Jason* came to live with us while his regular social worker was on vacation.  When she came back to work and found that one of “her children” had been moved without her permission she was not happy.  I don’t know if she vented her frustration on us because she couldn’t with her boss who had authorized the move, or if she actually thought that my husband and I had Jason moved without her on purpose.  Either way we began to feel her wrath.  She was not at all interested in the best interest of Jason, just of herself.

It started with phone calls where the social worker complained about how Jason shouldn’t have been moved without her permission.  I simply told her I had nothing to do with that, I didn’t choose the date, and her boss had been fine with it.  Then she began to threaten us with removing Jason from our home if we didn’t get our paperwork in on time.  I explained that the paperwork was already there. 

Another threat to remove Jason came when it was discovered that we needed to have physicals again.  The social worker demanded that they be on her desk within the week. I explained that we had the physicals scheduled for a few weeks away.  My husband was in the military and our physicals were rather low priority because squadrons were making ready to deploy who needed physicals first.  She suggested that we go to a private Dr. and pay for the physicals ourselves. 

Understand that these were threats.  She didn’t ask politely, didn’t tell us calmly that things were needed as soon as possible, and she didn’t ever let us forget that Jason was in our home against her wishes.  It was always, do this or else.  As the threats to remove Jason from our home kept coming, I finally called our old social worker to ask her for advice.  She was appalled and notified the head honcho.  The boss then had a talk with Jason’s social worker and gave us her number if we had any further problems.  This did not put Jason’s social worker in a better frame of mind.  In her opinion we were backstabbing snobs who thought things should go our way.  We were manipulating the system.

Then the day came when the social worker came out to our house for a scheduled check.  I stood there and watched her open my cupboard doors and refrigerator to make sure we had enough food.  She opened my dishwasher to see if anything was in it.  She even actually lifted the toilet lid to check it for cleanliness!  It was obvious she was looking for an excuse to remove Jason.  In the twelve months of being foster parents we had never had a social worker do these things.  I called the boss and explained what had just transpired.  She was quite angry and had the social worker removed from our case. 

In the midst of all of this Jason’s mother had her rights terminated.  As she was in prison and could use taxpayer dollars to fight it, she did.  So we began the long appeals process.  There was never a doubt in anyone’s mind that the mother would lose the appeal.  However, she had a right to that appeal, she didn’t have to pay for it herself and she was going to fight it, all the way to the Supreme Court. 

A year later and it felt like we were no closer to adopting Jason.  A phone call came that left me with my mouth hanging open and tears in my eyes.  The impossible was being made possible. 

*Not his real name.  He is Boy 1 on my blog. 

Tia Linschied is the mother of four beautiful children, two of which are adopted foster children.  Tia enjoys writing about her family, homeschooling, and her experiences as a foster and adoptive parent.