Behavioral Intervention

Yesterday, Mom and I attended Behavioral Intervention 3 and 4 (she wants to be my respite provider and also needs hours for her job as a preschool teacher). The material is all new as of October 1st, and I think they mixed Discipline 101 in with BI3, which means I've had it twice this year. *shrugs*

Differences between CPS and Bair--Bair actually taught us techniques to protect ourselves from things like hair pulls and choking. We are permitted to use two types of restraints--the Bear Hug and the Escort--if all attempts to deescalate the child has failed and they pose a danger to themselves or others. This, of course, must be documented (there's a Physical Restraint form) and will probably trigger a review of the child's individual service plan to see if there are other interventions that could be put in place to prevent future rages.

With CPS, the only restraint they would tolerate was a brief restraint (less than 1 minute) of a child under 5, which is basically grabbing a toddler to keep them from running into traffic.

I understand CPS is trying to phase out restraints all together because when done improperly, they can kill kids, but at the same time, I am inviting unknown and potentially volatile children into my home and would like to have methods to protect myself and anyone else in the household.

And I don't appreciate being lied to.

The other thing I like about Bair is the support they are promising (and really, I expect them to follow through with) for the foster families. We are encouraged to take respite (when my FAD worker asked how I would have dealt with my car accident had I had children in my home and I mentioned probably using respite days, she was clearly not happy with that) and to call our Social Services Worker for assistance. They have a foster mom who did have a child who did need restrained (and was eventually classified as Intensive and moved to a different agency to get the care he needed), and she would call her SSW after incidents to hash out what happened and brainstorm ways to improve her response next time. I always got voicemails and never a return call when I had a question with CPS. 

It's not that I think that CPS is bad, but they are viciously overworked and underfunded (Governor Perry, I'm looking at you). As anyone who knew me during my years at my old job, you can only stay passionate about something for so long under those conditions before you burn out. 

The fact that both Bair (about the half the Texas offices are on a placement hold until December, including Houston) and I have been getting calls from CPS asking if we have beds open probably means that their (and the judges') post-budget cut plan of sticking as many children as humanly possible into kinship care (care by relatives) is not working out as well as they had hoped. In some cases, it's appropriate, but kids were being placed with relatives who had felony records, who had histories of their own with CPS, etc.--people CPS would never in a million years approve as foster parents. Hebe and Thor were taken from my house screaming and sobbing because the father who had been granted custody was a "drug junkie".