Please continue to pray for Girlie. As you may remember, I notified my foster care agency a while back to begin to search for a family, a forever family, for "my" Girlie. She will need a lot as she grows. For those who don't know about Reactive Attachment Disorder, which she has to a tremendous degree already at 2, it is not something you can just "love" away. All the love, stability, etc in the world will not make it go away.

I received a call Monday at lunch that they had found a potential family and wanted to pick Girlie up from day care that day to meet with the couple at 4:30pm. Whoa! I was not happy. When we discussed this, the regional director and I wanted for me to be able to sit down with whoever it may be and go over the behaviors, etc that present themselves so that they would understand what they were getting into and could decide honestly about now and in the future. My whole reason for doing this was to prevent further transitions and upsets. I want to find a family for her that will not disrupt the adoption down the road when things really get rough. The caseworker left me hanging for a few min to talk to the supervisor and when she came back she said, "Oh, yes, that's what we decided and I forgot." Yea right. The cw and supervisor already met with the family Friday apparantly. I should have been there. I didn't even know.

So, I was to bring Girlie and meet with them first before they met her. I called the agency counselor, whom I had already talked to about her previously. She couldn't believe all the symptoms that were already present in regards to RAD. I left a message asking if she could join my meeting with them, so that they could hear things from her as well. I also printed out two pages of things we have seen with Girlie, and some things on RAD. One was a list of 28 symptoms of RAD in children. Girlie already hits 17 of them, and the rest will be a matter of time. They are things that she really needs to be older to even be around in order to do them.

The couple came in and were very nice. They really listened to what we shared, which I didn't know if that would happen or not. BUT, they work more than I do. The mom was just coming off of three days of double shifts. And while the supervisor told them that they should leave her at her current day care, they work weekends as well when the day care home isn't available. She will NOT make it in any other day care. A HUGE concern for me! They were ready to remove her from my home a while back when she was kicked out of her first two day cares. She is in a day care home now of a foster/adoptive/former caseworker parent who has children with RAD and understands. You won't find another like that. They were smitten during the meeting with her, who wouldn't be. She is adorable, and who could believe that she is capable of the things told to them? Surely with love all will be fine. I know that's what they think. They have never even heard of RAD. They don't understand.

Since then I have talked three times, twice today to the cw about finding out their plans for weekend day care. IF (WHEN) she doesn't make it in the day care they find for the weekends, what will they do? I highly doubt they will give up their job or find one that is only on the week days when her current care provider is available. I just know they won't/can't. What then? Each time the cw said, "Yes, I need to talk to them more. I'm concerned about that too." Fine, but the last time I said that today was when she called to look at scheduling another visit for them. No, this needs to be dealt with FIRST. If they can't reconcile the weekend day care, it won't work. She will be asked to leave any care setting she's in besides her current one, and then they will disrupt yet another placement for her. That is NOT right, and is not what she needs. It's not fair for her to set her up to fail.

I finally called the regional director today. I asked if she knew of the family that they were looking at for Girlie and she took on a tone of "you are trying to sabotage any placement" by saying very professionally that any time they move a child, blah blah blah. I said, OK but I just wondered if you knew about the fact that they need weekend day care which (name) isn't able to provide??? You know that Girlie won't make it at another care place?? Her tone immediately changed. I dont' think she realized that they needed weekend day care. She sounded as concerned as I am. She said, no she won't and she needs stability. Thank you. I'm hoping that that call helped and they can figure it out. We'll see what tomorrow brings...