You might be interested...

...in the email I just received from Licensing Worker's supervisor (She Deserved The Promotion Worker (SDTPW)):

Hi [Foster Ima],

I just wanted to let you know that the corrections have been made to your homestudy and and I have signed off on your file. Your file will now go to my Program Manager who will review your homestudy and sign it as well. Next, your license will be prepared and she will sign off on it, so I expect that you will be fully licensed and able to take a child by the end of the month.

You can feel free to email our placement office starting October 1st to let them know you have a vacancy in your home. The email address is [xxx].

The placement office typically works from a vacancy list; however, I am suggesting that you email because it usually takes a week or so once you are licensed to be added to the list, to be assigned a support worker and a relicensing worker.

Feel free to contact me if you have any other questions.

Is it possible?

I am hereby confessing to the blogosphere my naivete:

I spoke this afternoon with Licensing Worker's supervisor. Let's call her She Deserved The Promotion Worker (SDTPW)--she was the other worker who taught my training class and it was clear from day one that she was better than Licensing Worker. (Licensing Worker also took vacation the last two weeks of the class. But that's a different story.)

The unnecessary background is that I emailed Licensing Worker on Tuesday asking for an update; I received her out-of-office reply (that she would be out last week) which included that SDTPW is now her supervisor. So when I hadn't heard back from her by this morning, I emailed SDTPW--who then called me in response. Woohoo!

SDTPW tells me that my report is now on her desk and she will review it tomorrow. (Can I believe her? I hope so. Naivete #1.) After she reviews it and the only changes that need to be made are typographical (really? Licensing Worker is good enough that we can trust that? and she'll make them in a timely fashion? I'm feeling less confident already...), it goes to the program manager who should sign off on it "in the next week or so." Oh please.

So perhaps, just maybe, it is possible that with the start of the new year, I will have my license. With help from the external Absolute.

School Choices

I'm on day three of revising a four-page document, and on my fifth-to-last day of work, so of course I'm searching out procrastination. No, this is not why I'm on my fifth-to-last day of work.

I don't recall if I've written about school before, but since the issue came up in a comment (okay, since I brought the issue up in a comment), I thought I'd write about it. It is, after all, related to what I am doing for the next five days, if not to the document that I am supposed to be working on.

My Big City has some really good public schools and a lot of really bad public schools, with a very active reform effort to improve all of the schools. We also have more school choice than is reasonable. That is, there is a very vibrant out-of-boundary lottery as well as a very large charter school community, so a parent can, theoretically, change his or her mind about what school his or her kid goes to every year. I saw that this happens, among parents who are very commited to their kids' education, despite research (that I don't know where to find at the moment) that changing schools is bad for kids' performance. I was at a community meeting where a parent was incensed that her kids' school was being closed and the kid was therefore going to have to go somewhere new. Her son was in kindergarten and in his third school. (I should note that the new school was three blocks away and would have the same teachers, along with others, just not the same building.)

All this is to say:
1. A foster kid who changes schools with a new placement isn't necessarily experiencing more school disruptions than a kid who has lived in the same house his or her entire life. (Not that this justifies changing schools regularly.)
2. Our school system is set up to accommodate students who go to school outside of their neighborhood.

The school placement of a foster kid is the decision of the social worker. I understand that as a foster parent I won't have the authority to make decisions in this area. However, I am absolutely certain that if a foster parent said "I won't drive little Shaniqua to her current school" (or "I won't take little Shaniqua on the bus to her current school") that the social worker would say "fine, she'll go to your neighborhood school."

Which makes me think that I will have at least some say in the matter.

It happens that my neighborhood school is one of the good ones. And that it is very likely that whatever neighborhood school my foster kiddos are coming from, it won't be as good as mine. But that doesn't necessarily mean that switching schools will be the best decision in every case. I do think that by living where I do, with a good neighborhood school, the decision about school placement will be more difficult.

Yet I feel like once again I am going to be the exception, allowing the social worker to prioritize stability when that is the best option even when the school itself is worse, when my suspicion is that most foster parents in my city won't make the sacrifice to take their foster kids to a school in another part of the city, even when the schools are equally poor and stability is the only thing going for their education.

[And yet it has been over a year and I'm still not licensed. Why?]

Life Books

I know that I've read some posts recently (in the last four or so months, probably) about life books, but don't remember on whose blogs. Sorry for not referring back to you; I would if I could keep these things straight in my mind. (Actually, I might have posted myself about them. Who knows.)

Anyway, in my blog reader this evening I learned that My Agency is soliciting donations of scrapbooking supplies to help kids in care make life books. Great. I think that life books are a fabulous idea. I have a few concerns about making a huge deal about how "KIDS IN CARE SHOULD HAVE LIFE BOOKS!! WE'RE WONDERFUL FOR THINKING ABOUT THIS!!" Sure, a life book has more--or different--things in it than your typical kid's scrapbook is likely to have. But does it have to have its own special name?

Rant #1 over. This post is supposed to be about rant #2, starting now:

Why does My Agency have to have this special initiative, instead of, oh, dedicating a few resources to helping foster parents understand the importance of life books? What are they going to do, mandate that kids come in to the Agency to work on their life books with their social worker? It's not like they're going to distribute the scrapbooking materials that they receive to the homes where kids are living. And really, how expensive are the materials anyway? My jurisdiction is one of the best in terms of reimbursement rates, so I'd think that a few pairs of scissors, some glue, and fancy paper wouldn't break the bank.

Wow, I'm cynical tonight. Maybe I just feel affronted because I knew from the start that I would want to make scrapbooks or memory books for/with the kiddos in my home and didn't need the lesson on life books during our training to tell me that they are a good idea.

Okay, rant #2 over. Feel free to tell me in the comments about how your agencies don't do anything to support life books, so this initiative would be welcome where you are, or how foster parents need the extra prodding or assistance to make sure that kids have life books, or how there is a fundamental difference between life books and scrapbooks and how dare I minimize the importance of life books.

What will the kiddos call me?

This is a question that I've been mulling over for longer than I've been trying to get licensed. I had hoped that in my training class, they might have addressed practical questions like this.

Until yesterday, I had been floating three ideas:
1. My first name
2. Mama [My first name]
3. Ima [My first name]

But then inspiration struck. I have a little friend (Boy4--at least for now) who just turned 3 on Sunday. He can't quite say my name. Now, let's say my name were "Jenny" (it's not). Boy4 calls me "Munny." (If my name were "Serena" he would call me "Murena.") Which seems a great combination of "Mama" and my name. Plus, it's so adorable when Boy4 does it, but he is slowly growing out of it. (His parents, however, are slowing that process by no longer using my correct name :-) )

On the other hand, it might be strange for a kiddo to come into my home and have me kneel down to introduce myself and say "Hi, I'm Munny."

Yeah, maybe this requires more thought.

Answers, part 5

SocialWrkr24/7 asked a follow-up question: is adoption a possibility? (I've paraphrased because for some reason, I'm too lazy to copy and paste from the comment. But not too lazy to type two entire sentences about my laziness.)

As I told Licensing Worker during my home study, I'm really more interested in the fostering piece. I want to be there for the kids and their parents until reunification can happen. If it can happen. I know there aren't enough adoptive parents out there either, but if I adopt, then I'm out of the rotation (so to speak) for foster kids, and I have a sneaking suspicion that there's a bigger shortage of foster parents.

Now, what happens when kiddo #1 comes along, and I fall in love, and reunification can't happen? Ask me then if adoption is a possibility :-)

P.S. I should add, lest anyone have this thought in the back of their mind--my Big City has fairly good post-adoption support. So that isn't a factor that would have me saying "ooh, let's mess kids up more so I can foster longer." (I hope you all realize, of course, that nothing would have me intentionally deciding to mess kids up!)

Answers, part 4

I suppose I should save some of these questions for later, rather than inundating you with--what is it?--six? posts today. But that's too rational for me.

Sarsmile asked what I'm going to do about Christian holidays. I alluded to this way back in the beginning in a post that no one would be expected to remember or, more importantly, find. I could only find it because I had tagged it with "Christianity" and until this one, there were only two posts with that tag. Oh, you want a link to it? Here it is. It's way down at the bottom, the second footnote.

So yes, Christmas is definitely going to be done. I've got some decorations already and am looking forward to a party to decorate the apartment. We might have to go without a tree, but the kiddo will just have to deal. (The callousness is intended to be sarcastic.) Honestly, I just don't know how to buy a tree, put it in the stand, make sure it isn't a fire hazard...

Specifics of church vs no church vs which church will have to be addressed on a kid by kid basis. Obviously, it would be nicer if the answer is no church. Not having Saturday for errands and such, if half of Sunday were then taken up by church, things could be difficult. The time that we could spend going to museums and the park and having play dates instead will be spent grocery shopping and cleaning and being boring. But it will depend on the kid's church-going background and any direction from the kid's biofamily, though as long as the kid actually is Christian, we'll undoubtedly end up going to church on occasion for cultural reasons.