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my husband and I live in NJ and are fostering a relatives 3 children. We are completely in the dark as to what is going on with the parents, what they are doing if anything to get their children back. I never receive notice of upcoming court hearings like I thought I was supposed to. the cw tells me the date but i thought i was to receive official notice from the courts. I find out through the family grape vine what is going on because the caseworker will not tell me one thing. The childrens law guardian is useless, never returns my calls, never answers my questions.... my question is, am I allowed to know if the mother is complying or not and when the hearing is over and the children are to remain with me, am I allowed to know why they are remaining longer or do I just have to accept the cw telling me "everything will remain the same for now"??? I know the mother is still using drugs and it is not going well on her part and we are willing to adopt all 3 babies, I would just like to have some kind of idea where we are and where we are headed, why is that so hard???
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Due to confidentiality laws/rules of the agency, Caseworkers are limited on what they can tell you. Most of what I have found out I've had to dig for. I've known a lot about my current placement because what bio mom did made the newspaper. From that I was able to get more info. With my prior placement the info I would get was pretty vague.
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No, the CW probably won't tell you how the parents are doing. This is why it is so important to go to court if you can. At the end of court they set the date for the next one, at least here, so keep you ears open. If you missed it, ask someone.
The CW has been my source of court dates many time. Either because the case was new to me, or because I missed writing it down. Go, go, go if you want to get a feel for how things are going. Even by attending every court hearing, though, I didn't really know much about the progress, or lack thereof, until the TPR when they went through everything with the CW. I had been told that I had no worries about the kids leaving, but that was all I could be told. Up till that point, I didn't know what it meant as the parents made very single visit. Turns out, that is all they did.