TPR

TPR = termination of parental rights. The most biggest, most horrible and imposing thing the government can do to a person besides the death-sentence. And it's what is next for our case.

I am really relieved. These kids have been in care for a year and their parents are still months from getting them back. They need a home to call their own and need to be together, if at all possible. The parents can still work at getting their rights back, but after tpr has been done, DHS can start looking for an adoptive family and then it's all a big race from there.

The paperwork from the children's program showed that no one person can handle all 4 of these kids. It's need to be a team of at least two. Which means that the kids would be split between mom and dad, back when we were still entertaining the idea of them going home. Two to mom and two to dad.

A month ago things were looking really good at returning home. But housing continues to be an issue. Not just because there is none, which is true, but because of mom's rental history and dad's personal history, both of them are having a really hard time of finding some place that will give them a break.

And then court happened. DHS suggested postponing pernamnency for another three months to give dad a chance to prove himself a fit parent. Why this hasn't been done since the beginning, I don't know. And is dumb. The law favors return to mother most of the time, especially our judge, so it was never double-checked, the amount of work the dad was putting into the case. The judge over-ruled that and said that tpr needed to be served by Jan 15th. That these kids are young and deserve some stability in their lives and that adoption needed to be a real step in their case. Thank goodness. Maybe now things will start moving along.

What they do first is serve the papers to the parents. The parents then have a right to a trial. This trial is done by jury and can sometimes last 3 days. It is usually really ugly and terrible - all of the parent's faults listed on and on for reason to give these kids a chance at a new family. It can go a couple of different ways. 1) the parents can fight until the bloody end and it gets nasty and there are lots of tears and words and the jury makes a decision. 2) the parents hold on for as along as they can, but it is such a brutal process that sometimes a trial that could have taken 3 days get shortened to 2 days because the parents get so depleted of hearing all their faults and sign their rights away. 3) the parents could have a head on their shoulders and know that if the case has come to this, they are basically already esteemed as not fit parents and they sign their rights away within the first day. 4) our county is so backed up right now with these kinds of cases that once the date has been set, it's usually 6 months out. The parents could come to their senses anywhere between those 6 months and say that they want to relinquish their rights without the trial.

Our parents that we are dealing with are very much 7th graders. Purely emotional and cannot foresee long-term consequences or plans and pay very little attention to detail. It's a wreck sometimes to try to communicate with them. So super frustrating. I am not counting on number three or four being us. Although it would be amazing.

Then DHS does an extensive genealogy search. Digging up relatives who would have no idea who these kids are and asking if they would like them. If that doesn't work, then they do 'recruitment' which is where they make up an advertisement and send it out to all the adoption sites and hope some innocent bystander will take all 4. You know, where words like, 'spontaneous' mean "never know what the child is going to do, very unpredictable" and words like 'high-spirited' mean something like bordering ADHD. I can't imagine a house with all 4. Just reading the report from the children's program and what all went on while the parents were supervised with the kids is a nightmare. No one failed - but it was chaotic just reading about it all. I can't imagine being there, with all the noise compounding as well.

Right now it seems like DHS would rather place all 4 kids together in a home that could handle that as opposed to splitting the kids, 2 and 2, even if that was between family.