Disruption

This is a dirty word in foster care.  And rightfully so.

Disruption happens for many reasons.  But no matter what the reason is, it sucks.  For everyone involved.  The child.  The family.  The workers.  Because we know that it adds  trauma to a child who is already traumatized.  We foster to help, not to cause more pain.

My first placement ended in a disruption.  I did EVERYTHING they tell you not to do.

We met him through a friend of a friend a couple of times.  He got along great with my husband, and even though he had disrupted out of a therapeutic level group home, when we got the call because he had no where else to go, we said yes.  We thought we could get through to him.  We thought if we gave him a safe home and loved him enough it would turn out ok.

We were wrong.  He had been in foster care since age 8 and he needed so much more than just love.  He was a 13-year-old boy that I didn’t know how to parent.  I had never parented a teen before.  Our two sons were only 4 and 2 years old at the time.

We felt so alone.  We weren’t licensed foster parents so we had no agency to turn to for help or guidance.  There were no support groups.  His case manager didn’t return my calls.

So after catching him in a lie yet again, I packed up his stuff and put him out at the curb while he waited for his parole officer to come get him.  On a Friday night.

After he left, I was so ashamed.  I couldn’t believe I had done that to a child, inflicting another loss.  Especially because I was adopted and knew how that abandonment felt.  I wanted to run away and crawl into a hole and never talk about foster care or adoption again.

I was also pregnant.  Soon after the disruption, I had a horrible miscarriage and lost the baby at 15 weeks.  I wondered if I deserved to lose the baby because of the disruption.

Luckily time heals.  Or maybe time gives us amnesia.  Probably both.

After about a year, I realized that I couldn’t get away from foster care or adoption.  It is a passion that I rightfully earned through my life experience and I couldn’t run from it.

So I became a licensing worker.  Because I knew that I could support foster families, the way I should have been supported when I was dealing with the biggest challenge of my life.

Tonight, I am helping a foster family have a disruption.  And no matter how good and valid the reasons are, it still sucks.  But I am grateful that I can be there for my foster family.

Even after 13 years, the gravity of that dirty word isn’t lost on me.  And it never will.