Lisa: As foster parents, Aaron and I still have to follow children services protocol. Their goal is to always reunify the children with their birth family or relatives, before taking permanent custody and allowing foster families to adopt.
One of the requirements are parent visits, which sometimes involve siblings. In Alia's case, her birth parents are offered one 2-hour visit per week. Siblings and relatives are not invited right now. They are instructed to call the day before to confirm the visit otherwise the visit is cancelled, and Alia can go to daycare like normal. And even if they confirm a visit, they must arrive an hour before the scheduled visit otherwise the visit is cancelled. Alia's visits are scheduled on Fridays from 9-11 a.m.
The other big component to this temporary custody is the birth parent case plan. The county gives them time to clean up and get their act together in order to get their children back, depending on the situation. In Alia's case, it looks like the birth parents will need rehab, mental health assessment and treatments, to get jobs, to find and keep a place to live, and to show that they can provide for their family. A tall order if you ask me but certainly no more than is expected of all other parents. As of right now, the case plan has not been put into place.
There should be monthly court hearings to make sure all components of the system are doing their part and moving forward. Perhaps the case plan will be presented during November's hearing. The 90-day hearing is a pretty big court date as the case plan should be in place and worked on by then. If not, the magistrate could motion "abandonment" and move towards permanent custody.
So let's see how this placement goes. Of course we don't want to wish anyone bad but we are also still hoping Alia will be "the placement" for us.
