Saying good-bye

When working with the social services system, we expected things to change frequently. We knew we should plan to work with a lot of different case workers. We were supposed to plan on having one consistent worker for M and I.

Not so much.

Three kids. Two families.

Same intake worker (the one who does the initial interview and who pretty much decides if a child(ren) need to be placed in care). Same ongoing worker (the one who sticks with the kids and checks up on them and makes sure they are getting visits and other needs met).

OUR caseworker? (the FDS - we'll call him 'Bob') left after the girls... the poor new worker had to wait months before we remembered her name and stopped calling her "not-Bob" and "the new Bob'" then another month before we would tell her anything...

Anyways, Sunshines caseworker said goodbye today. She's been working with her for a year and a half now and WANTED us to take her in the first place. Lil Miss had a ROUGH afternoon after their goodbye visit, and ended up being hand fed lunch and dinner and put in her room early for bed. She was vile to M, violent to me, and got destructive. She wouldn't let us get close to her, and couldn't be in control.
We gave her words for what was going on in her head and that made her more angry.

She has been a really great support for both the kids and us. It really seams like this year, she has seen some unusually bad things and she looks like she's going to break if she doesn't have a major change... We're sad to see her go, but we hope she finds something really pleasant to do now.

Thanks for two and a half great years!!!

Oh, and our daughter! You found her, found us, did the math and stuck us together... it's working.