We had a treatment team meeting today to discuss Sammy’s future and what we saw as his needs for treatment.



This is the most positive meeting I have been to in a very long time. Mostly because the team was on the same page. I had several people backing up my statements, concerns and questions.

Any time you enter any type of treatment, you are asked to list your goals for treatment. This can be difficult, and even with all the things I have been through with Sammy, I still sought input from my friends. I posed this question on the Adoption.com forum that I frequent, and on the Attachment & Trauma Network list as well. Through the answers my wonderful friends gave me, we were able to come up with a list of goals.

Here they are:

• Manage behavior especially when angry

• Develop coping skills

• Increase awareness of his emotional state & mood

• Identify emotional triggers

• Accept structure by following age appropriate rules & consequences

• Diminish argumentative behaviors

• Taking responsibility for the choices he makes

Develop a plan to do the community service he owes and follow
through

We developed the general goals, then we identified specific ways for him to meet these goals, and the supports that will be in place to help him achieve them.

There were several times that I wanted to get up and do the happy dance. One was when the foster mother said that it was obvious that Sammy treated Larry and I differently than he treated her. The other was when the social worker that I don’t like informed us that this would be her last meeting, and then she was handing the case over to another worker. Sammy’s foster mother also said that his temper is WAY too short. That he explodes over very small things. This became very apparent when Sammy did not like the way the meeting was going, and got up and left. He stomped up the stairs, and slammed the door several times. There was no denying his behavior.

We also put in place a crisis plan with very definitive steps to take if Sammy becomes aggressive either in our home, or at the foster home. In the past Sammy has tried to sabotage visits, and has asked to be returned early if he feels like things are not going his way. We have plans in place for this, and most importantly, we have the support of the foster mother. If he needs to be returned early, by our decision, not Sammy’s, he will lose all privileges at the foster home, until such time as the visit would have ended normally.

The support of this team is so crucial to my son’s healing. If this would have been the hostile type of meeting we have had in the past, he would be guaranteed to fail.

We will also meet monthly to review, and possibly revamp his goals. We don’t have a time frame in mind, since any time we have tried to do this in the past, we have exceeded the time we thought.

One final thought. While we were driving home, I was replaying certain events from this meeting in my head. One of the things that stood out to me was the talk of respite. The foster mother has places very close to her that she can take Sammy for the night or a few days, if he decides to explode. There is also a live-in respite provider. The foster care agency provides weekly counseling and case manger visits weekly. Once Sammy comes home, all those resources are gone. Is it any wonder that adoptive parents struggle?


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