Yesterday

**There has been so much drama this week that taking pictures has seemed irrelevant. I've yet to decide if I want to post about the other happenings of this week, but I know for sure I need to document thursday.**

Yesterday I thought I was going to see a mother's joy when she hears her daughter is being returned to her. Five months ago this mother made the mature decision to let her daughter live with her grandmother because she knew she had her own issues to take care of. She knew she needed to do what was best for her daughter. For the first time in over two years, this mother finally decided she was ready to make a change.

I've only known her for the last four months, but in that time I have seen one of the most determined and motivated individuals I may ever meet. She has worked tirelessly to ensure that when the court date arrived she would be prepared to have her daughter placed in her care. Every monday for the last sixteen weeks I have watched her interact with her daughter and I have been impressed by the obvious bond between them. It was obvious to me when we went to the dentist and the only way her daughter was finally able to comply was when her mother told her how disappointed and sad and upset she was. This daughter wanted to please her mother because she is bonded to her and, as is normal in bonded relationships, the daughter did not want to disappoint her mother.

However, the judge did not support our recommendation for the goal. I sat in another hearing for another case earlier yesterday morning, in which the mother had similar issues as this mother. In the earlier case the mother had been doing well, but within the last six months she has regressed. It is my own personal opinion that the judge might have had that on his mind when he told this other mother that he wanted to see her continue to make progress for another six months before changing the goal. I understand the judge has to protect the children and I respect his decision, but it doesn't mean I have to agree.

Perhaps the most devastating part of the judge's decision was his decision to make the child a ward of the state. Previously, she had only been a ward of the court and was not in foster care. The child had been living with her grandmother only because the mother agreed to place the child there, not because she was court ordered to. At that point the mother still had all of her parental rights, which I think was and still is appropriate. As a ward of the state, the child will remain with her grandmother, but she is now in relative foster care.

Yesterday this case became a foster care case, instead of an intact case. Once the case went to foster care it gets reassigned to a foster care caseworker. Under normal circumstances we might expect that the case might remain in our office since we have previously worked with the family. However, we aren't operating as normal. Our intake has been closed for the current time, which means the case is going to move to another agency entirely.

I fully anticipated that last monday might possibly be the last visit I supervised. But I thought it would be the last for completely different reasons. Yesterday, we had a meeting with the mother and grandmother after court to discuss where we go from here. As we sat there it hit me that I may never see this family again. I might get to be there when we hand the case off to whatever agency gets it, but even then that is only the handoff of the child. Generally, handoffs don't include the parent too.

I have watched this mother make so much progress and work so hard. She has busted her a** to get her daughter home. (My supervisor's words exactly.) Sometimes you work so hard and it seems you have nothing to show for it. The judge tells you that the work you have done is commendable and yet he doesn't send your child home to you. Yet. My heart breaks for my client. I don't know what it is like to have your child taken away from you, but I do know what it feels like to buckle down and work hard and see nothing happen. I know what it feels like to work and feel like it is all in vain.

I hope she sees that six months is a blip on the screen in the grand scheme of things. I hope she sees that her daughter is so young she will probably not remember most of this anyway. I hope she sees the light at the end of the tunnel. Yes, six months feels like an eternity now, but what you have done is not in vain. Keep doing what you are doing, please. It will not be in vain.