FULL DISCLOSURE
For us, full disclosure was ALL the documents they had on The Boy from the time he went into foster care in 2009, till now. Medical records, school stuff, care/safety/treatment plans, etc. It was mailed in a FedEx envelope and arrived on our front steps. I picked it up and it was HEAVY. It was thicker than a ream of paper. We estimated it was at least 1,000 pages long.
It was all out of order. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to how it was put together. When I started glancing through it all, it was overwhelming, and that's an understatement. I wanted to cry just looking at it all.
And did I mention we only got the documents 3 days before the full disclosure MEETING with his team? The basis of that meeting was these documents and any questions we had about what we read.
I had 3 days to read through over 1,000 pages of records.
I started by sorting it all into years. So you can see how painful this really was, here's how many years I had to sort into.
2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016
EIGHT YEARS.
Some of the years were short, with only a few dozen pages. Other years were HUGE.
I started with the most recent years and worked my way back. Looking back I wish I would have started with the oldest years and worked my way current, but it is what it is.
It wasn't fun reading the files. It was really, really terrible.
There are few positives listed in these types of files. They write up the problems these kids have, they tell you every little mistake they made, and they make everything sound way worse than it was. And all of these things are repeated over and over, year after year.
All their little behaviors. All the difficulties they've had in school. Individual instances that came about because of circumstances these kids could do nothing about. Every painful situation that constituted your child being removed from their biological family.
Over. And over. And over again. Year after year.
I just tried to keep thinking, if someone had to write up a file like this on ME, what would it say? What would it say about my husband? When all they're focusing on is the problems, how can anyone ever sound good?
I wanted to cry every night after finishing a few years. I felt sick. I felt terrified. I felt overwhelmed. And scared. And wary. And a million other emotions.
The day of the full disclosure meeting quickly arrived and I was a ball of nervous, sweating, freaked-out nerves. We called into the conference number, our caseworker sitting at the dining room table with us. Honestly I'm not even sure how many people were in on that phone call, but at least a dozen. All these people who had worked with The Boy in some form for either a few months, or years.
We were emailed a document the day before that touched on the highlights from The Boy's full file. Together, all of us, went through that file and discussed things as they came up. Justin and I had made notes throughout reading the file, so we were given the chance to ask questions here and there.
More than anything in his past, we focused on what he's been like in the last 3 months.
See, The Boy has had 48 placements since going into care in 2009. Read that number again: 48.
He's been in a lot of different places, but he's been with his grandmother several times, and every time he's ended up having to be taken out of her home for one reason or another. This last time when he was taken from her home, it was very different.
His caseworker said when she picked him up this last time he looked absolutely defeated. She'd never seen him so low. She'd never seen such finality to his expression.
She met with him a little later and he said "I'm ready."
She said, "ready for what?"
"I'm ready for you to find me a family."
Something triggered in The Boy. The final string of hope at making it work living with grandma snapped and it seems to have set him free.
Everyone during that meeting said The Boy they were involved with currently is not the same boy from that 1,000 page file. He had turned around. He was different. He wasn't perfect, not by a long ways, but he had made amazing changes. He was trying in ways he never had before.
By this point, there were tears in my eyes, and happiness in my heart.
Our Boy was ready for us. He was being prepared.
Toward the end of the meeting, one of his team brought up the financial side to us adopting him, and we were quite surprised.
- They're going transfer his Medicaid to where we live. It will cover everything and he'll have it until he's 18.
- His college tuition is pretty much paid for, up to a masters degree.
- They will pay us a monthly stipend.
- And there's a huge tax credit to adopting an older/special needs child. For more info check out THIS link.
We weren't expecting any of those, and we're doing fine financially, but it certainly was a nice surprise. There will be no financial stress to adopting The Boy. We're not going to have to worry about our medical insurance going way up to get him the things he needs.
Everyone assumes it's expensive to adopt. And to adopt a baby it certainly can be. But adopting from foster care is a totally different story. Especially in adopting an older child. In the end, this adoption will have cost us nothing.
Full disclosure is done. We can move on from this now. While I know it is important to know everything in The Boy's past, I think it's equally important to give him this fresh start. To turn a blind eye in some way, and to let him move past all of that.
