The Binder

We had absolutely no information about Joshua other than his name and birthday.  We knew he was 13 1/2 months old because we had his birthday.  He obviously had been walking for some time because he strutted around my house confidently, not with the hesitate wobbly steps of a novice.  He came with a garbage bag of clothing and toys.  I was told by The Agency that it was something that his case planner had thrown together from donations.  She had guessed on his size.  Everything was too big and very, very worn.  He had shoes that were at least two sizes too big and they came off when he walked.  This made me incredibly sad.

Where was the Walmart stipend so I could get him some new clothes of his own?

I washed and folded all the clothes he came with, determined to donate them right back to The Agency, and then I went into my clothing stash.  I had tons of clothes that my nephew Miles had worn once and grew out of, so I wasn't worried about Joshua being naked, but these were clothing I intended to keep. I was wondering why he didn't come with the stipend kids new to foster care usually did.

Hmm.  Then he must not be new to foster care.

Every foster child -- at our Agency, at least -- comes with a big black binder.  In it is a permission letter for the doctor and others that says that The Agency has custody of the child and that we are the foster parents.  It has medical forms that doctors fill out and that we return after each doctor visit (planned or emergency), emergency procedure forms, and places to note the child's progress.  

I opened Joshua's file and noted that he was indeed new to foster care, only three days prior, but that he had been placed somewhere else before.  There were charts filled out with his clothing inventory and a visitation log that the foster parent had filled out saying that Joshua had visited with his parents the day before.

This, I knew, was a big no no.  Parents didn't get to visit their children in the foster parent's home until the parents were cleared to have unsupervised visited by The Agency.  The foster parent was only allowed to be said supervisor once s/he was cleared.  I doubted this happened.  Clearly, the prior foster parent had been a friend or relative of the parents.  In foster terms, this is known as "kinship care."  Why then was Joshua still not with that person?  Was the stipend given to him/her and if so, where were all the supplies that were purchased for him?  

I called the on-call case planner because it was after office hours, but she could not help me.  She said my best bet was to call The Agency in the morning and find out who his case planner was and figure it out from there.

So that's what I decided to do.

We settled in for our first night with a little boy who had no idea what was going on and was too young to have it explained to him.