Pro-
This is the grandma from the other board.
I am. I am trying to find a legal forum that will help clarify my issues before we see our lawyer again. I have a number of issues with the people involved in our GS's care in foster care.
1. Caseworkers never call back. The caseworker who took him finally called us back after she took him, talked to me over the phone and said if she'd known all that, she wouldn't have taken him! They took him while he was challenging our authority, not uncommon for a teen boy who had been diagnosed with ODD in Kindergarten. (I had forgotten the school psychologist named it, I just concentrated on things to deal with the behaviors and worked with counselors at school). Anyway, the intake caseworker didn't tell me she had already submitted her report and wouldn't be putting my information on it.
2. CPS claimed we weren't taking his mental health needs seriously enough. We had a licensed counselor through the school, she didn't see his behavior as suicidal. Melodramatic? Yes. Manipulative? Yes. Self-harm? Yes, but only as an expression of those first two items.
3. When CPS got involved, I sent him to emergency room because he ramped up the melodramatic, manipulative behavior to the fullest, then sent him to an in-patient facility for 4 days and they said he was good to come home. I had a psychologist lined up with an appointment made for 2 weeks later. I was going to ask him for a referral to a psychiatrist that he could work with.
4. GS never exhibited typical depressed behaviors. I specifically chose a psychologist to counsel him, and be able to refine the diagnosis. He was in a larger practice and we could get family counseling there, too.
5. CPS got him to the first psychologist app't, then cancelled with no other counselor selected.
6. CPS has used my insurance sporadically, using Medicaid when they should have used my insurance & doctors.
7. CPS took 4.5 months to get GS a psych eval, which did not say he had major depression but possibly PTSD and anxiety and now an eating disorder. After 4 placements in that time, I agree with that. But CPS wouldn't allow me to talk to the psychologist so he had no clue about the early diagnosis of ODD, or the neglect and abuse during the first 5 years of life, or his failure to bond with his mother, or his bonding with me being disrupted by stepmother #2.
8. CPS did not act on the recommendations of the psych eval until I questioned if he had been to a psychiatrist for an evaluation of his meds, as recommended by the psych eval. It took them 4 months after the psych eval to get him to a doctor, that was about 2 weeks ago. We just got his medical records and it looks like it was just a med check -- not an evaluation. Psychiatrist was not given the results of the psych eval, nor was I allowed to tell her his history.
9. Our lawyer had to request all records that CPS was supposed to supply us, by law. Medical records are spotty, with vaccinations he received not recorded. When they took him, his vax's were up to day according to Ohio law to enter public school, but they gave him more they said were required. Anyway, it's not in the documentation as to what, when or where he got them. Hospitalizations are not documented. Prescriptions were changed, with no apparent reason. Benedryl was used to help him sleep, but the meds he was on made him groggy. Incident reports are missing. Incidents that were verbally blamed on me as the cause are documented as having a different cause that upset him.
10. A doctor recommended residential treatment in Dec, I had a treatment center researched, on my insurance, at one of the finest hospitals in OH for adolescent mental health. There is a signed recommendation, and CPS refused to send him. Instead they sent him to a group home where he was the only kid without a probation officer. Counseling was once a week. We were allowed no interaction with his counselor. The place was 75 miles away from home. The doctor that recommended residential treatment also recommended family counseling.
11. He never went to school from Nov 25 through Jan 10. Educational records are missing from Oct 24 2013 through Feb 23, 2014, and the one after Feb 23 is incomplete. He dropped from an A/B student in advanced classes in our care to C/D/F, and dropped classes. Attendance went from missing 2-5 days a year to ????
12. He never saw a doctor from sometime early Feb until July 14, despite the fact that I spoke to a doctor in the hospital in January and advised him of the family risk of Type II Diabetes. One of his meds increases those odds, too. The doctor ordered his blood to be tested monthly. He got a blood test in July but the results were not included with the medical records. That appointment revealed a 40 pound weight gain from Feb to July.
