Meeting with PO

[klmno]

I had the meeting with the parole officer and it seemed to go well. He is backing up my approach to keeping mail between difficult child and my mother monitored and is going to email difficult child's CM at Department of Juvenile Justice about it. He said if it became an issue, we would deal with it differently then. He said he would look thru difficult child's main court file but doubted there would be much in there since it was not put in a court order. He said it might just be in the judge's personal file but didn't say he would talk to the judge about it. He's in agreement that my mother should not be told where difficult child is. He said that if GAL ever told my mom or anyone else where difficult child is that it's illegal and should be addressed as such.

He was fine with difficult child trialing the medication decrease/removal and seemed pleased with the reports he's getting about behavior so far. I talked to him about my concerns when difficult child comes home that the demands would be so much on me that I couldn't do them but then difficult child would have to go to a group home or something even if he was behaving- which would not be fair to him. He said the system doesn't always work well and it is unfair and we would try to work out something if that happened- like maybe the mentor could help transport difficult child to a therapist on some occasions. He said difficult child would have to be assessed by the county mental health dept upon release and we had to follow their treatment recommendations. That didn't make me too happy- would they ever say he didn't need much? I don't have any faith in the tdocs over there at all. He said he understood but we didn't have any choice. This could lead to a problem.

He said he wasn't involved with the child support issue at all. I asked why I hadn't been contacted by dss child support division to meet about situation prior to going to court and he said because the system works backwards a lot of times. LOL!

I passed difficult child's first probation officer on my way out and we smiled and spoke- she was a single parent of 2 teen boys and always very supoortive. I passed difficult child's last PO- the one that lasted 18 mos- on the way in. I acknowledged her but she just threw me a dirty look. The parole officer said "well, there are good ones and bad ones over here, just like in any business".

He said they are now watching the kids while they give urine for a drug test because the kids had been sneaking in fake urine to pass off. He said one boy came in with a container stuffed in his pants and it busted and looked like he had peed on himself. LOL!

 

[everywoman]

I'm glad it went well. It seems like he is willing to work with you and recognizes the flaws in the system.

 

[maril]

He sounds like a reasonable man. Good luck with everything! I hope there will be progress.

 

[JJJ]

It sounds like you have a good one this time. We have to get our tdocs through our county mental health as well. There are good ones, bad ones and nice but ineffective ones. Just play the game. If they want to try something, let them. If it doesn't work at least they feel like you cooperated. I have it in my standard parent report that token economies do not work as behavior mod for Tigger and I have a list of who tried it with him and the results. I promise you that each new person (whether therapist or school) insists on trying a token economy cause "they always work if you do them right. They waste weeks of their time and then they usually begin to understand that mom has a clue about her own child. I like the idea about the mentor taking him to the therapist appointment. Maybe you can also find someone (either a college kid or a stay-at-home mom that would be willing to be a driver -- it would cost less to pay them to drive him than it would to lose another job.)

 

[klmno]

Thanks, all! JJJ, he doesn't know for sure if he can get the mentor to take difficult child to appts but it would be great if he could, at least most of the time. Another thing we realized while talking is that difficult child's school schedule will be different because he'll be in high school instead of middle school so appts will need to be 5:00 or after. I told him I'd tried that a few times before and here's the reality- the newbie tdocs are willing to do that sometimes (which means they are the less experienced ones) but as soon as they get clientele built up, they no longer want to do it, leaving us with inadequate therapy to begin with and switching tdocs every few months. He understood and also agreed that difficult child should not be taken out of school once a week to go to therapy unless he's really in bad shape. He said maybe we would get lucky and the mental health people would be ok with difficult child having minimal therapist appts for a while and the mentor having a lot of positive effect on difficult child. If the mentor is good, he might really have more positive impact on difficult child since many issues pertain to not having his father in his life. The PO is making sure that the mentor is a male.

If the PO stays this way, he could be more of an asset than a detriment in our lives- boy that would be a miracle!

 

[Wiped Out]

Sounds like a good P.O. It was nice of you to acknowledge the former P.O. You are a better person than me, I would have walked right by her!

 

[klmno]

LOL, Sharon! Actually, I envision you as a much more patient and friendly person than me.

This issue about the mental health evaluation to be done by the county upon difficult child's release bugged me all night long. It doesn't sound quite right to me that it would be required as policy when the kid gets released with the state Department of Juvenile Justice's recommendations for supervision, mental health, school, and everything else. And it was my understanding that the county legal system can require certain mental health treatment, but cannot dictate who provides it- unless it is paid for by them. I wonder if this is a way for the county legal people to push the GAL's desire for me to get a psychiatric evaluation and the PO just hasn't mentioned that part yet. I wonder why he he didn't mention this before- before he said we would go by what the Department of Juvenile Justice mental health people recommended.