- Prior to the removal
of a couple children.
When I entered the home, the children are
actually very excited to see me.
They hadn't had contact
with me previously,
maybe one time they had
had contact with me.
But they were excited to
see someone in the home,
and someone that was paying
attention to their needs.
And so, it turned out
being multiple children
being removed which can
have its own challenges,
and a parent who was pretty depressed,
chemically dependent, had
a lot of domestic violence
in the home, and we ended
up having to remove them
just because she was unable
to keep them protected
from her spouse at the
time, plus her depression
and chemical dependency issues.
When I went into the home,
the environment was not
appropriate for children,
such as feces, dog feces,
not enough, you know,
not enough food in the home.
I don't believe they had
running water at that time,
so they didn't have sanitation facilities,
and when we did the removal,
you know mom was upset
at first, but when I started
talking to her about,
you know, we will help you
and we will move forward
with you as fast as we can,
but at this point, you know
this needs to happen and
I need you to work with me
to help the kids get
ready and help assist them
in thinking about what's
in their best interests
at this point.
And she was able to do that.
She pulled herself together,
pulled her tears away,
and was able to help me
packing up their bags,
and at the same time, we have, you know,
law enforcement in the home too, with us,
at any point in time.
But this parent, she knew what was in the
best interests of her children,
and it wasn't to create
a chaotic scene for them
at this point.
So those are the removals that go well for
the children and the family.
And usually those are ones
that can move forward faster,
as they understand the
reasoning, and they have
a little more insight to what's
happening in their world.
One of the removals that didn't go well,
I didn't realize that I would be removing
the children at this point.
I didn't have law enforcement with me
in the initial beginning.
Made contact with law enforcement
as the parent understood
what was happening,
in that I was calling law enforcement,
they became pretty agitated and upset.
I had walked into a home
where they had children
tied into the, well the
children weren't tied,
I apologize, the bedroom was tied,
so the children were
unable to exit the room.
And they had no windows or anything,
and they were living in their own feces.
And so, when I entered the home,
I saw the locked door
right away, the tied door,
and so my emotions kinda got going,
which caused the parents
to kinda get emotional,
and law enforcement wasn't present,
so when I was contacting law enforcement,
they continued to get more agitated.
At some point, in the removal,
the parent said he was gonna kill himself,
went to get his medications,
and so law enforcement
eventually entered the home,
but they also were unable
to be present the whole time
just because the overwhelming
smell in the home,
of feces and urine, and
being unable to, you know,
kind of be in there, because
it can make a person,
you know, not feel well, and so, you know,
we were trying to all go
back and forth into the home,
so with law enforcement,
so although it didn't
start out the best, it did end well.
You know, the parent went to the hospital,
and the children were removed and put into
protective care.
The nice part about some removals
is we are able to find
family and have family,
you know, placed right away.
There are sometimes that that does happen,
and that was actually one of them.
They were placed with
family that day cause
I was aware of who the
family members were,
they had made contact with us.
You know sometimes we
can work with parents
pretty quickly to make
placements with family members,
instead of having to go
to unknown foster parent,
so that the most traumatizing for a child,
it's not only the removal, but
they're going to strangers,
if they were placed in foster care.
