Foster Care Support Group
Foster care is a system by which a certified, stand-in parent(s) cares for minor children or young peoples who have been removed from their birth parents or other custodial adults by state authority. Responsibility for the young person is assumed by the relevant governmental authority and a placement with another family found.
Much needed vent here. Very groggy from lack of sleep, so I apologize if I'm not making much sense.
I was about to go to bed last night (or this morning) when my FD knocks on the door and says she needs to go to the doctor. Turns out the food poisoning we thought she had was actually a recurrence of an infection she was battling when she first arrived. Fortunately, they gave us some meds and sent us home instead of having her transferred out and staying at a major hospital for a week, like they did last time. She doesn't much like it, but having a reclining bed is not enough reason for a lengthy hospital stay. Knowing the symptoms, we caught it much earlier this time and she is obviously (to us, not her) responding to the treatment.
So far, so good -- at least as much as this situation can be good. However, when we were putting her new medications away, we noticed that one of the old pill bottles had been emptied. She had gotten into it once before, but that was when we accidentally left the medicine cabinet unlocked. This time she had unscrewed the latch. Big problem. Especially since her new meds include Vicodin.
We decided not to confront her for two reasons. 1) This could have happened as long as a month ago. 2) She is really sick and we don't feel that the confrontation would have ended well for anybody. We need her to trust us right now, and throwing this in her face would result in her mistrusting our medical decisions.
This isn't to say we did nothing. We put super glue on the screws and we are going to lock our bedroom doors whenever we leave. When we got licensed, we put in key locks for just this sort of scenario. Also, we are going to contact her case worker and ask for permission to dispose of all medicines not currently in use (there's a fair amount), even if the prescription is not out. As soon as the current crisis is over, we will then be able to casually mention that all narcotics have been destroyed and we will be able to leave our door unlocked again.
Are we overreacting here by locking our doors, along with the medicine cabinet, or are we not reacting enough? We have had a few curfew problems, but this is the only real trust issue we have with her. Since my husband and I don't have any heavy duty meds, nor does our bio daughter, it is only hers that we have to worry about.
I should also say that we are pretty sure she is not abusing these herself, although she has probably taken a few we were not aware of, as long as she had access. What she is doing, by her own admission last time, is distributing them. Along with being very dangerous for her friends, this is also very potentially dangerous legal-wise for her.
Any advice? Is there anybody else who has dealt with something similar to this? Sorry for the long post. It has been a long day after an extremely long week.
I was about to go to bed last night (or this morning) when my FD knocks on the door and says she needs to go to the doctor. Turns out the food poisoning we thought she had was actually a recurrence of an infection she was battling when she first arrived. Fortunately, they gave us some meds and sent us home instead of having her transferred out and staying at a major hospital for a week, like they did last time. She doesn't much like it, but having a reclining bed is not enough reason for a lengthy hospital stay. Knowing the symptoms, we caught it much earlier this time and she is obviously (to us, not her) responding to the treatment.
So far, so good -- at least as much as this situation can be good. However, when we were putting her new medications away, we noticed that one of the old pill bottles had been emptied. She had gotten into it once before, but that was when we accidentally left the medicine cabinet unlocked. This time she had unscrewed the latch. Big problem. Especially since her new meds include Vicodin.
We decided not to confront her for two reasons. 1) This could have happened as long as a month ago. 2) She is really sick and we don't feel that the confrontation would have ended well for anybody. We need her to trust us right now, and throwing this in her face would result in her mistrusting our medical decisions.
This isn't to say we did nothing. We put super glue on the screws and we are going to lock our bedroom doors whenever we leave. When we got licensed, we put in key locks for just this sort of scenario. Also, we are going to contact her case worker and ask for permission to dispose of all medicines not currently in use (there's a fair amount), even if the prescription is not out. As soon as the current crisis is over, we will then be able to casually mention that all narcotics have been destroyed and we will be able to leave our door unlocked again.
Are we overreacting here by locking our doors, along with the medicine cabinet, or are we not reacting enough? We have had a few curfew problems, but this is the only real trust issue we have with her. Since my husband and I don't have any heavy duty meds, nor does our bio daughter, it is only hers that we have to worry about.
I should also say that we are pretty sure she is not abusing these herself, although she has probably taken a few we were not aware of, as long as she had access. What she is doing, by her own admission last time, is distributing them. Along with being very dangerous for her friends, this is also very potentially dangerous legal-wise for her.
Any advice? Is there anybody else who has dealt with something similar to this? Sorry for the long post. It has been a long day after an extremely long week.
think you are doing the right thing.......it would be very serious if your foster daughter was caught giving away narcotics......
K
On the plus side, C seems to be responding to the new pain killers much better. Also, we have been granted permission to dispose of all inactive prescriptions and did so last night, flushing narcotics, and dumping the rest in wet kitty litter and burying it in the middle of a trash bag before taking it out to the garbage cans. One less thing to worry about.
First, my husband searched her room, looking for the contraband. He didn't find it, but did find some other stuff, which she took great exception to. Also, she caught him in the act, and thought he was trashing her room (we think the cat knocked stuff off the shelf).
At this point, my husband left the house to cool off, and my fd chased him outside, screaming and throwing things around. This culminated in her breaking a window in our shop. She promised to clean up the mess tomorrow and we put the discussion off until tomorrow as well, letting her go to a friend's house to cool off.
*She has already agreed to pay us back for the door the window was in.
*We reset the lock on the medicine cabinet, but it probably wasn't necessary, since she pried the front panel off. We have reattached it with glue as well as a lot of screws.
*Our bedroom doors will be locked again when we are gone. We have been letting this slide since things have been going so well.
*We are buying a metal lockbox tomorrow to be placed inside the medicine cabinet for added protection. We were hoping to not have to take this step, but had already planned for it if this happened again.
*All non-current medication has been disposed of. In our defense, it was only a month out-of-date. She has been to the hospital so frequently lately that it has been hard to keep completely current/know for sure that we will be sticking with the current medication, instead of going back to the old one.
*We left a message for her social worker -- who will be unavailable until after Christmas.
This is my big vent, but overall things HAVE improved. She is much less secretive and openly says she loves us. As horrific as this night feels, we don't feel that she should be removed, I just needed a place to vent.