| Jim, I am not a foster parent but my daycare lady is and I have seen
her go through so much in the past few months with this one child that
I really felt bad for her.
Now don't get me wrong when reading this. My daycare lady is very good
with the kids and cares alot about them. Most of the kids they give
her have been abused either sexually or mentaly. This one partiucler
kid she had was almost 2 and was sexually abused by his dad, the mother
knew about it and still let it happen so DSS took this kid away and
sent him to my sitter. He went on a visit one day with his mom and
never came back. My sitter got a call from dss and was told that the
mother filed a 51A aginst her for neglect and abuse (which she never
has done). Dss came donw to talk to her and told her they were going
to drop the charges because they knew she never did such a thing. They
were supposed to close the case on this kid last Firday 8/10 the case
worker showed up but his social worker never did. So now my sitter has
to wait to find out what happened to the little boy because no one
seems to know where he is, not even the DSS office.
She (my sitter) feels a loss when the kids leave to either go to
another home or back to their parents.
Liz
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| I have never been a foster parent but I can relate to the feelings the
providers have because I can well remember how tough it was at the end
of a summer at summer camp (8 weeks long, I was a counselor) when the
kids in my cabin left. That was before I was married and, to me, it was
like giving up part of my family. It was strange because I seemed to
be the only one affected that way. I certainly understand how a foster
parent feels. I wonder why they don't get burned out after investing
so much in a person to have it guaranteed to end. I don't know if I
would be willing to put myself through that. But I suppose the
willingness is a form of mature love which I would like to develop
in myself. I have one child, a three year old boy.
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