She automatically gets a year???

The goal is almost always reunification, even when the bios are out of the picture for some extended time. If they show up, that's progress. In October we'll have had our kids 1 year. The TPR trial is set for the end of September. Their mom has been in and out of rehab 3 times, disappeared twice, been arrested and is awaiting trial for the reason they're in care.. The oldest has been under DFPS supervision for all but 6 months of his nearly 5 years. The little one is nearly 3, so she's always been! The rumor is that the mom is pregnant and due around the time of the trial. If she's clean when she has the baby, but is convicted of the abuse and serves jail time, the baby comes to us. If she's not clean, the baby comes to us. Then we'll probably begin the wait again for her time to come and go for services. Believe it or not, I'm all for the slow motion. It ensures that when TPR finally comes, it'll stick. It's hard to watch it. Hard to be in court and not get any say. Hard to love kids that may go home.

Ooops, I just realized I posted this in the wrong section. :arrow: But thank you for the input. It does make sense to offer her every opportunity, I was just HOPING to be done.

It is ususally based on state law, not the details of the case. All states are different. Most states give them at least 12 months.

They usually do give them the year. :hissy: Sometimes when it is getting close to TPR, that scares the moms and they start working their plan and then they do give them extra time, especially if they are getting somewhere with their plan. We had a boy 18 months and dad kept ALMOST getting it together, finally grandma got him. Then they gave a mildly mentally retarded, mental health issue mom TWO YEARS to try to get it together, and she had made basically NO progress that entire time :arrow: . Then we had a boy a year, mom made no progress, were going to TPR, they found dad, and gave HIM a year. You gotta have the patience of a saint in this system.:evilgrin:

our fd bio mom had three years. She did nothing didn't complete anything on her service plan...you name it. She then made a good choice by selectively surrendering her rights. The couple changed their minds a year ago. We got her and were told we could adopt quickly...WRONG. In our state there is a legal loop hole due to the selective surrender she gets her parental rights back. Now she may get them back! She hasn't seen them in four years!

I like to think about it from the legal angle, not the casework angle. In order to terminate parental rights and have the TPR not get overturned on appeal, the state has to prove that it has made "reasonable efforts" to reunify the family. So what are reasonable efforts? There's the rub: nobody knows and the law doesn't say. So most courts and most departments of social services go WAY WAY WAY beyond what any normal human being would say is reasonable. They provide tons of services, give the parents eons and generally go over the top. When TPR comes, they can say very clearly that they've met the reasonable efforts burden and the parents still washed out. That prevents the appeals court from overturning the case and sending the kid back.Does that help? To me, it explains why everything looks so irrational.

Except when the parents don't! And then we end up removing children from foster families where they have attached and RUing them with birthparents who can only parent with extensive (and expensive) state support. I know, I know -- I'm making a huge generalization. But I wish the reasonable efforts were more clearly defined. And enforced! So what's going to happen to social services with this economic downturn? I fear that we're going to be seeing social worker layoffs and more children lingering longer in the system.

This is unbelievable. I imagine this is to protect birth parents who give their children up in a private adoption...not to protect birth parents in an abuse situation. I hope they get this together quickly.

hopefully they will give her enough rope to hang herself with. that is what happened with ds' bmom...left for 6 mo, got an extension, and promptly messed up.

I realize this is an old post, but I have to say that I, also, wish that reasonable efforts was more clearly defined. We have had Porkchop for almost a year (it will be a year in a couple of weeks) and he was placed with us at 2.5 months. He is now 14 months old and his case is, and has been, a rollercoaster for everyone involved. his biomom cleary loves him and she has "done" all the services asked of her, but cannot demonstrate that she can apply what she has learned and make good parenting decisions without the immediate and direct guidance of a service provider. We even had a go home date set which is now blown out of the water given that as soon as she had more unsupervised time with him (including an overnight a week for a couple of weeks) she fell apart and could not do it. So we cut back on visits to two four hour supervised visits a week. Now I find out they are going to add a third weekly visit, extend it by an hour, and the visits will be partially supervised. Seriously....what are they thinking? One day they are talking about "building a case" and now I get a new visit schedule with a build up in visitation again? I have heard many times from CWs about proving they made reasonable efforts...each CW has a different idea of what reasonable efforts entail. To me, Porkchop's biomom has had over a years worth of every service imaginable and still cannot manage to feed Porkchop properly, let alone do the other things he needs...she is a great "kid" (she really is 20 going on 8 maturity wise) and enjoys playing with him, but parenting is beyond her. yet all I hear is "we dont have enough to terminate and we don't think it is safe for him to go home"... so, really, what does it take?

AngelSunday- I feel for you and your FS. It seems like in these "gray" cases, in particular, that DSS/judges should look strictly at what is in the child's best interest. And 14 months seems long enough to keep a baby in limbo. Sadly, I think what happens in these cases is that if there is not enough evidence then the child is sent back to the birthparents. When services eventually stop, the child may bounce back into foster care again. Which we all know is awful for attachment and traumatic for the child. Our toddler FS was RUed after DSS lost the TPR trial on his birthparents. DSS said it wasn't safe to send him home, but a judge said there wasn't enough evidence to TPR. So after spending just about his entire life in foster care, he was RUed and we're waiting to see if they can hold it together. As for the question of "what does it take" -- we were told that someone would have to end up in the hospital or jail before the judge would TPR.

This is one reason we had to get out of foster to adopt. It was too much. I feel like a year is a good amount of time. However, some parents wait until a few weeks before the hearing to start working the plan which then gets them an extenstion. I look at it as to what is best for the kids, not me, not the bio-parents. It is the kids who get hurt most by these things.

I am fairly certain after porkchop's case is resolved (one way or the other) that we are going to be very reluctant to go down the foster/adopt road again. We are hopeful that with the recent settlement of the class action lawsuit in the state of Michigan will work in our favor- at least chances seem better that they won't drag things out much longer.. course the fear is they will just send Porkchop home. Which would be an unmitigated disaster for him and his biomom. She is really too mentally ill to be a parent. massachusetts mom, I will keep your FS in my prayers and will hope that he returns to your family soon.

Don't get me wrong. I am totally sympathetic to your plight. I absolutely think that the child's best interests should be the main & only consideration in these matters.But, wow! All I can is I hope none of your foster & or adopted children ever read this thread. No matter what... these people, be they good or not so good, gave birth to your child. To speak of them in such a manner I hope stays simply in these forums as they are a part of your child. So to degrade them in some respect is degrading your child.

As an adoptee that was in foster care for 2 years, I can understand these peoples fustration. My fustaration with the "system" is that it seems to be ok to bounce kids around to give neglectful parents more of a chance. The total lack of respect given the children in our society is more sickening to me then the lack of respect given to bio parents that play games with their childrens lives. I understand what you are saying in terms of children hearing bad things about their parents and I also understand your distaste in children being treated as a commodity. But, in many cases these kids are better off being adopted then being bounced and dealing with the horrible issues of RAD because there boioparents are to selfish or crazy to get it together. Reform is good but is not realistic unless blame is put where it belongs. These kids are made availabel because of bad parenting in the bio's/...not because there are potential adoptive parents. I was made available to my parents, they did not try to manipulate me from my biomom as does happen in some cases. As a result I spent 2 years ov my life in unknown homes with people that re not "invested" in me as a real person. I find that very sad. IMO....one year is MORE then enough time, probably too much time, as its the child that counts not the parents. as an adoptee, Iunderstand that more then anyone else....no aparents should not degrade their childs bparents. The child will figure it out for themselves as they grow. But I can certainlt understand the foster parets voicing fustration at a system that doesnt put the kids needs first, but the m0others needs.