haircut frustration

I would double check that one! i just had my fs' haircut and the social worker was gushing over it! I'm in L.A. county. We adopted our first fs after having him from birth - they wouldn't let us circumcise him until the adoption was final even though there were NO parents in the picture - they had relinquished him under the safe arms act. So, at 11 months we had to have it done - ouch! this is my second go at fost-adopt - cross your fingers - it looks like it's going to be a tricky one!

Santa Clara County is the same.. no haircut for foster kids without parental OK. If parents say no, then court permission is needed.

We had a 13 month old girl who had this one really straggly piece of hair that hung in her face all the time and always got in her mouth when she ate. I got fed up and cut it to the length of the rest of her hair. We are talking about only a dozen or so strands of hair that I trimmed about an inch to match the rest of her hair. Well after her next vist the social worker said the mom (a 16 year old heroin addict) was very upset that we had given her her first hair cut! She was wanting to know if we kept the hair, etc. I tried to explain to the social worker that we didn't have her hair cut, I just trimmed off a straggly end. Who knew it would even be noticable?

It is easier to get forgiveness than permission. Stuart's Law of Retroaction I had no idea there is such a rule. Count my blessings, our foster children (4 and 5) love getting their hair cut... they love "stick up hair" (spikey with a little gel in it). No one has ever said anything negative.

I am fairly new to this site - so - I am reading all that I can. I LOVE DianeS's suggestions!! What a hoot!! I know that in Indiana you have to have permission from the bp and/or cw. I had a fd (age four) with me last year for a while and she had long hair (including long bangs) and her hair was getting terrible to work with. I asked the cw if I could have it trimmed and she said "ok". So, I did. I took her and had her hair professionally cut. Remind you, she was only four - I could have cut it myself, but I chose to have a "professional" do it!! :) :) Note: You could not tell that her hair had even been cut and I did not have the bangs cut!! Well, I took my then fd to a supervised visitation with her mother. The first thing that my fd said was, "Look Mom, Christina cut my hair." Well, needless to say the bp hit the roof. She informed me that I had no right to cut her hair - that she was the MOTHER and she had NEVER cut her hair before. She was very rude and disrespectful. I did not deserve to be talked to this way especially in front of this child that was already having difficulting listening to anyone but her Mom. Note (again!!): Fd and her brother had been in the foster care system for several years off and on. I wanted to give the Mom respect (maybe she felt bad because she wasn't around to make this decision - maybe not - I didn't know and I was not going to upset this child) so I had to bite my lip because what was getting ready to come out was "If you were a Mother that would care for your children then you and I would never be having this conversation and you would be able to decide if and when to cut this child's hair!!!!" But, I remained calm cool and collected!! In general, most bp don't mind their child's hair being trimmed. I believe the "law" with cutting hair was started because some religions have different beliefs in regards to cutting hair. Some fp's would have the child's hair cut to suit the fp as soon as the child arrived at their home and in some cases this violated the bp religious beliefs. Christina

Heres what i did when i was in the sam stuation. i told the SW that the hair was hurting his vision, and lucky for me I had a great doctor that backed me up on it and i cut the hair! :) good luck

[font=Comic Sans MS]I am not in CA, but in Wyoming. We have "hair issues" here too! I have not had a problem myself but other foster parents in my county have.When the children are taken from the bparents they only have so many things they get to have "say" about. So they hold those tight!!!I ran into the issue of have a medical procedure done! My fd (12 months at the time) was tongue tied. It was affecting her speech. I had to fight tooth and nail and months to get it done. I finally had the doctor write a report and sent it to the judge on the case! That got the ball rolling!!!! It's a real pain!!![/font]

I have a fs that is 4 years old, when he came to me his hair was very curly and past his shoulders, it took at least 15-20min to do it...gel blow dry just like a girl, it was bueatiful. Every where we went people would say what a bueatiful little girl, he would get so mad. He begin replying through clentched teeth, I'M A BOY, i told him not to talk to adults like that and if he didnt like being called a girl he should have his hair cut. bparents, mainly mom said no. It came to the sw wanting me to put him in pre school, he started wetting his pant peeing the bed, we asked what is wrong, his reply, i dont want to go to school and have all the kids call me a girl, when mom found this out she finilly let his hair be cut. Its really dumb that we cant make decisions about stuff like that. I would NEVER allow my son to have hair that long so in our home i'd like the boys to look like boys. But if bparents so no then there the boss. what bull. :mad:

Wow... that blows me away. I can't believe... wait yes I can... I can believe all sorts of weird wacky stupid things... but dang. Not being able to cut your foster child's hair without permission from the parents who obviously are in NO position to be making decisions for a child they can't take care of anyway? *bangs head against wall*

I had a little boy who had long beautiful black hair. His birth family refused to let us get it cut. We were constantly being told what beautiful girls we had. It was really annoying, especially since we live on a military base.

Here in indiana we have to ask permission also!:hissy: It gets crazy when you have dialed sw number 500 times to get permission to trim bangs out of someones eyes because you dont know if they are awake or not. :confused: We get very annoyed because after the 500 phone calls to talk with the sw you then get we have to confirm with bp (which happens to be mia about 75% of the time).:eek: Usually we trim them then hope nobody is paying attn!! shhhhhhh dont let that out lol. How crazy is that? Oh well, the things we do to adopt!!:eyebrows:

In CA I asked my 2.5 yo AA FS's attorney for permission to cut it - as BioM would not give me a straight answer and the cw was from Mars. BioM wanted it kept braided (platted) but I couldn't do that. She would do it every few weeks - but he would pull it out - finally when there were blisters on his head from them - his attorney said - cut it and if they have a problem - let them call me. There was a huge issue over it - but I didn't have to glue it back on - and he was doing so well at my home - they didn't want to move him. So it blew over. I now maintain whatever legnth that the child has when they come to my home - if it is short - it stays short. Our "contract" says to maintain the child in a clean and healthy manner. To my keyboard's way of thinking . . . . . maintenance includes reasonable trimming of a child's hair. . .

I too had a 18 month old fs whose hair was almost long enough to donate for the Locks of Love. BM wanted to get it cut so he would look like a boy but she was afraid to tick off BF. Finally after he took fs out trick or treating this year and got commented on his cute GIRL(6 different times that night alone), he did allow bm to trim it up.(his bangs were into his mouth-he would move them to eat)He had since then gotten 2 more cuts by the bm and he now looks like a boy with a boy cut but still long enough that if he were mine, it would be a couple inches shorter. Also remember we have to get permission to sign them up for just about anything: scouts, church groups, swimming lessons, etc. If they come with a hairstyle already cut, then I do keep it trimmed to the same length and style as when they arrived but if they are little and have never had a cut before-you just have to wait! I had another little fs who his mom didn't ever want it cut either(it was very long and curly-difficult to keep neat looking) with in two weeks of him being back home full time- she (bm) had shaved his head:arrow:

we have 3 foster kids, 2 girls and a boy, they're hispanic and the boy's hair is very straight and grows really fast, so it's always sticking out over his ears and grows really funny around his hair line. (apparently it was growing out from a buzz cut when he came to us.) it took a while to get it approved to get it cut, but now we're also in the 'maintenance' stage and just cut it whenever we need to. our older girl has long pretty hair with no bangs so it really hasn't been an issue yet. the other is only 3 months and although she has a ton of hair, like her sister, it really won't matter for a while.

We have the OPPOSITE problem... We do not want to cut our son's hair due to him having Plageocephaly from the bio parents leaving him in the crib for months. His head is really misshapen. He has beautiful curls that hide his "issue". The bios want him to have a buzz cut...SW is not much help. ߤע ♂️