I am writing to follow up on the conversation we had earlier this summer regarding difficult child's placement and parole requirements once he is released from incarceration. As you know, he might be released in XXX for good behavior and I am very concerned about difficult child having the best opportunity to keep improving once he returns to the community. Primarily, I want to make sure that we do not end up with the same situation we had last year that lead to his latest offense.
It is my understanding that difficult child and I have signed an agreement stating that the current plan is for him to return home upon his release and that he will have 30 days of house arrest, a mentor spending time with him for an undetermined amount of time, monthly appointments with you, and be required to get a job. Additionally, this plan can change prior to his release, afterwards you will add to these requirements as you deem appropriate, and mental health therapy for difficult child will probably be required. Since difficult child is not old enough to have a driver's license, I will be responsible for getting him to all these appointments unless you can get transportation provided and you have indicated not to expect much, if any, assistance in that area.
Further, I understand that it is my responsibility to keep you informed of any issues regarding difficult child, plans for him to return home, and my ability to meet your requirements. Therefore, I am letting you know now that I am a single parent and simply cannot work the full-time hours necessary to financially support difficult child while accommodating a mentor's, a therapist's, another employer's, and your schedules, along with taking care of the typical motherly duties such as making sure difficult child is prepared for school, getting him to doctors as necessary, attending IEP meetings, and addressing household chores. As you are aware, I am currently unemployed due to trying to accommodate everyone's expectations last year and since we have been following orders for over three years, I do not believe that having an increased amount of orders from CSU is the answer.
Conversely, I am sure that the hardship created by the additional demands contributes to the problems for difficult child and me, both individually and with our relationship. Therefore, I am asking you to prioritize the various things you believe difficult child needs because I simply cannot provide them all. I would ask that you weigh the importance of keeping the family together along with whether or not another available placement where all the orders for services and appointments can be met is actually a safer and better environment. I personally believe that it would be detrimental to difficult child to be placed in an environment where there is potential for neglect or abuse of any kind but it would also be detrimental for him to return to a situation where the expectations on us are more than we can feasibly meet then have to leave home again, regardless of who gets blamed for it. It would appear to me that if people are so sure that all these services and monitoring will rehabilitate difficult child enough that it is not worth him returning home yet and there is an available placement where nothing detrimental is likely to happen to him, that he should be placed where these things can be accommodated, then return home. If the priority is family reunification upon release then we need supports that focus on our specific problems instead of increasing our stressors and hardships, and that would require understanding our specific difficulties including being more concerned about me being available to work full time hours at a job where I can get benefits, such as medical insurance for difficult child and myself, than whether or not difficult child can get a job at 15 years old.
Specifically, if you want to make sure difficult child does something constructive with his time when school is not in session, shouldn't the requirements be supportive of his academic and career goals and not interfere with my job requirements if they are expected to be effective? There are trained therapeutic mentors; wouldn't it be more feasible to provide one person for the mentoring and therapy instead of ordering both? If his primary needs require funding for mental health treatment that is not available to CSU, then shouldn't someone be advocating for him to be released from CSU so we can have access to those funds through other agencies and let a mental health case manager monitor his progress? If there are going to be requirements for difficult child regarding school behavior, shouldn't they be supportive of his IEP instead of changing the IEP to fit parole requirements, especially since the IEP has been effective for the past two years? Also, if difficult child is on house arrest for the first thirty days after he's released, will he be able to leave with me to do necessary things like shop for school clothes and go to the grocery store and to run errands with me so that he's not left at home alone and unsupervised, or are you expecting me to somehow keep him supervised constantly and still get these things accomplished?
While I don't question your authority to order services and place various requirements on difficult child while he is on parole, I do ask that the focus remain on what is in his best interest and what offers him the best chance for functioning in mainstream without engaging in further illegal activity and self-destructive behavior. In order for this to be successful, I believe there needs to be a mutual agreement between you, the guardian ad litem, and whomever is going to be difficult child's caretaker about what services and requirements address his specific areas of difficulty. I understand that the people in the legal system believe they already know what should be ordered, however, it is impossible to know what is in difficult child's best interest if the decision makers do not understand the specific problems that we have had while difficult child is living in the community and if they are not comfortable trusting the reports from the parent. I am a lot more interested in having rational discussions about these issues and coming to an agreement about more feasible ways to achieve the objectives than I am in trying to have a control battle with anyone in the legal system but as long as the people in CSU view the parent as part of the problem rather than someone that needs their support shown to the child, this obviously can't happen.
