difficult child's therapist from Department of Juvenile Justice

klmno

Active Member
called and asked for history. i hate it when people do that- they want to give me 15 mins at most to give 3 years of history that I have already provided documentation on. Anyway, she says she will look thru his file next week for that. I tried to summarize things the best I could, expressed my concern about whether or not he should really stay on MS's- or at least, trial him off of them while he's in there, and stressed the importance of family therapy NOW, not after he's released. I flat-out told her that if people plan on me being at the gate to pick him up when he's released, we need something done prior to then and a few sessions isn't enough. Also, if this county is looking for someone to just jump thru their ordered hoops then refuse themselves to get on board with any mental health treatment, then they need to find a paid employee because difficult child's parent is not who they are looking for.

My blood pressure sky-rockets when I have to go over all that stuff because it seemed so preventable. She specifically asked about difficult child's history on probation and what had been done and not done for him. Boy, did I give her an earfull about that!

So, I've either royally ticked her off and turned her against me or she will become an advocate. I'm not holding my breath, but these people need to get a clue. At least she isn't as clueless as some tdocs- she did know/understand that AD's can cause mania. That's more than a lot of them. She sounded shocked and said "did most of difficult child's charges come after prozac"? Then, I heard a couple of deep long sighs when I said he'd been trialed AD's again in Oct. followed by rx's for albuterol, steroids, and allergy medications.

I guess we'll see. I went off a bit, too, about how I didn't want to be accused of witholding info when I provide it because I can't force people to pick it up and read it. She said most parents don't provide it. I said I can understand why if their county people have spent months telling them that they don't care and don't want to hear about it.

The converstaion actually wasn't as hostile as my post is- going iover this stuff with people in the system just sends my blood boiling. I mailed them ALL this info over a month ago. She said she would look thru it and call me at the end of next week.
 

CrazyinVA

Well-Known Member
Staff member
Repeating history is something I simply got used to.. I kept a "cheat sheet" for phonecalls like that. You would *think* people would bother to look in a file, but I also think they're not used to parents providing good records or background histories. I hope the therapist is worth a darn .. and that the ball starts rolling in the right direction.
 

JJJ

Active Member
I know exactly where you are coming from. Kanga's current grant/placement DEMANDED very specific detailed information -- close to 100 pages. When I complained on this board that they didn't bother to read it - I was told what did I expect when I gave them a 100-page novel. BUT THEY DEMANDED IT. I also gave them a 3-page summary that they couldn't be bothered to look at either. I'm right there with you.

The fact that therapist knew enough to ask "did all the charges come after the Prozac ?" is huge. She has at least a hint of a clue! I hope this is the beginning of true help for difficult child.
 

klmno

Active Member
Thank you both! I'm with you, JJJ! I let every person in state Department of Juvenile Justice know that this county turned difficult child over to them in spite of me having everything in place for Residential Treatment Center (RTC), with recommendations and psychiatrist's referral and funding lined up, simply because of PO and county wanting to make sure no funding came out of their pocket, too. A lot of what I tell them (ok- gripe about) probably does sound like a typival parent's complaints, but I'm convinced that these people - at least some of them- know I'm telling the truth. The thing is, in my view, only incompetent parents would sit back and not say anything. Just like with sd's- if you care about your kid and start cathcing on that things aren't adding up and your kid is getting the short end time and time again, you start making some noise.

I realize that it may cause more problems for us but I guess I'm just made that way- parents need to be screaming until something is addressed in this county. I read way too much stuff about how ridiculous it is. Actually, many parents think it is highly corrupt. I don't know if I'd call it corrupt because I don't know if it's intentional- I just think there are way too many incompetent people who have no accountability in it.

Anyway, we'll see how things go with this therapist. Hopefully, it will help that therapist's can usually figure out over a period of time that difficult child has issues, we have issues between us, but none of them have anything to do with him being mistreated or me being incompetent and difficult child reveals plenty to prove that. And he's not really such a bad kid either- he just has a few screws in the wrong place- LOL!

Oh- JJJ, the processing place told me they didn't need all that info about difficult child. Yeah, right, they were going to do their own evaluation based only on court documents of his legal history (no mental health stuff) and what difficult child could tell them and I already knew what happened after the PO had told me that- she then told the judge that I witheld information.
 
M

ML

Guest
Keep telling your truth, K. Whenever your asked and even when youre not. That's all you can do.

Don't forget to do some things just for you. Are you basically doing okay?

Love and hugs,

ML
 

klmno

Active Member
Thank you, both! I had forgotten to mention that the school principal spoke with difficult child about trying to make a couple of his classes more challenging and then he had someone from the high school level talk to difficult child about some other things that difficult child had been stressing over. That made me feel a lot better!

I visited difficult child today and he seems much better than he was last weekend. His CW was checking visitors in today, for some odd reason, so we spoke a minute. I have an IEP meeting there in a couple of days and they are having a special visitation, where we can actually eat together, coming up.

I'm working on reaching a comfort level. LOL! When I see them actually doing what they say and following up, etc, it helps a lot. When they listen to my concerns it also helps. Now, if they actually address the big ones, I can let out a real big sigh!!
 
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