When difficult child's are in legal trouble...

[klmno]

(I'm going to assume that this isn't just a local or state matter)

The NAMI volunteer who called me last week refferred me to VOPA- Virginia Office of Protection & Advocacy, I think. Apparently, they aren't a government agency but help those with mental health issues who get caught up in the legal system. (Do they have these everywhere?) Anyway, they couldn't help- why? The ONLY reason was because I have already been paying an attny for difficult child for the past year, since I fired the public defender.

I just thought I would throw that info out in case anyone else ends up having a difficult child in legal trouble- you have to call the OPA FIRST - before any other attny. Well, that bit of info could have saved me about $4000....And, they probably could have and would have done a lot better job getting difficult child a fair punishment and educating the courts a little more.

I don't know why it always seems that I find out really important stuff after the fact.

It would have been nice if the GAL had just mentioned this to me.

 

[Steely]

Interesting info.
Thanks for sharing, even after the fact.
I still am searching for my meaning on this planet - it seems that I have to have lived it in order to know it - perhaps you feel the same way.

 

[judi]

Wow - sounds like a good program if you find out about it BEFORE you get too far into the system.

In IL, we don't have anything as near as I can tell. My son has stayed out of jail for over 4 years now. Both times he spent the night, I called the crisis mental health team for the county to go and assess him at the jail and they put him in a private cell. However, I only knew of this program because of what I do for a living.

I agree; its very frustrating.

 

[Shari]

Thanks for the info. Not to be borrowing trouble, but I imagine I will need this down the road, so I'm going to look into it now.

Good to know.

 

[klmno]

Shari, just in case- you're doing the right thing. Knowing what I know now, I wish I had called NAMI and other agencies at the first sign of a mood disorder in difficult child. Just to get the spill and learn the ins and outs.

Steely, you bet I understand- I'm left feeling like I'm learning everything in hindsight for the past 3 years now. It might not feel so bad if I was raising a younger child, too, that I thought this would help- but, shoot, this is my one-time shot. I'm just left feeling like "this is what I should have known and this is what I should have done and this is what I did wrong". Experience is wasted on those who can't use it now. That is how I feel right now. It is just frustration- I try to remind myself how much worse it could and would be if I hadn't found this board. Really, the support and suggestions and shared knowledge cannot be matched anywhere.

So, while I whine because I didn't find it sooner, I also have to be grateful that I found it at all- and before anything got any worse.