself.

When I picked Seth up from school the other day he clambered into the car and asked me “Mum, do you have five dollars on you?” When I answered that I didn’t and what did he need it for, he looked sheepishly away and said “I stole it last week, so I have to return it to the office”.

Well, I was momentarily flabbergasted as this is not typical of Seth’s behaviour.  Despite having FASD, stealing other people’s stuff has never been an issue although I have suspected him of sometimes taking the odd coins laying around.  Rather than making  accusations on those occasions I’ve given the talk about how I need to trust other family members not to take money I leave in places like the car, or the zip pouch on the pusher, so I was surprised that Seth would steal so publicly.

Before driving away from school we discussed the incident, and it seems that, despite a little embarrassment, he was not too concerned about what he did.  I felt better for it having been a group crime - he and another boy had each stolen a five dollar note while a couple of others watched out for the return of the office lady. At least it spreads the accountability around a bit.

Remembering a find I made while doing the washing a few days previously, I asked Seth what he’d done with the money.  He was a little vague about this, replying that he must have spent it at the milkbar or something.  “Surely you’d remember spending five dollars…”, I prompted (while recognising Seth’s memory deficits, surely spending a ‘windfall’ of five dollars on chips and lollies would be memorable within the last couple of days).  “I don’t remember ” he replied, with no concern.

“Well” I said to him, “I’m just wondering about the wet five dollar note I found in the washing machine the other day.  I guess it must have fallen out of someone’s pocket. I was wondering whose it was.” His eyes lit up and he exclaimed “Oh, yeah, so I didn’t spend it.  I can take it back to the office tomorrow”.

I questioned him then about how they were found out and whether there were other consequences to their crime, apart from paying the money back.  It seemed one of the “watchers” felt guilty the next day and told his mum what had ensued so she’d rung the school.  Seth and the other young boy were drawn out of class separately to explain their case and given a little talk about stealing and trust, but there were no disciplinary procedures except to talk to their parents about it and to return the money.

I discussed this issue of trust with Seth for a while but I found it quite frustrating as he just didn’t seem to care or understand that others at the school may not trust him now.  I even did a bit of role playing suggesting an example of a friend who won’t let him near his bag in case he steals from it, but Seth just thought that was silly….”My friends know I won’t take their stuff”.  He was more troubled when I pointed out that he won’t be able to collect and count the money on “special food Wednesdays” any more so I laboured that point for a while in the hopes of him developing some sense of the consequence of his misdemeanour.

Then I asked him “So if you weren’t planning to spend the money, why did you steal it?” and he replied, ” It was exciting and we wanted to see if they could catch us!”

Although this is what I’d expect from my dare devil son, it worries me like hell because he’s not even a teenager yet so how’s he going to be in a few years?  It’s enough of a risk for any young teenager, being egged on by his peers and wanting to impress, but how much harder for our kids with their fetal alcohol affected brains to make the right decisions when they don’t see the consequences and are impulsively seeking an adrenalin rush by taking exciting risks?

It reminds me of an article I read a while ago, possibly recommended by a fellow blogger, which described so well why kids with FASD are seen to have an under-developed conscience.  This helped me to understand better how a sensitive and empathic child like Seth, who has a great deal of compassion for animals and children suffering or in need and is always so apologetic if he accidentally hurts somebody, can show little remorse for some of his actions and how they affect others.

I was glad the teacher (his classroom teacher thankfully, the only authority at the school who Seth responds well to) had dealt with the incident in a low key manner, as blustering and punishing would simply have set up Seth for defensiveness and anger and caused behavioural difficulties with further repercussions.  She later told me Seth’s response to being withdrawn from class and spoken to was quite appropriate, and he was quite ok with the kid who had “dobbed” them in, understanding that it was the right thing to do.  He admitted that stealing was wrong, but didn’t really indicate why he thought so.  She certainly didn’t feel that it had kept him awake at night as it had done the other little boy who didn’t even take the money!

Seth’s been going well these last few weeks since school resumed after the term break but, with the school production and a two day camp coming up, there will be breaks to his routine and extra unstructured time so I hope he manages to keep on track through all these changes.  I’ll keep you posted.

If anyone’s been following my blog I apologise for not posting for so long.  I had a few little hiccups with the process, but hope to get into more regular posting again.

Trouble is I seem to have a long list of blogs I like to read, and some of those busy ladies post every day.  They certainly keep me busy.  I’ll put a list of my favourites in my sidebar for others to try. They are mostly other foster and adoptive families, primarily with kids with FASD, like my son Seth.

Both Seth and Portia have just finished two weeks holiday from school, and we all enjoyed the break.

Seth’s first day home he got together with a bunch of mates from the local state school he used to attend and they all spent the day out bike riding, touring the local “jumps” which the kids have made on spare blocks and council land around the township.  (A BMX track and skate park has been planned for our town for many years, but we’re still waiting for it to happen.  There are several ideal sites but there’s always some vocal residents complaining that they don’t want such a recreation facility anywhere near their home… so the kids miss out).

He headed off most mornings with water and a snack in his backpack, or pocket money for purchasing junk food at the local milkbar, to meet up with this “gang” of eleven and twelve year olds. He’d come home mid-afternoon grubby, sweaty and smelling like a boy, with a few scrapes and grazes on legs and elbows but delighted with his day’s activity, the boys he met up with, the places they went and the increasing size of the jump he could manage without falling of his bike.

It felt a little strange to have my twelve year old out of range of sight and sound for so many hours of the day without an adult in attendance - just half a dozen kids out enjoying their freedom.

I found  the spare mobile phone for him to take after the first few days, just in case I needed to contact him. I never did, but sometimes I felt tempted to be a nagging Mum and ring under some pretence. “Hey Seth, your sister’s just taking a batch of choc-chip cookies from the oven…come and grab some for you and your friends”,  or “Hey Mate, it looks cold out, did you remember to take a coat?”  (Like he’d wear anything but a t-shirt when he’s racing around on his bike!).

I know all the places they go to and none of them are more than a couple of kilometres from home, so if I really needed to I could jump in the car and track them down pretty quickly.

Sometimes after he’d been gone a while I felt just a touch of anxiety. I’m not sure what worried me. That he wasn’t crossing the road as carefully as he does when I’m with him? That he’s not keeping his helmet on all the time, because maybe the other kids don’t and it’s not cool to protect your brain ?

Maybe I’m worried that the other kids are a little more streetwise than Seth, and may convince him to do stuff he hasn’t even thought of yet.  Or that someone older (but not wiser) will interfere with their play and introduce less than innocent ideas to them.  Or it might just be that they’re being noisy and silly as kids their age do, and are annoying other people without me there to make sure he’s behaving well. I don’t want other mums looking at these boys and tsk, tsking because they’re running a bit wild.

Towards the end of the two week break he was out and about less often - most of the others had dropped off along the way.  At one stage they spent a few afternoons working on some jumps in our own back yard so that kept them closer to home.  By the last few cold drizzly days they were more likely to be indoors playing computer games, and that first week of wild freedom seemed just a memory.

I know books and articles on FASD talk about the need for close supervision of kids who are alcohol affected in case they get themselves into trouble with foolish decisions. They are often unaware of consequences and this can lead them astray.

Allowing my son more freedom than usual these holidays has probably set up a precedent. I hope I don’t regret it as he enters the teenage years when other teens will probably introduce him to less appropriate activities than jumping his bike over a pile of dirt. But at this point I guess I’ll just go on trying to teach Seth the rules and values that I hope he will follow as he grows up and hope that, despite having FASD, he takes it on board and behaves accordingly.

I guess that’s what we hope for all our kids as they grow up.

I have a little time to myself today while Angel is at access with his birth family. Well… I say that because he was picked up by a worker to be transported to our local Department of Human Services (DHS) office about 45 minutes away, but as his family hadn’t confirmed, they may not turn up so he’ll probably be home fairly soon.

His family have access with Angel three times a week in their own home, so this access at the DHS rooms rarely occurs. For a while he wasn’t collected unless they rang to confirm, but often they’d turn up anyway and he wouldn’t be there, so now he goes most weeks and is returned soon after - an hour and a half in the car, often with him screaming, for no good purpose. I’ve asked for this Thursday DHS access to be scrapped, but we’ll have to wait till it goes to court this week for any decision on that.

I have concerns for Angel’s situation. He is transported to supervised access three or four times a week. Sometimes he is picked up by one worker, supervised by another, then returned home by yet a third. Today, at least, the one worker was doing the whole access and both trips, and even informed me she’d be doing all of tomorrow’s visit too. That’s a plus.

I just wish she was a worker he already knew, but this is her first time with Angel. It didn’t stop him going to her readily, and I can see he is getting used to going to all these strangers without any anxiety. Yet just two months ago he was a typical securely attached eleven month old, preferring to be with mum and reluctant to go to the arms of unfamiliar people. He still looks out for me, and will come to me first for comfort and attention, but that readiness to go with other people worries me quite a bit.

DHS and my foster care agency are both aware of this less than ideal arrangement of supervised access for all their infants, not just for Angel. They’ve even held a few forums for carers and workers to discuss the issues and try to work out some more appropriate policies around infant supervised access. A shortage of case support workers means they cannot usually manage to assign the same worker to every access, and juggling so many children’s access visits generally results in some split shifts with a changeover that results in a second worker transporting home.

It’s good if the carer can also help with transporting, to reduce the number of strangers that the child has contact with. I now regularly pick up Angel from his birth family’s house one day a week. As well as easing the demand for workers it gives me a chance to interact with Angel’s Grandma, who will soon have custody.

The first week didn’t go so well and I came away feeling a little apprehensive about how I was to develop a rapport with her. But the next week we started talking and she suddenly realised I was Angel’s carer and became a lot more talkative. Obviously the week before she had thought I was yet another new worker doing transport, although she may have been puzzled to see Angel straining to get out of the stroller to get to me.

The last couple of weeks I have arrived about twenty minutes before it’s time for Angel to leave and Grandma and I sit on the couch, talking as best we can about Angel’s routine and playing little games with him. Her English is fairly limited and I can’t speak Vietnamese at all, but with body language and hand gestures we’re doing OK. Angel goes happily between the two of us, playing peekaboo games and being chased and tickled, and there’s lots of laughter, so I hope he is sensing a growing relationship between us that will give him a feeling of connection when he has to leave me to go live with her.

This week is Angel’s court date. It is almost certain he will return home but we don’t know yet how long the reunification plan will be. I hope the magistrate is not so insensitive as to send him home immediately as I don’t feel he’s ready yet. The visits home still overwhelm him and he very much needs me in his life to help him feel secure. A month or more to increase access times and introduce a few overnight visits will work in his favour and help him to build up a little resiliency to draw upon after he’s left our family altogether.

This is the most difficult stage in a placement - the child leaving our family. I don’t give it any emotional space yet, except to prepare Angel himself (as much as you can prepare an infant just past his first birthday) and the other children, Seth and Portia.

When he’s gone I will have plenty of alone time to hopefully see my way past his going, to deal with the family’s grief and prepare for the next child to join our home. I’ve done it before, but each child is different, and how I feel each time, is different. I just know it’s never easy.

I was lucky enough to attend a one day seminar on therapeutic foster care recently, presented by Kate Cairns, a long time foster carer and social worker from the UK. What an engaging speaker she was.

Much of what she had to say focused on the effects that an unsatisfactory or disrupted attachment has on a baby’s development. None of this is new to me (I’m an avid attendee at seminars and conferences, and love to read parenting and fostering “text” books) but she had a very personal way of describing the process which really brought home to me how an attuned baby engages with his caregiver.

This engagement lays down patterns in the brain to ensure that they develop all those important life skills like how to form a trusting relationship with another person, how to self-regulate and to curb impulses and control rage, how to recognise and acknowledge their feelings and those of others.

Any foster carer can look at a child and see the behaviours that indicate “this child’s brain did not form the necessary templates in that first year or so of life”. The child very obviously demonstrates the consequences of this deficit: is unable to trust others or rely on them for help and comfort, needs to control everything and everyone around them, hasn’t learnt to check their impulses or control their rage, and shows no awareness of their own feelings and certainly is unable to show empathy for others.

I look at my own daughter Portia, who has been with us for all but the first year or so of her thirteen years of life and recognise that these behaviors still form a noticeable part of her personality. Her need to control members of her family, particularly her little brother and her dad, drive them both to distraction. She tells them what they should be doing, or how they should be doing it, with utter confidence in her own infallibility.

Luckily, she’s doesn’t get into a rage very often (although plenty of those hissy-fits that teenage girls seem particularly prone to) but she still has a great deal of difficulty curbing her impulses. Despite the guidance she’s had at home and school with the mantra “stop, think, do” we’ve yet to see that being consistently used although she’s not in trouble for scrapes, damage and breakages as much as a few years ago.

But I’m happy to say that Portia is learning how to recognise how others are feeling and to change her behaviour accordingly. At nine or ten she often had social problems at school and most of it stemmed from her own tactless comments and actions. It seemed at that stage that the only way to boost her shaky self-esteem was to put down everyone else and build up her own accomplishments with lots of bragging and showing off. I’d say she’s come a long way since then.

Certainly I now see a quieter and more genuine awareness of her own strengths. She doesn’t need to brag or compete as much as she used to, and when she makes a derogatory comment about someone she’ll catch herself and try to explain why it is she feels that way, which opens up the opportunity for a bit of a learning discussion on why people behave as they do.

When she came to us as a quiet, timid, undemanding, slow-developing one year old, I didn’t know about the effects of neglect and trauma as described by Daniel Hughes and Bruce Perry. I knew nothing about therapeutic fostering and reparenting, but I knew from parenting my own babies that this little girl and I needed to bond. So I did what came naturally, treating her as if she was a much younger baby, which wasn’t at all hard because she was a tiny little thing and nowhere near walking yet.

I wrapped her in a cosy bunny rug and snuggled her into my body as I rocked and sang to her (even though she seemed to never need soothing or to be settled to sleep). I carried her around in a baby pouch on my chest despite her legs dangling down past my waist and making it very difficult to go upstairs or climb up hills and rocks when bushwalking.

Eventually I transferred her to a hip sling which didn’t keep her quite so close but was a great deal more convenient. When giving her milk I always held the bottle and snuggled her on my lap. I would not let her hold the bottle, which she was used to. She needed to rely on me for that warm soothing milk, and trust me to provide it.

I managed to keep that routine going till she was over two, despite her little foster brother arriving in the meantime who also needed constant feeding and soothing. I played baby games with her at a time when most kids have moved on to more sophisticated pastimes. Lots of patty-cake and peek-a-boo games, riding horse on my crossed legs whilst facing me as I sang to her, silly rhymes that babies love, with tickling and blurting on bellies and pressing of noses. All attempts to regain what she’d missed in her first year of life: attunement with a caregiver.

Unfortunately for Portia and I this process of attachment was often interrupted over the next two years, mostly by failed attempts at reunification with her birth mum. This would sometime take Portia away from our family for days, weeks, and at one point three months. Also, as I mentioned before, baby Seth joined our family when Portia was not yet two and his withdrawal from alcohol in those early months of his life took a lot of my time and energy.  I guess that Portia, while getting plenty of care and attention, may not have been getting the intensive mothering that her early neglect demanded.

But of course attachment is an ongoing process. Over the years I made extra effort to pull her in closer to me. It wasn’t always easy as through her toddler and preschool years that the quiet, mousy little baby was replaced by a willful, controlling, angry child. I always felt she was distant and detached from me. Even her younger foster brother Seth, who was with us from five weeks of age, developed a very normal secure attachment to me.

It’s sad but true that the more horrible your child’s behaviour, the more you want to distance yourself from them, and the more frustrated and discouraged you feel. Unfortunately this is exactly when you need to be spending more intensive time with the child to bring them in closer again.

Over the years I noticed a cycle. Portia’s problem behaviours would escalate and I would be forever scolding her, feeling cross and annoyed with her and would crave distance, retreating from the intensity of the frustration and stress. Then I’d recognise where I was in the cycle and realise it was time for some very significant bonding.

A child psychologist who saw Portia when she was five for just a few visits, helped me to realise how, when I was overwhelmed by her behaviours, I would pull back emotionally from her and she gave me a few ideas on how to regain some closeness. She encouraged me to simply spend more time with Portia, doing stuff she enjoyed showing her she was worthy of my attention. Playing simple board games, colouring and making things together, singing and dancing to a music CD, cooking yummy sweet things to eat together, standing outside watching her ride her bike up and down the footpath, sharing stories and making up our own.

It amazed me how much time I could find to spend with her once I’d changed my attitude. I concentrated on softening my tone with her, making sure I met her advances with a smile instead of a frown, decreasing my scolding and nagging and replacing them with encouragement and joy in her accomplishments. It felt so good to begin liking her again, and that was made easier by the fact that her horrible behaviour quite noticeably decreased and she did become more likable by everyone else in the family too. Extra bonus - they weren’t always yelling at her and sending her away from them anymore either. Everyone was happier.

This relationship and behaviour cycle continued over the years. Even now I sometimes feel myself slipping and I have to remind myself to seek out Portia’s company and conversation a bit more - a bit more difficult now she’s a teen who naturally tends to spend more time alone in her room with her homework or reading or just listening to loud music. But it’s still worthwhile working on strengthening that still shaky attachment and the rewards are gleaned by seeing a corresponding shift in her behaviour and attitude.

Nowadays the activities are a little different. Watching her play basketball or skate or dive with lots of encouraging words and gestures, inviting her to help me with cooking, or asking her to make her famous choc fudge cake for afternoon tea. It’s sharing funny things on TV or YouTube or reading an article out loud from a newspaper that I know she’ll be interested in (or listening to something she wants to read out, even though it’s not really that interesting to me) or telling her something funny that I think she’ll appreciate. Sometimes it’s just showing her that I am keeping her in mind, that she is important to me.

I sometimes wonder when Portia’s behaviour reverts a little to that impulsive, oppositional, tantrum throwing four year old that she was, could it have been different? Maybe if we’d managed to do more, known better or tried a little harder, focused just on her and not continued fostering (but then we wouldn’t have our sweet son Seth). Or should we just look at the long way she’s come and promise ourselves to never let up or give in, but keep working hard to make sure this kid stays connected to family and community, feels strong and worthy, has focus in her life (thank goodness for all those sports she loves) and do our best to get her through the teenage years unscathed, to successful adulthood.

Well, that’s certainly an outcome worth a bit of hard work!

In my last post I talked about our difficulties in getting a diagnosis for Seth.

In Australia there is no real recognition of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD). We have no diagnostic teams who understand the problem. We have to flounder around, making appointments here and there for hearing tests, sight tests, blood tests, genetics consultations, IQ tests… and at the end of it all, months after starting, we were no closer to understanding the big picture.

Until a lucky break.

An organisation in my home city, ARBIAS, who deal with adults suffering brain injury from the effects of drug and alcohol use, realised that children suffered this problem too and launched the first Australian clinic to look at FASD. No team approach, just one neuropsych assessment, but I had my referral in within days of finding out about the clinic, and Seth was booked in for mid December. I was ecstatic, not just for us but for all those other foster families I knew who suspected their kids were alcohol effected.

Seth was reluctant to submit to yet another assessment, but I explained to him that this time we would be looking at his brain and how it works, and even how it doesn’t always work properly, and that with this information we’d be better able to know the best ways for him to learn. At this point in time, having given up on the home schooling, he had been attending a small private community school half an hour from our home with small classes (only ten in his class) and individual work programs, and he seemed quite settled and happy. He had just the day before completed grade five, and after the long summer break, would enter his final year of primary school.

It was a long day for Seth, who is easily fatigued by cognitive activities, but my discussion with the neoropsychologist at the end of the day left me optimistic that this time Seth’s real problem (brain damage from fetal alcohol) was being acknowledged and the final report would be a major stepping stone to acquiring the services he would need to be educated to the best of his ability over the forthcoming years.

I was maybe a bit too optimistic, but a month later I finally did get that report, and as I mentioned, it did tell me what I’ve been waiting to know. What is more the detailed results of all the testing gave us an accurate profile of Seth’s cognitive abilities, including attention and memory, executive and adaptive functioning, auditory and visual reasoning, language comprehension, reading and maths levels. I was confident as I read the report (although it occasionally brought tears to my eyes as I realised the extent of damage my little boy’s brain had suffered) that it would be of great assistance to his teacher in the school year ahead.

What was a disappointment was the news that the organisation, after barely six months, was closing the FASD clinic. Apparently they’d overreached themselves, and could not actually afford to provide these services to children. Although we were one of the lucky families to receive a diagnosis, it meant there were no further services offered, as had previously been promised. We were on our own again.

So here we are with a seven page assessment outlining Seth’s neuropsychological abilities and impairments.  I need to work harder at being an advocate for Seth, but I’m not sure how to go about it. I feel too emotional and passionate sometimes to present as cool and logical. I need someone else to be able to come to the school and talk on Seth’s behalf about his disability. Unable to find anyone knowledgeable about FASD except the neoropsychologist who did the original assessment and with whom I sometimes have phone and email contact, I am ringing around organisations that provide services for children with acquired brain injuries and I’m hopeful they may have some services to offer Seth. I have also contacted an educational psychologist who seems sympathetic to Seth’s needs and claims some understanding of FAS, and she is willing to come work with the school (but that will be at quite some cost to us).

I can’t be the first Aussie mum to have a child with a FASD but I feel like it. I know of no other child with a diagnosis (but have my suspicions of a few children in foster care who show quite definite symptoms). I’m hoping someone might read my blog (or a few someones) and maybe one day I can get a support group going. The only support organisation I’m aware of in Australia is NOFASARD. That’s in another state (South Australia), but at least they provide some information, and are a lobby group for families living with FASD in Australia. Anyone else in this country who suspects their child has fetal alcohol damage would find this a good starting point for information.

For now I need to look at my son and determine his immediate needs and how we can meet them.

Of course, it’s not all about FASD, but when it comes to his school experience somehow it always comes back to concerns about his behaviours and learning difficulties. At home it’s easier just to see the sweet and active boy he is. He loves riding his bike, learning tricks on his skateboard and mastering his inline skates (actually his big sister’s but I’m hoping she’s actually passed them on to him). He is delightful with his little foster brother (who he’ll so miss when he has to leave our family) and is totally obsessed with the computer game RuneScape which he loves to play on line with Portia and their friends. He is an interesting conversationalist, often branching off on some illogical but fascinating tangents, and makes for good company when he has to stay home from school (which happens quite regularly) and we’re forced to spend the day together.

People tell us how lucky it was for him to be placed in our family all those years ago, but despite the hard work and heart ache, he’s a joy and we’re the lucky ones.

Just a couple of months ago I received the neuropsychologist’s report from the assessment she did on eleven year old Seth late last year.

Six pages into the report which detailed the assorted cognitive areas she tested I read the words I’ve been expecting for years….

Seth’s profile can be most explained by alcohol related neurodevelopmental disorder [ARND]….

Apparently a definitive diagnosis cannot be given without confirmation of maternal substance abuse. Although there is no doubt his mother drank heavily throughout the pregnancy, we don’t have written evidence of this.

But here at last is an explanation for all the difficulties Seth has experienced throughout his school years and hopefully I can now say to teachers and any others who have contact with my son, “this child has fetal alcohol brain damage, this is how it has effected him, and this is what you need to do to ensure he has the best opportunity to learn” (and hope they will listen to me).

When Seth entered our lives barely six weeks old and less than seven pounds, despite being born pretty close to full term, we had no idea of the distress and joy this little boy would bring to our family. It started as a one week voluntary placement by parents both suffering from alcohol dependency who were unable to deal with the constant crying of their baby suffering from alcohol withdrawal. One week turned to two, then Human Services became involved as the parents weren’t attending access visits or responding to the social worker’s calls. Weeks turned to months and Seth saw his family only twice after entering care. They eventually faded out of his life altogether. I have had some written correspondence with his mother. I think she is glad her little boy is in a safe, loving home away from the alcoholism and domestic violence that would otherwise have been his experience.

I was the one to take baby Seth to the Children’s Hospital to test for Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS). The geneticist who performed the examination reported that although he didn’t feel that Seth had the facial appearance consistent with FAS, his small size and the history of alcohol exposure were very suggestive of it. Six months later a pediatrician’s report stated that Seth was

at moderate to high risk of having some difficulties associated with FAS/E [Fetal Alcohol Syndrome/Effects].

By this stage Seth’s early distress and dysregulation had abated and he was now a sweet, happy almost one year old who had a special spot in our family. We applied for Permanent Care so he could remain in our family forever. Whatever the future brought, we would be there for him.

During his infancy and preschool years Seth demonstrated timely development in most areas with a few problems around speech and, later, fine motor control. As we accessed services to help him in these areas I continually questioned the possibility of fetal alcohol effects, but the professionals did not seem to know their stuff too well. Replies were usually like “but he doesn’t have the FAS look” or “He’s bright enough, he has a normal IQ” and at age four and a half he did fall within the average cognitive range when tested with the WPPSI-R (a common preschool IQ test). We continued to attend to individual difficulties as they arose.

Preschool and the early years of primary school went along smoothly enough. Seth was always a little behind his peers in any academic areas, but he was a sweet responsive boy who caused no trouble in school so he didn’t attract attention. I noticed he was harder to engage in reading and word games, number puzzles and suchlike than the older kids had been. But he was an active boy who loved bike riding and climbing and performing handstands and cartwheels along the footpath, so his resistance to anything requiring brain power just seemed part of his personality.

By the time he was eight or nine however, we started to notice some puzzling aspects about Seth. Not only was he not learning to tell the time, he didn’t even seem very aware of the time throughout the day, unsure whether it had been lunchtime yet, or when it was time to come inside at the end of the day. Even the seasons and months of the year seemed to baffle him. Time spent on simple maths facts and times tables while walking to school or driving in the car were repeated day after day, with no sense of him getting it. What is more he was less cooperative about spending time on these activities and sought ways to avoid them. At school his teacher found him reluctant to try new activities, hard to motivate and hard to keep on task.

We organised for an educational assessment to be done when Seth was nine and a half and at the end of third grade. It indicated his IQ was in the low average range and that he had some specific learning difficulties in reading and spelling with poor visual memory and weak processing speed. The report concluded with a number of recommendations and suggested classroom strategies which I was able to take back to the teacher. Over the following school year some individual intervention in phonic based reading was provided at school and at home I put him through a similar phoneme based program called Phono-graphix. We did see a little improvement but by the end of grade four Seth had slipped even further behind his peers in all academic areas.

At this point I was really starting to feel concerned for my little boy, now ten and a half years old. Not just because he was doing poorly academically, but I could see his self esteem falling too, and he was often frustrated and confused in the classroom. Some behaviour problems were also starting to emerge in that Seth was becoming a little defiant at school and would sometimes run off from teachers when they were disciplining him. I had a few discussions with the Principal but felt that the school was not able to meet his needs. But then I wasn’t really sure what his needs were.

As Seth started fifth grade I felt trepidation for the coming year. He seemed unsettled, complained about not being able to do the work, told me he was dumber than the other kids and chose to work at home with me regularly (over the years we had often had the occasional ‘home schooling’ day to give him a bit of a break from the daily grind of school) . After an interview with his teacher, who had taught him the previous two years and was really concerned for how difficult he was finding school and how much he was dragging behind his peers, I made the decision to withdraw him from school for a while to try full time home schooling, and pursue a diagnosis of a Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) in the hope of finding some answers to the difficulties he was experiencing.

That was one year ago. Home schooling was not completely successful. Seth changed his mind so many times. He would remember the fun times, break times out in the playground with his friends, socialising in class, friends that helped him with his work and he’d forget how discouraged and frustrated he’d been.

Sometimes he would beg me to let him go back to school. He would nag and nag all day, completely unable to focus on any activity, fall apart in my arms, but I knew returning to the state school was not the answer. Their overworked teachers, large classes of 28 kids and lack of interventionist resources meant they could not meet Seth’s needs. If he let me, I knew we could be successful with home schooling, but he resisted most days. He was difficult to motivate, needed my constant attention to get a task completed, refused to get involved with local home schooling groups and hated all the assessments the paediatrician was putting him through in our attempt to gain a diagnosis.

We were starting to doubt whether this was going to lead us anywhere but we stumbled upon a service that we hoped might give us the answers we were looking for. I’ll talk about this more in my next post.

So Angel wasn’t sent home at a moment’s notice - lucky, as I hadn’t packed all his clothes and toys.

In my heart I couldn’t believe the Magistrate would really do that to this little boy; just rip him from the family he knows and loves, to return to a Grandma who has become almost a stranger having barely seen him each month. He’s been given the one thing needed if this reunification attempt is not to traumatise him - time. We are now speaking in months. The next court case is scheduled for early June.

In the meantime regular, more frequent access has been court-ordered for Grandma. Next week she has two visits, each of two hours, three visits the following week, then increasing to four the week after that. One a week will be held at DHS and I have been invited to attend a part of that, which I willcertainly do. It can only help Angel to see me with Grandma, and I want to impart a little of his routine and his needs to her if I can. The other access visits will be at her place which will enable Angel to become familiar with the home he left almost nine months ago and the other members of the family. This includes his mum and two older sibs so there are many people to get used to again.

At the end of four weeks the transition will be reviewed to make sure Grandma is abiding by the guidelines and demonstrating her commitment to her grandson. I guess if she doesn’t seem to be complying the plan for reunification will be reassessed. I hope she comes through with flying colours. I need her to, to be able to believe that going home is in Angel’s best interests.

All kids belong with their family, and if that family doesn’t meet my ideals of the very best family for that child, who am I to judge? I did have a little dream, when Angel’s birth family moved off the scene for a bit, of him moving on to a loving “permanent care family”. Whenever he was at his most charming and cute (and he’s very good at that) I imagined how delighted his new mum and dad would be adding him to their family. I’ve participated in transitions to adoptive and permanent families in the past.  Although it’s always difficult farewelling a child who’s been yours for so long, the outcomes for both the child and families have always been excellent, and I look back at all of them very positively.

Angel returning home means a shift in my projective thoughts. I can do that (well I hardly have a choice do I; I’m the foster mum). Not knowing the family at all makes it more difficult, so I’ll be pushing for more contact over the next month, and hope I can develop some rapport with Grandma, even though we don’t speak the same language.

I don’t anticipate having contact with the family after reunification (as I still do with one little girl who left my care five years ago, but still regularly stays with us, and is truly still my little girl) but I would like to have a positive image of Angel within his home and family to help me cope with him going.

Angel’s family have been given their chance. I’m on the sidelines watching, hoping they do a good job of it, so my heart is easier when the day finally comes when I have to hand my sweet little boy back to them.

Or should I say, insufficient plans for Angel’s reunification with his birth family.

There is a strong possibility that Angel will be returned to his grandmother’s custody this week. At present she is only seeing him every few weeks for a one hour supervised access along with other family members. With the possibility of him returning to her care it was suggested to her that access be arranged on a daily basis leading up to the court case, so if the decision is made to send him home at least she will be a little more familiar to him. But she refused, on the basis that she cared for him his first three months, has been seeing him since, and knows him. But how can he know her?

For the last eight and a half months Angel has been in my care and, as would be expected, has formed a strong attachment with me. For the last few months the feeling at his care plan meetings was that there was a strong likelihood he would not be moving back to family and that we should be pushing for permanency plans to be made. His birth mum showed no signs of overcoming her dependency, and Angel’s grandmother was not wanting custody of the baby, being more than busy enough with his older siblings. Neither were taking full advantage of the scheduled twice weekly access visits; in fact sometimes four or five weeks went by between visits. Our concerns were to move Angel’s case plan from family reunification to Permanent Care, but each time it went to Court the outcome was yet another three week Interim Accommodation Order, even though D.H.S. (Department of Human Services) were pushing for a Custody Order.

Until just two weeks ago when the Magistrate refused to roll over the Interim Accommodation Order, claiming that Angel should not be in foster care as there was no significant risk to him at home. The Magistrate directed that we send him home that day. Fortunately the D.H.S. worker managed to convince her that it wasn’t in Angel’s best interests to be returned home with no transition, having not even seen Grandma for almost two months, so we were granted till the next scheduled Court hearing to make plans for his reunification.

D.H.S. workers are trying to make these plans believing if we end up with the same Magistrate she’ll send Angel home the very same day. But Grandma obviously doesn’t have a great understanding of how attachment works (most people don’t) and doesn’t seem keen to learn. What is more she has never worked well with D.H.S. workers so they haven’t had much chance to explain to her how important it is for Angel to have time to begin attaching to her while he’s still secure in his placement with me. Being of a different culture and language with little understanding of English doesn’t help communication efforts either.

I had planned to attend some of those extra access visits too so Angel could see me interacting with Grandma, maybe talking and laughing with her, the two of us playing with him together, so the little guy could see that I approved of and liked Grandma. Then when he found himself living with her, and no sign of me anywhere, he’d hopefully feel ok to love her, because he somehow remembered the two of us together in a positive way.

Now those plans have to be set aside.

Who’s to say Grandma will bother to come to any access now until the Court hearing. Meanwhile I just keep on caring for Angel, giving him all the love he needs, hoping that the last eight months in our care has built up his resilience to help him through this difficult time ahead for him.

I can hardly blame the Grandmother - she just wants her grandson back - but I hope the Court’s guiding principle of acting “in the best interests of the child” win out and we can make a gentle transition for him back to his family. I can’t make myself feel ok about Angel returning home, but I would at least like the opportunity to make such a big change for him happen the best way it can.