Another brick in the road

Wow. It's been a while, huh? Let me give you a brief overview of how I feel the last couple of days weeks months (yikes) have gone.

1. Lovebug got sick
2. I got sick
3. Lovebug got sick
4. I got sick
5. I got sick
6. Christmas
7. Lovebug got sick
8. I got sick
9. Valentine's Day (no one was sick for a whole month!)
10. Lovebug's 11 year old brother stayed with us for a week
11. TPR Trial
12. Lovebug got sick (are you noticing the theme yet?)

Not that sickness is the only thing that happened, it just feels like it. They say the first year is the worst, in terms of illness. And good news, we celebrated one whole year with the little munchkin on Feb. 5!

The big news, in terms of foster care world, was the TPR (termination of parental rights) trial. The trial was held on Feb. 24, and was an all day affair. Bio-mom testified for most of the morning, followed by the DHS case worker, lunch, more of the case worker, the visit supervisor, and finally rebuttal by bio-mom and the case worker.

Basically, the testimony included answering questions about the entire history of the case. Ultimately, bio-mom's lawyer attempted to establish reasons why she (bio-mom) should be given more time to complete her plan The state's attorney attempted to prove that "reasonable efforts" (a key term in foster care) had been made to reunify the family, and that it was in the best interests of the children to terminate parental rights and place them up for adoption.

What I found surprising was that I wasn't surprised about much of anything said during the trial. From what I heard, I expected to find out a lot of things I hadn't known. I give credit to the DHS caseworker and Lovebug's attorney for keeping us in the loop. I'm really impressed with both of them.

Bio-mom didn't come out looking great after trial, and frankly I felt that even her lawyer had a hard time selling her side. There were some inappropriate lines of questioning during testimony, and a few tears, but nothing as dramatic as we expected.

At the end of the day, the judge "took the matter under advisement" and will issue a ruling at a later date. We are waiting for the ruling to come (the judge has 90 days by law). Until it does, we continue with visits and the reunification plan.

If the ruling comes down and it's to terminate parental rights, then there will be one final visit within 24-48 hours. In order to rule in bio-mom's favor, there has to be a significant indication that the children could be returned home quickly, or an indication that the state did not provide reasonable efforts to help the family reunify. If that's the case, then there will be a date set to review the case again in 3-6 months.

And so we wait for the next step...