Hotel View

Hotel View
Originally uploaded by ajdele.

Im in Atlanta most of this week for an independant living confrence through work. "Independant Living" is all about giving teens in foster care an option besides falling on their face and into a ditch after they age out of care. Great idea, implementation is a little more tricky especially in GA for some reason. Most of the confrence is of little use to me as it is geared to people who run IL programs or work directly with kids in some way. My job is more complicated, I have to take into account parents and courts and stuff like that too. Im feeling that all this is so incredibly important and I dont want the responsibility. I know that I dont do my job as well as I should. Making sure that things are done on time and following the rules, making sure that policy is followed; I can do these things. Its relationsihps and investing myself into my kids and parents that I dont do very well. All the things that you can't write into policy.

All i've been hearing for the past few days is how rough foster kids have it. now dont get it twisted, they do. as a group there are few who have it harder. but my job isnt cake either. Especially someone like myself who takes it seriously. I have to answer the question of why I should invest myself into people (parents and kids) who hate me. And they dont hate me because im an asshole but because I follow policy and do my job. It is just in doing that job that I need to keep families apart until the right time. and of course DFCS and the court and the family all dissagree (ussually) on when that right time it. I am hated for it by most of my clients. I dont have the personal resources to be hated for doing my job.

by the way, this is the view from my hotel in Atlanta.

Let no one be forgotten

Thinking today about the state of things, of the world i guess. The reports from New Orleans are disturbing. Most of my news I get from NPR, they tend to be a little optimistic. There seems to have developed, at the very least in sentiment, a very strong racial devide. This adds sorrow upon sorrow. Why must we continue to see things this way? It is all a mode of control. If we can divide along racial lines then we can be controlled. By playing on fear and pain the country will submit to yet another polarization. In the government it is democrat and republican. In our culture it seems to be black and white. What about asians and eastern europeans? Where do they fall into it? My God, who is really to know that the response would have been better faster if it was postly white people waiting for help. I think it can be safely said that things would have come together faster if it were mostly rich people there. Apparantly money makes people move. Those who could afford it got out leaving those who did not want to or were not able to leave what little they had to suffer the consequences. My God help us all. I pray before the Most High that no one in that tragedy is forgotten.

Such rage has never been known

i could have killed someone yesterday. Those who know me know that it ussually takes a lot to make me mad. Yesterday, yesterday this woman made me so mad. Its a day later and I could still get myself worked up about it. I punched a wall, yeah thats right, put my fist into a wall. Not normal for me. Not just a little tap either, I put a bit of a hole in it. Rediculous. She mocked me, this damn woman mocked me. It was a phone call, she fought and fought and all i was doing was my damn job and enforcing policy. Those who write policy try to make it so we have as little judgement in case operations as possible, supposedly everything is in policy. But this woman felt she was too good for policy. Why, you ask? Well she and her husband are very rich, and very white and very very beligerent. They are used to getting their way in everything. Well in this case she is not dealing with some stupid teller at the bank or an associate at Pier 1. No sir! This is the mother fucking division of mother fucking family and children services! If she was really nice about it and had actaully tried in good faith to work with us and follow the spirit of what we ask for and so on and so forth we have been known to bend the rules a bit. But no way. She must have forgotten who she was speaking with. This family makes demands and forgets that we owe them nothing but in fact they were the ones who want the children placed with them. She actually had the balls to threaten to bring the kids back so we could place them again....anyway, it was bad. Real bad, I was cursing in the office all up and down the halway. Not normal for me, even at angry times. I really wanted to do the ghost dad thing and strangle her through the phone. Its a good thing that im not ghost dad. I pray for wisdom in dealing with this family. and I pray that God gives me the patience to not take those kids out of that home simply because their grandparents are assholes.