Change is hard, especially when we try to control
everything.
After limping along, burnout
out at work I left my position at DCFS in the beginning of March.
It was scary and unplanned, but an
overwhelming sense of peace and comfort have helped me realize this was the
plan.
About five years ago, when our secondary infertility became
obvious, Gamer and I had discussed becoming foster parents. I had just finished my internship with the
foster care foundation and I felt strongly that foster care was something we
were supposed to do eventually. We knew there was no way to do it without jobs
and a bigger apartment. I had never
intended to work for DCFS, but Utah
privatized disability care the year I graduated from UVU and suddenly there
were thousands of caseworkers looking for work.
I was lucky to get hired by the state four years ago. My caseload immediately became “my kids” and
for the first three years that was enough.
My job enabled us to buy our house and eventually our house led to
custody of Fajita.
Then last year, after successfully settling Fajita into our
family, I just wanted to adopt every single child in my office. With escalating urgency I felt I should look
for different employment. As a
caseworker it was impossible for me to work for DCFS and provide foster
care. In other words, the people who
understood foster care and the issues that stem from it the most are the least
able to help in providing permanent homes.
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| Foster child coming soon! |
But change is scary.
So job postings would be researched, but application deadlines were missed
and I continued to dislike my job more and more. And then everyone in my office was
pregnant. Okay, not everyone, but in the
space of three weeks the arrival of four babies on our team of twelve were
announced, including my supervisor. I
had already been through one supervisor’s retirement and with planning, the
transition was seamless. The window to
get a supervisor hired was less than a month.
I didn’t realize how three months of maternity leave would change
that. My supervisor didn’t even need to
tell HR she wasn’t coming back until she had maxed out her leave. And then, the
social worker job market stabilized and private companies began hiring again. Everything
boiled into a chain reaction of people leaving.
Caseloads soared, documentation was lost, clients were traumatized. Finally our build supervisor publicly plead
no one else would leave until we could hire some new people. And then six months later, I had a new
supervisor.
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To say my new supervisor disliked me from the start would be
an understatement. As my blog name
dictates I have a somewhat strong personality and things didn’t work out from
the beginning. Unfortunately, DCFS only
allows transfers quarterly and it would be four months before I could put in to
transfer to a different location. When
transfer requests opened at the beginning of the year they had added that your
current supervisor had to approve the reason for the transfer request. And I couldn’t bring myself to tactfully
submitting my request before the deadline.
Each day at work was dreaded.
Instead of proactively looking for other employment, knowing my
supervisor was trying to get me to leave, I dug my heels in and
discussed a life-long career in my current position. I threw myself into being the perfect
caseworker. I was miserable.
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| Fajita's new digs. |
Fortunately God had a plan for me that was not being
miserable for the rest of my life. My
supervisor discovered an error I had made during the chaos and used it to build a strong enough argument that I should
quit. So I did, to the shock of many of
my friends. I left without notice. I cleaned out my office and went home. On the way I called the agency who promised
to hired me if I ever left and I called the agency I had decided would be the
best 3rd party to do foster care.
And for the first time in two years I could breathe.
Changes. Our license
has taken a little longer than expected.
Our first placement will arrive when the high school gets out. We requested they figure out a way for him to
continue at his current school to the end of the year. We will be having weekend visits soon though,
so we wanted to get ready. We had to make some changes to our house. Burrito
and Taco moved downstairs to share the biggest bedroom with Bean Dip. Fajita was given the bed we had in storage in
the garage so we could give her bed to our placement. We could be licensed for three children, but
we don’t have enough bedrooms. Until we
get another set of bunk beds, we can only have one.
I have spend the week rearranging and cleaning and setting
up bedrooms. My siblings are off track
and we very helpful in taking apart the bunk beds so we could move them
downstairs. Babydoll was so cute
learning how to use a socket and unscrewing the bolts for me. What about you readers? Any major change coming this summer?
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| Burrito's cool new fort. |
Mom and I were discussing how to handle foster children on
her blog. We can with permission post
photos, but obviously we can’t use their names.
We can’t identify them in a way that indicates they are in foster care
either. We want you all to be able to
keep track, but they could be coming and going. We thought about allowing them
to pick their blog name, but I don’t think we will have approval to formally
introduce them in a post like we have in the past when new members have joined
our family. What do you think
readers?
Sport had a Court of Honor today and he earned his first 4 merit badges! Two of them are even Eagle-required, so we are very proud of his accomplishments.
The Dog Walker used the merit badge books and wrote everything down in his own way on white sheets of paper. Sport much prefers the fill-in-the-blank worksheets on meritbadge.com. He has not committed to earning all of them (yet), but I did tell him if he completed 75, I would get him a dog so he could do the dog care badge.
