Perspective

You know how you go into things thinking one way and then you are in the middle of it and you start to think that perhaps you may think differently now that you know more?

I went into Foster Care thinking that reunification was a bad idea and a myth of sorts. I mean these kids are taken sometimes from the worst of the worst things that you can ever imagine. How would you in good conscience send them back?

You hear about parents getting chance after chance of getting their kids back, "working their program" so to speak, yet many fail over and over to do so, and the children flounder until their case has spent so many years open and they eventually age out of permanency options because of this. Instead roaming from home to home, or even State facilities.

So what happens when you go into a case with so many negatives, things you have read or heard, yet you start to believe that perhaps some people can and do make the effort to get their lives together to support their children and get them back. On paper things start to look like the changes are being implemented and the parents are complying with the courts.

Does then the best interests of the family and children, which are for them to be together seem like an ideal outcome or does it remain a myth?

Can people really change that much?