sundary

**Sorry about yesterday’s interruption - work got in the way!!**

SOOOo you have your list right? all your peices of paper?

Ok I’m going to leave the questions here so you know which one we are referring to….

*Ahem* (This is my speil before the activity).

There is a knock at your door, you open the door and the person standing there introduces themselves as being your new case manager. You have just enetered Foster Care.

1. Who did you live with? Throw this peice of paper away. Your being moved immediately into a group home to live with 7 or 8 people with rotating staff every 8 hours. Your parents (or parental figure) is gone, your siblings are gone. You have moved into a house full of strangers.

2. Who was your best friend? Throw this away. You no longer get to speak to your best friend. You can’t talk to them on the phone because your placement (group home) only allows you to speak to 3 people, your case manager decides you can only speak to family members. Your best friend’s parents cannot pass the background check due to something that happened before you were born.

3. What was the name of your school? Throw this away, your new house is across town and you aren’t allowed to use mass transit to go to school, because you would be unsupervised. The staff find it too much of a hassle to get you to school. Did I mention all of this is happening 2 weeks before finals?

3a. Did you play sports? If so you can’t any more. If it was a school team, you have switched schools and you have also missed tryouts. If its not, your staff doesn’t have time to take you and the other members of your placement will probably have an issue of their activity every night is attending your practise/games.

4 If you had any pets, what were their names? TOSS IT! Your pets cannot go into your placement with you, and you aren’t allowed a new one while your there due to the possibility of other youth having allergys, or them hurting or making sick another youth or staff.

5. What was your favorite activity? Yeah, lets get rid of that one too. You are no longer allowed to do your activity due to restrictions in the home. For those of you who answered below, you can’t take horses with you. YOur journal/ writing will be read by staff and no longer be personal, your not allowed to do any illegal activities (GIRLY!) or you will be sent to juvie, you can’t be alone so no driving with friends, your placement has no trees and its a legal liability for you to climb them roux. You guys get the idea. Your pretty much can’t do anything. Even movies - you can’t go and see them without staff and your ENTIRE home - which due to cost means its the dollar movies! And you also cannot rent any R rated videos.

6. What was your first car? Thats gone. Its a legal liability for the state for you to even have your drivers license, not to mention there is no one to sign the paperwork, no one to help you get insurance, and no vehicle with which you can learn.

7. What was your favorite home cooked meal? Bye bye. You have no one to cook the meal, the staff now prepares your meals (terribly!) and if you don’t want what is for dinner you get 2 options: a cheese sandwich, or a peanut butter sandwich (no jelly!)

8. What was your comfort item? Yeah thats gone too. Its was either stolen or broken by people in your house or you couldn’t fit it into the hefty bag you used as luggage as you packed in half an hour.

9. What was your favorite game? Not anymore! There WILL be peices missing from board games, cards missing from card games, or simply no one to play the game with you.

10. Favorite place to be alone? Your not allowed to be unsupervised at all anymore. You can use the bathroom and shower is pece, usually. I shared a bathroom with 3 other girls. We covered the sower door with a towel because people always came in, and we hid behind the door to pee. Staff also reserves the right to enter if they think you’ve been in there too long and might be in trouble/danger etc.

11. Favorite vacation spot? Really Vacation? The state budget doesn’t allow for vacations, and not to mention you need a court order to travel out of the state, supervisor permission to travel out of the county, and they need extra staff because we are an AWOL possibility (AWOL- Absent without Leave)

12. What was your religion? Your no longer allowed to go to church, you may be in a religious placement because they were the only ones with a bed open - you have to participate in their religious activities, your placement has a 99% chance of not taking you to church because its too much of a “Hassle”, you also have to have someone at your place of worship volunteer to be responsible for you and under go a background check.

13. What was your favorite item of clothing/ jewlery? That got stolen too.

14. How did you express yourself? Your personal thoughts and feelings are no longer private. THey will be reported to your case manager  and end up in court reports. Journals will be read, art work will be dissected. Even your therapy sessions will not be confidential. Reports will be sent to your attorneys and case manager after each session regarding what you have discussed.

How are you feeling right now? What do you want to do? Are you angry? If so, at who?

The following are your new house rules.

1. Respect staff/ youth.          (I was 17 and my staff was 21 - do you respect most 21 year olds at that age?)

2. No alone time.

3. Dinner is at 6pm every night, you will eat and do chores following (your chore is kitchen, which means you wash and put away ALL dishes for all 10 people- staff included, you clean the counters, your sweep and mop the dining room and the kitchen, you take out the trash, and you always put away any left overs).

4. You get 3 15 minute phone calls a day to those on your approved phone list.

6. After school, you have quiet time for 1 hour - do your homework.

7. No TV after 8pm.

8. No visitors.

9. You must be with a staff at all times, and all activities will be group activities.

10. No smoking, no coffee.

11. All medication (including asprin, tylenol, tums, pepto) will be adminstered by staff.

12.  All hygeine products will be kept in a locked cabinet by staff.

13. Every Saturday is deep cleaning day (This is when you get to bleach the walls).

14. No cell phones, no internet except at the library.

 

I would like to get some feed back from all of you about how your feeling, and how you think you would have reacted in your teen years to something like this.