Case Workers and Custody
I know quite a few case workers or people involved in children’s services. I never really valued the work they did until I witnessed it firsthand. On one of my trips to job and family services (JFS), I saw a friend of mine, rocking a baby in her arms with a diaper bag at her side. Not her own baby, but one I’m sure she had just removed from a home and was waiting for placement. Like teaching, social services isn’t one of those careers you enter to make a fortune. Initially, I thought our caseworkers were lacking real empathy and real emotion. I couldn’t understand why their hearts didn’t break for Jade like mine did. Then the story started to unfold and my eyes were opened to the ugly, frustrating side of their work. I’m going to tell you this story in a chronological order so it makes sense, but it unfolded more like a puzzle over the course of six months.
*All names have been changed*
Jade went to JFS when she was pregnant. She walked there and asked to surrender her rights to her unborn child. Maybe Sara told her to, but regardless, you can’t sign over rights to a baby who isn’t born. She was in denial she was pregnant. The story changed so many times but I’ve heard she didn’t find out until she was six months along, then I heard 36 weeks, all the way to she walked into the hospital with a stomach ache, when really, she was in active labor. I don’t think JFS showed up to the hospital but shortly after, they re-entered the picture.
There was a fight. Sara and Jade’s mom were arguing and one of them was holding Michael. I’m not sure if he was dropped or what but the police were called and shortly behind was JFS. Another visit came from JFS when Jade left Michael’s seat on the edge of the couch and it flipped over. I think he took a ride in the ambulance that day, or at the least, he went to the emergency room. He had another fall when she was holding him and dropped him because she was looking at her phone and reaching for a pacifier at the same time. Jade’s parenting skills, as you can see, were non-existent and honestly, I’m not surprised. Sara called the police on her a third time when she left Michael with no food or diapers at Sara’s house and Jade apparently started walking to a town at least twenty minutes north. Sara’s family has had their fair share of conversations with JFS as well, so she’s not an ideal role model either. I’m fairly certain she’s lost custody of her kids at some point. Did you hear me when I said this is a cycle? Regardless, I was questioning what I was doing trying to help this girl if she was willing to just leave her baby and start walking to visit friends.
She walked to JFS the day Sara made her leave her grandma’s house. She was without food, low on formula and had no place to go. Michelle was Jade’s saving grace the first day. She drove her to the hotel, bought her food and formula, showed her how to do laundry in a bath tub and tried everything she could to make her at peace for the night ahead. She helped her bathe Michael and later told me he was filthy; they both hadn’t been cleaned up in days. She got in touch with Rustic Hope, the organization that put up the Facebook post, and tried everything she could to get Jade a place to go. She’s the one who I called looking for answers in the first day, but she’s not the first one I met.
“Do you need to check anything,”? I asked the girl with the van who dropped them off the first day.
“I just need to see where you keep the food so I can check for bugs and make sure you have running water,” she replied. And here I was worried about the crib not matching the guest room décor.
I never caught that case worker’s name. She brought the van and unloaded them both, left me the business card and moved on. Mystery transport girl made a delivery that day, which forever changed my life and she may not even remember.
When I finally talked to Michelle, she walked me through the reader’s digest version of what was going to happen. She was a temporary case worker for us, responsible for making sure Michael wasn’t in imminent danger. She came to visit and we showed her the house, she checked in on Jade and gave her a list of things she needed to work on. She encouraged her, told her to write in a journal, asked her how she was feeling. She talked about not getting pregnant again, following the rules of our home and tried everything she could to make a connection with her. Michelle does this job because she is called to it; I could sense it from day one. She pulled us aside after the first visit and told us the hotel story. She gave us a plan and offered advice on how we could best assist Jade. I heard the word case plan for the first time that day. The following week, we’d meet Kasey, who would walk the journey with us for the rest of story.
Kasey was quiet but factual. She wasn’t as sensitive as Michelle, but she did her job very well. She explained to Jade that she was going to do everything she could to help Jade be a good mom to Michael. Jade was going to focus on things like getting a job, saving money, getting a mental health evaluation so she could ensure she received all the benefits she was entitled to. Kasey was going to check in on her regularly and expected to see progress.
Kasey and Michelle see worst case scenarios nearly every day. They deal with parents who don’t show up to meetings, they walk in after a mom has overdosed in front of her kids. They rock babies in offices and hand diaper bags to people like me, trying to get a social security card they need for their foster or kinship kids. They have to make hard choices to return kids into homes I know they don’t think are the best options. They told truths to Jade’s story I otherwise wouldn’t have heard. They mentioned temporary custody to us one Friday morning., and eventually, they sat in a courtroom with us and asked a judge to grant us full legal custody of “the minor in question”.
Jade was with us for almost a month, much less time that Kasey was with us. A lot can happen in a month. I’ll unpack that next.