I loved my job as a foster care worker. I grew to love many of the families I worked with over the years. I loved the children, and grieved a bit each time I had to close a case. I made good friends out my coworkers and worked with most of them over 20 years. I loved the challenges and puzzles that sometimes life presented itself.
I hated my job at the same time. I hold in my mind thousands of sordid secrets that parents told me or their children told me. I learned more than I ever wanted to know of dark side of people's sex lives.
A parent would come in for an interview, and usually one was angry with the other parent. The next thing I would be told all this stuff, I really never wanted to know about anyone. I felt it was not my business, but it was in my job especially when it came to children. I had to teach myself not to react with disgust because I was required to try to help these people overcome their issues.
I would then have to confront the other parent which sometimes ended with a confession but usually ended with me being cussed out and sometimes threatened. Usually the parent who reported the actions of her partner had forgive said partner and I would have a confrontation with them denying they had ever said anything.
Some days I felt like Alice running with the Queen of hearts and Alice saying that they were getting no where, and the Queen responded that some days you have to run as fast as you can to stay in the same place. Every day doing foster care was like that.
Audits were a cuss word or they should be. We had many. I remember working to 2 AM helping to review my co workers case so that we would pass the audit. There was for a while a joke in the office- "The cases will be pulled at random from everyone except Mary Todd and most of her cases will be pulled." I had a theory on that. I had strange cases, and I think the auditors liked to read my case files. I hated when they pulled audits right before Christmas. The added pressure would make many of feel like we had jangled nerves.
I grew to hate Christmas, and have not put a Christmas tree up since I retired. We had to do all our regular work plus all the additional work of delivery gifts, arranging extra visits between family and the children. Sometimes I felt like Christmas was an evil holiday created by wicked elves. I became the "Grinch" even wrote a couple of poems about being a Grinch. I did one Christmas get a lovely Christmas tree. It was nine feet tall fir tree. I have a high ceiling in my home and a coworker said, "Todd do you need a tree?"
I responded, " I haven't gone out to cut mine yet."
My coworker laughed, "Well I have very tall tree for you Todd. You just have to pick it up in the ditch." She proceeded to tell me that a divorcing set of parents were at war over this tree. He bought it for her and their children. She threw it out in the ditch.
We went over and I had a tree that was not a lopsided pine tree for at least one Christmas.
I really did not like it but "gallows humor" saved us all the time. We got bombarded every day with nightmare stories that were true. We all dealt with the bizarre from time to time. There also became the term in my office for a particularly bad case, "This is a Mary Todd Case." I would laugh it off but try working 25 such cases with 37+ children, and it becomes a nightmare. So I resorted to humor, but sometimes I just broke down and cried. There was no humor to fix somethings. Towards the end of my career, I came to a staffing where I would get a particularly bad case, and the worker said, "I knew you had to have it because it is a Mary Todd case." I said, " I wish I would get a few simple cases with no medical issues. I swear one day someone will say that and I will scream." They all laughed, but I was serious. I was tired very tired.
Burnout is real. I was cremated several times and rose like the phoenix from the ashes until my health failed. I knew I was in bad shape, but I was in denial. I could not stop going. I was by this time on autopilot. It was the day before the end of the month of September 2001- a couple of weeks after 911. I had been to court that afternoon. The Judge asked me after the hearing if I was okay because I was so pale. Even though I had parked my car close by, I had to stop four times going to my car. I had seen all but one of my forty-two children that month. I was to see her the next morning, but she was in a safe place and healthy. I got to my car and my lips were so blue and I was so pale as I looked into the rear view mirror that I could no longer deny that something was wrong. I went to Urgent care and was told I had a serious sinus infection and no blood tests were done. The meds I was given I had a violent reaction to them, and I stopped taking them and went to another doctor. My blood count was 3.3. I should have went on to be admitted that evening but I had to make arrangements for someone to care for my mother, and I opted to go in the next morning. By the time I got to the hospital my blood count was down to 2.8. Dr. Sheikh said to me that he had not thought he could save me. Burn out is dangerous in that you over look yourself so very much that you don't even see the need to care for yourself. It is the chief reason I tell people not to stay in child protective services like I did.
The paperwork when I began in 1978 was huge, but it increased 300% by the time I retired. No one can do that amount of paperwork and do the social part of the job justice. I had less services and less help for problem children in my early years, but I did more for them. I transported every one of my children to and from visitations, medical appointments, and sometimes I would just come to talk to a child needing a little extra time. By the end of my career, all that was impossible. Transporters were a blessing. I still attended many medical appointments which were the crucial ones, but my one to one work was no longer available.
When I started in 1978, the Termination of Parental Rights law stated that the Agency had to do every thing possible before seeking TPR. We were all glad when that law changed and put it back on the parents. Looking back, the original law was better because it made us do everything possible to preserve the families in which we worked. These days due to federal laws TPRs are done within a year to a year and a half. I did not like that part of the law. It takes a long time for a family to fail, and I think that they need 2 years before an agency can proceed with TPR unless it is an abandonment case. I know most will not agree with me, but I look at it from a moral issue. I was good at my work because I did not pursue TPRs until I knew it was the best for that child. It was frustrating to the foster families, but if the case was appealed which several of mine were I knew they would be solid and none of my cases were overturned upon appeal. We have a responsibility that if we are going to end a family that we do our best to try to prevent it.
One of the things I had to deal with while working with a family was to work at two purposes- one to reunify the family which was always my first choice but at the same time work towards proving a TPR. I would tell the parents up front when I presented the treatment plan that if they did not do what they needed to do that the agency would pursue TPR. I would explain the law to them. I would warn them that they needed to do better along the way, and then for way too many families I would sit down and tell them that we would be pursuing TPR but they could still turn things around. Few ever took advantage of that warning. I lost only one TPR hearing and that was one I did not believe should happen. The judge agreed. Now he would not have that option because the law has gotten tighter.
I loved my job deeply. I loved the people I worked with day in and day out. I loved being told by a three year old boy that I was dumb and having tea parties with delightful little girls. I loved than no day was ever written in stone except those days where we went to court. Those were always written in stone. I worked in constant chaos, and loved the moments of quiet piece of driving miles along some highway thinking of life and its wonders and oddities.
The poems I wrote about the Grinch were in response to a fellow poet who loves Christmas and I wrote these two poems in response to his love of Christmas... maybe one day I will be happy with Christmas again...
In Praise of the Grinch!
The wicked broken-hearted Green Grinch
Who stole Christmas!
How mean he was!
But I sort of get him…
After listening to people
Needing rent money and heat…
Those I got…
But those who knew there
Would be a brighter Christmas fund
To help them out, and each year
They fell behind in rent…
Just to get their rent paid…
The ones who asked for expensive toys
Or fur coats or the biggest television
Reminded me of Janis Joplin’s song
About wanting a colored TV.
I would find as I got closer
To Christmas… the greener I became….
My hair would spike from being pulled out, and
Doing the stories plus our regular work
Left us frazzled, cross-eyed and drained.
On January first, we had survived again, but
Too tired to celebrate, and
The green color would drain from my face;
I was no longer the grinch
Who every day hoped I could steal Christmas that year, while
Plotting how I could do it the next year…
I never could…
Mary Elizabeth Todd
November 6, 2017
Don’t Underestimate the Praise of the Grinch
(for Walt)
November comes and the Angel tree
Is set in a local mall
For children in foster care or
With Child Protective Services….
All the forms had to be filled out…
Forty-two is a lot of Children, and then
The gifts must be delivered…
Thanksgiving is a week away and then the stories
And the investigates for the fund for Christmas have begun.
I am disheveled and worn out and think how many more days…
I can tell you there is not enough and many more than twelve…
The parents of the three-year-old placed last
January just have to see their baby.
I hold my tongue, and say
Come in for a talk…
They only have time for a visit.
After hanging up my phone…
I bang my head on my desk…
Then the presents from the angel tree arrive…
Some people bought little…
Some brought a lot…
Each present is inspected so that
No pervert’s gift gets thru, and
Due to moldy clothes once given…
The word “new” had to be added
To the Angel tree instructions…
Two weeks before Christmas
Between visits in homes and
Visits with parents…
I wrapped packages that I swore
Grew by the hour…
How many did I wrap…
Maybe fifty… closer to one hundred…
I prayed they all came by the end of next week…
Three weeks before Christmas…
All those thousands of gifts that filling my office
Had to be delivered, and by now
Coffee no longer worked…
I arranged trips across my state…
My car packed with presents
For wonderful children…
The only part I loved was delivering those millions
Of boxes…but there was always one or two who
Did not get their angel tree gifts…
Without saying a thing…I bought the gifts
Wrapped them and added them to my near exploding office….
But three days before my vacation…
A woman smiled and said sorry this bike was late, and
All these wonderful gifts….
One I had bought the week before…
I smiled my most ungrinch like smile, and
Thanked her for the wonderful gifts she brought…
I called the foster mother…it was two hours away….
She cannot meet me halfway…
I really did understand…
So early the day before my governor’s gift of Christmas eve
To be off… I drove to deliver those gifts,
And enjoyed the day of quiet outside my office.
But since I was on call for all those children…
There were times I met foster parents at hospitals
On Christmas day…
I so understand the Grinch…
A person can only do so much, and
I never was a miracle worker.
Mary Elizabeth Todd
November 6, 2017