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.