When Policy Trumps Persons

I was looking back for a post where I explained pieces of the journey with John, but I can't find it. So I guess those of you who know all about it already will have to be patient and hear it again. Or skip this entry all together. Or skim. Of course, I'm assuming that you care enough to have remembered the details. Maybe I'm egotistical there. If you're like me, you may not have room in your brain to remember my life when you're so busy trying to remember your own.

Back in the fall we started to hear rumors that John was going to be returning to our town after Christmas to live in foster care. I immediately knew it was a bad plan and began to make phone calls. I of course, explained to the caseworker why I felt it was not a good idea and was told we would just have to "agree to disagree." I reminded him as I have multiple times, that this was a CASE for him that he could close some day, but that the decisions he was making were going to affect John's lives and ours in a major way. I called others at the county that I knew and attempted to plead my case. I spent hours of my time explaining what would happen. And I was told that it was not our county's policy to "institutionalize children." After a long period of time in residential, they needed an opportunity to prove whether or not they could make it in a family setting.

The policy is a good one. I don't disagree with it's intention. But in the case of my son, it simply did not make sense. He was 6 months away from turning 18. He had a good job and his grades have never been better at any other school. He was bonded to staff members, felt secure, and he himself believed that he would do better just staying where he was and completing their independent living program. But in order to graduate, he would have had to stay past his 18th birthday and there was nobody to pay for that. Besides, he needed to learn to live in a community setting and apparently this community was the place he needed to learn to live -- even though he had a very negative peer group in our town.

I explained to everyone that he was NOT ready. I talked to his therapist and the people at the ranch and nobody felt he was ready. I again talked to people at the county. During this period of time, John stopped taking his medication and thus we could not allow him to come home for Christmas break. The social worker explained that he was going to talk to John about getting back on his meds during the transition. I mentioned the need for John's time to be filled. Everyone assured me he would step into a job here in Mankato as soon as he arrived as he was going to transfer from restaurant he was working for when living at the ranch.

John was moved to a foster home on January 2, and on the third we had court. I decided to roll over and play dead because I knew that based when I had spent hour preparing a statement to be read in court a year ago, it hadn't made a bit of difference. So in court I kept my mouth shut.

But on the phone to whoever i could get to listen to me i reminded them this was a bad plan. I told them he couldn't handle it, that he was not going to make it long. I predicted people in the foster home being in danger, I predicted him not doing well at the new school, I predicted him losing it. The social worker said he agreed -- he might lose it, but then he would be consequenced in a detention facility and hopefully "figure it out" before he turned 18.

So he comes to our town and, we find out after things blow up, that he never does start taking his medication. His job does not transfer here as promised. The school setting is not as described and he is put into a school to work program even though he doesn't have a job. He is not allowed to stay in the building after 12 noon, and he is told he needs to go out and find a job (without transportation provided) during the hours between noon and three. The first day he gets lost trying to walk home, the second day he calls me for a ride, which I am not allowed to give, and by the third day he is told to just spend his afternoons at the YMCA until he has a job.

I remind the social worker that John does not do well with unstructured time. I ask questions. I try to get answers, but I eventually just decide once again to let things take their course because what I think or say or predict hasn't mattered much at all over the years.

On the 18th of January, just 16 days after moving in, John lost it at the foster home. They were able to calm him down, and the foster mom agreed to let him stay for the weekend. But by Monday, a day short of 3 weeks from the day he moved in, he was assualtive and threatening and the foster home said he could not return.

We then found out he had not been taking his meds for weeks. He was heading to a detention facility for a couple weeks where he would be forced to take them. And the new plan? A foster home to try again, but this time not in our community. So, a new school, a new town, and most probably, not able to graduate early as planned.

Do I say "I told you so?" Yes. But it doesn't feel good. I KNEW this would happen, and so did everyone else. But there is this policy and even though in this case the policy didn't make sense, policy trumps persons. And who knows how a different scenario may have given John a transition into adulthood that would be more successful.

I am not pointing fingers. I don't blame any one person. I just know that in this situation, all of this could have been avoided. I know that some of the people involved in this case read my blog and I hope that I have been representing the facts here, not a bias and if you feel there are errors I would like to hear them.

I wish that my son was the only one who has had his future jeopardized and his life jerked around because of policy. But he's not. And it is easy to say "He's almost an adult, he's responsible for his own decisions, it's his fault." But everyone knew he was not ready for this move. Everyone knew he would screw up. He has a mental illness that half the professionals don't even believe he has. He wasn't taking his medication. And yet he was moved back into a setting where he has never been successful, unmedicated.

I really don't think that the professionals in this case are uncaring or distant, but the bottom line is still this: The case gets closed when he's 18. So everyone can shrug their shoulders and say, "Oh well, nothing we could do. We have to follow policy."

But not us as his parents. We will be the ones he turns to after this is all over. And we won't be able to see him as a policy, or a case, or a situation. He is our son.