I’ve been avoiding this one—a series of three pieces on the injustice of bureaucracy in the foster system. For months I fumed and pounded the table and jotted notes, but I held off sending anything. I didn’t want to come across as self-righteous or whiney, a shrill voice harshing the mellow of your inbox.
Also: I didn’t want to bore you. Bureaucracy is hard to write. There’s so much paperwork involved, so many emails. Bureaucracy’s greatest tactic is its tireless tedium; the victim of bureaucracy struggles to find an advocate whose eyes won’t glaze over.
And yet, bureaucracy lies at the core of the fostering experience, and I would be lying if none of my sketches included it. So I finally sat down to write.
I’m happy with how it turned out. This series, as much as anything I’ve written, says something true and profound about my found family. I realize some parts might be dry, like the scene in a police procedural where they dig through old files. But I promise to make it worth your time.
On a random Friday in February I call the boys into the living room for our monthly meeting with their case worker and my home supervisor. The boys sit on either side of me on the couch, knees bouncing, eyes wandering, as their case worker runs through the items on her checklist. How is school going? How are their grades? One of my kids just turned 16, so I bring up the idea of getting him a driver’s permit. Like all my kids, he has already spent a surprising amount of time behind the wheel in the years before he moved in with me. (Turns out, adolescents make eager designated drivers.) He’s already a proficient driver; now we’d like to make it legal.
It’s been some time since I got my driver’s permit, so I'm a bit fuzzy on the process. Presumably he'll need to go through a drivers ed program and pass a written permit test? The case worker is fairly new to her job, so she’s a bit fuzzy too. Getting a permit should be doable? DHS might be able to cover costs? We find a video on the DMV page that announces a “simplified licensing process for foster children.” Well, that’s good news.
What is certain is he’ll need his birth certificate, which she has been trying to track down for several months. And he’ll probably need some kind of written permission from his guardian and/or the court. She isn’t sure what else. My home supervisor chimes in, reminding everyone of the obvious: learning to drive is a life skill. My teenage boy has a right to learn to drive.
Yes, the case worker agrees. We’ll both do some digging and get back to each other next month.
In the meantime, how are things? She asks my kid if he still wants to be a welder. Yes, he still wants to be a welder. She asks his brother what he wants to do with his life. At 12 years old he has recently lost everything. He doesn’t know what he wants to be when he grows up.
•
In the coming days I send out feelers to other foster parents I know, asking if they have any experience getting their kids a driver’s permit. One friend, a long-time foster parent of teens, sends me a long text, explaining the different tactics he’s used for different kids. Some of the laws have changed in recent years. He isn’t sure if there’s a best practice to recommend, but he agrees that DHS should cover the cost of drivers ed.
Meanwhile my home supervisor forwards me an email exchange she had with a DHS connection she’s leaned on before. I read through it one, two, three times. Lots of unfamiliar terms throughout (we might be able to track down funds “through Milton Proby,” which can be accessed through some sort of “care portal”), but the gist of the message is resources are available. We might need court permission, but my kid’s CFY can help push that through. The case worker will need to accompany my kid to the DMV. All in all, this shouldn’t be too hard.
A month passes, and I drag my kids out of bed on a Friday morning for our next meeting with their case worker and my home supervisor. The two teenagers zone out while the three adults discuss our findings on the permit issue. The case worker has no new info, but she says that DHS will not cover the costs outright. Also, we still need that birth certificate.
“Any luck tracking that down?” I ask. Her team is still looking into it.
“This is a life skill,” my home supervisor reminds the case worker. In other words: this kid has a right to get a driver’s permit.
“Right,” the case worker says, and shifts in her chair.
In the meantime, DHS wants to check in on the boys’ safety and wellbeing. How are things going? The boys slump beside me on the couch. The older one still wants to be a welder. The younger one still isn’t sure.
After the case worker leaves I make french toast with my younger boy, a reward I promised him the night before, after he asked me what we were going to do on his day off, and I delivered the news that we had a meeting scheduled with his case worker. He was not happy. No matter how friendly or competent a case worker is, kids tend to hate these meetings. They disrupt a kid’s sense of self, jolting him out of his given roles as a son, a student, a brother, a friend. No matter what else he does this week—all those classes and video games and football with friends—he can’t quite escape the confines of this other role. He is a foster kid now. Every meeting with a case worker molds him back into that role, a role that comes with few benefits and many obligations, including this meeting he didn’t want to go to—a meeting in our home, which he didn’t choose to live in.
So we make french toast. It would be easy to see this french toast as some kind of perk, like your boss ordering pizza to lessen the sting of a terrible job. But it’s more than that. After this meeting, in which my kid has been forced to see himself as a foster kid, I’m trying to give an edible reminder of something truer: he is also just a kid.
•
Late nights after the boys go to bed I start researching drivers’ ed programs, and it turns out most of them don’t require a permit to begin student learning. My kid can register now and complete his classroom hours at the soonest available opportunity. He will need a permit for street training, but that is still several months out. Meanwhile, openings for classroom hours are filling up.
Another month passes. My home supervisor texts to ask if I’ve heard any updates on driving stuff. I haven’t. I’m not sure what we’re waiting on, so I send an email to the case worker to check in. After a few days there is no response, so my home supervisor sends a follow-up email, copying the case worker’s supervisor and the CFY on her message. No response. After five days my home supervisor sends another email, and the case worker’s supervisor responds to tell us what they have already told us: we will need permission from appropriate channels.
So far every DHS message has been written in the most passive voice available. We will keep you updated if something changes. I don’t know what updates they’re expecting, or what could possibly change.
My home supervisor responds with a case study in diplomacy, thanking everyone for their replies and proposing some solutions. I cross my fingers and wait. This time the case worker responds: Remember, we still need his birth certificate.
I respond to the team: Actually, we don’t. He can begin classes without one.
The case worker’s supervisor sends me a long email, which begins with a statement I find incomprehensible: she has started digging around to figure out what the policy is for getting foster kids a driver’s permit.
Roughly 5,000 kids are currently involved in the foster system in Colorado. Many of them, presumably, would like to learn to drive. Why doesn’t anyone know how to get my kid his permit? And why has DHS only now started “digging around”?
Anyway, she explains that flex funds will need to be approved by DHS. To approve flex funds, the case worker needs to prove that she exhausted at least three other funding options before sending it to the higher ups at DHS for a signature. But the case worker is very busy. If the foster parent were willing to look into other funding options, she suggests, it would speed up the process.
Sure, I respond. I can do that. However, summer classes are already filling up. Since we started this process two months ago the openings have gotten pushed back to mid-summer. Can I register my kid for driving classes now and get reimbursed later?
The email chain stops. No one responds.
•
We still need to get written permission from a parent or guardian before he begins driving classes. Otherwise we’ll have to take it to court.
I can’t explain this process without revealing too many family dynamics, but I will say that getting a guardian’s signature is rarely straightforward. In some cases bio parents are unreachable, and all approvals must be pushed through court. In other cases the parents are in contact, but they are afraid to sign release forms for an activity they can’t oversee. Or, as if compensating for a lack of control in their kids’ lives, they might use an unsigned document as leverage. In other cases, the parents are supportive and eager to help their kids have good experiences. The range is wide.
In this particular case the process is not as bad as it could be. Harder than mailing a letter, easier than going to jury duty. Usually we get things approved within a couple weeks. I send off paperwork and wait to hear back.
Bureaucracy is taking over my life. I perform admin tasks like a part-time job, a single parent up at night enrolling my kid in summer camp (16 emails, 10+ phone calls), school basketball (29 emails, more phone calls), summer football (multiple trips to Parks and Rec, more phone calls). We keep up with mandatory dentist appointments, doctors appointments, sports physicals. Documentation recorded, sent, filed.
Have there been any medical, medication management, or dental appointments this month? Yes☐No☐
If yes, please list (make sure there is a health form attached for each visit listed):
I text the case worker: Permission to get this kid a haircut? I’m having trouble getting in touch with his guardian. Monthly reports for both boys due three days ago. Up late again. Falling behind. Hey there, just checking in on that haircut. Is it okay if we move forward with that? Still haven’t finished that monthly report. I fill it out after the kids go to bed.
Did the child have any contact with family of origin/significant others this month? Yes☐No☐
If yes, please list dates, with whom, and describe how the contact went (child reaction before, during, after visit; significant others’ presentation):
I run into a friend and they ask how I’m doing. I’m tired. Maybe burnt out.
While I’m writing sketches about kids teaching me rap songs and breaking into my closet, I’m also staying up late filling out an application for free summer camp. It’s too boring to bring up. The unending nature of it defies explanation. Do I have to smile?
I look at other parents around me and wonder what their lives are like. What is it like to know your child needs a haircut, so you get him a haircut? What is it like to know he needs medication, so you get him medication?
I’ve asked about my kid’s birth certificate at every monthly meeting for six months now. Every month the same answer: “We’re working on it.”
But I’ve finally realized the truth: no one’s working on shit.
Some of my friends’ kids are starting to apply for a permit, and I watch them go through due process: the online test, the DMV, the unflattering photo. Some of them are well on their way to getting a driver’s license while I’m still waiting on parent approval. My kids and I are lonely. Things go smoothly for the families around us; we keep getting stuck in the gears.
It’s time to take matters into my own hands.
(Sorry for the cliffhanger, haha… Look out for Part Two on Thursday!)
Families are always tricky to write about, all the more so when your family is involved with the foster system. Many details cannot be shared, and it’s all too easy to fixate on the sentimental or the tragic. These sketches, which are nonlinear and intentionally vague in places, are my best attempt. Taken individually, they say very little about our shared lives together. Taken as a collection, unfolding week by week, I hope they communicate something of the joy, pain, and humor of our little household.
It is striking how these big agencies can create a sense of powerlessness, just as you are trying to empower your kiddos.
Certainly feeling you on this one! I hate that we have to be a contributor of bureaucratic headaches. Let me know when you find a way around it haha