Leaving Home

The years had flown past: Jonathan was seventeen. The fostering program had specified that we would foster Jonathan until he was eighteen, when he would transition into a Group Home of our choosing.

However, a few months before his eighteenth birthday, I had such bad back pain that I could not continue. I phoned DOCS, explaining about my back. They were vague about Jonathan – but understood my situation. They could offer us a month in a Respite Home not far from Jonathan’s school. He could continue to be picked up by his regular school bus.

I accepted – there was little choice. We took Jonathan there, for what we called a “short holiday”. I hoped it would be enough for my back to recover ….

We all worried about him, and whether he was being well looked after. And of course, we missed him badly – he had become an integral part of our family. There was a huge emptiness in our home.

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My second daughter, Bella, was trying to concentrate on preparations for her final exams. I later found out how this anxiety about Jonathan, on top of her studies, was impacting her. To my shame, I say now that I should have noticed more, been more alert to the needs of my own children.

To me she seemed to be coping well with her studies; her quiet demeanour was always calm and measured. It was around this time too that a friend of hers lost her brother in a terrible car accident. So much extra pressure.

Being verbal doesn’t necessarily mean someone will speak of their needs, and she never wanted to make a fuss. Later she told me of how difficult it had been for her, and I wished I had realised at the time.

However, she became a young woman who could read the hearts of others, who had an intuitive understanding of how to sensitively and gently offer comfort and strength when needed, perhaps because she had been one who did not, or could not, ask for it herself when she needed it.

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The time had obviously come to immediately begin the process of looking for a Group Home, and Sheryl agreed. We would check them out together. Who knew how long this process might take?

I rang DOCS again, asking to speak specifically to Jonathan’s caseworker. I could not remember the last time one had visited. The fostering program support had degenerated also, from little to almost non-existent.

“Jonathan?” was the perplexed reply from DOCS. “No, he doesn’t have a caseworker any more ….”

Why not?

“He’s in a stable placement – he doesn’t need one ….”

But we needed a person to liaise with us as he transitioned to a Group Home!

I said I wanted a new caseworker to be appointed immediately, to work with us in finding a Group Home which would meet his needs – Jonathan’s name was on the waiting list; it had been put on the list when he was nine years old, to be effective for when he turned eighteen.

No … his name was not on any list. I was aghast.

No … he would not get a new caseworker. He was nearly eighteen, and at eighteen, he would no longer be the responsibility of DOCS. They were not interested.

I phoned the adult equivalent of DOCS, known as FACS (Family and Community Services). No, they were not interested in helping us. He was not their responsibility – he was not yet eighteen.

I was shocked beyond belief. We’d fallen through the cracks of the system. Too old for one government department, and not quite old enough for the other. We were literally in “no man’s land” – and it was not a pretty place.

Once again, I had been too trusting and naïve. I believed people. How many times had I been assured that his name was on the list for a Group Home placement?

Was there even a list? Apparently not. There had never been such a list.

How many times had they promised we would be involved in finding him a suitable home? Assurances of an easy transition …. All false. No one cared.

Perhaps I should have looked in the mirror and seen the sign emblazoned across my forehead: “GULLIBLE!” or “NAÏVE!” or was it “STUPID!” or “IDIOT!” They all suited.

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What would we do?

The month of respite was drawing to a close.

I had received no phone calls from DOCS during the time of his respite care. However, they had apparently not forgotten Jonathan ….

One afternoon, I received a phone call from his school.

Had I heard the news about Jonathan’s new home yet?

New home? What new home?

Having worked at his school for two years, the staff knew me well, and trusted me. They also knew DOCS well – and did not trust them. The principal suspected I hadn’t heard, so she filled me in on all she knew. 

DOCS had contacted the school and organised for Jonathan to be picked up straight after school the very next day. They would call by the respite home to pick up his belongings and take him to his new home. The principal told me the suburb – in the hills district, an hour from my home, and over an hour from his school.

Without our being involved in the selection process? Leaving behind all his possessions still at our place? Without saying good-bye to his family who loved him? Without even an address?

And then I knew.

The shock nearly caused me to faint, and I had to sit down.

A few months prior to this I had watched a documentary on television about a motel in that area mentioned by the principal. It was on a main road. It provided accommodation for teenagers who could not live at home, and for whom foster families could not be found. Workers from DOCS came in daily to supervise.

It was not a Group Home – it was a motel, being paid by the government to put a roof over the heads of troubled teens to keep them off the streets. These were the outcasts of society, the lost ones. This was the way DOCS “cared” for them – and ticked the box that they were being looked after.

The workers would not have been trained in the area of disabilities. They worked rotating shifts, so there would be no consistency of care.

I was horrified.

There would be no one who understood how to feed him, how to successfully give him his medications, no-one who knew how to move his arms gently to release tension and maintain movement, no one who knew how to attend to his personal care, how to bathe him and dress him, taking account of his spasticity and minimising his pain. Was there even a bath or a shower-bath on the premises? He certainly could not shower himself ....

His right arm had to be put into its sleeve before the left arm, as he had more flexibility on the left side … all those little things that I did automatically … but who would know? Who would understand? Who would care? Who would turn him over twice during each night? Who would reposition him during the day, to avoid bedsores? No one.

Who could read his signs, interpret his moods? He was fully dependent for all care, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. He couldn’t even explain that his nose was itchy, or that he was tired or hungry, or sad.

I rang DOCS. The conversation was short. They gave me the address of his “new home” as they optimistically called it. Yes, it was THAT motel.

Perhaps they thought they were doing me a service by relieving me of my fostering “job”. Perhaps other foster mothers or birth mothers would be relieved that their work was completed, that the young person was no longer their responsibility to worry about.

However, I don’t think they thought at all about how it would impact me and my family, losing Jonathan in this way. I might be “only” a foster mother in the eyes of DOCS, but this foster mother was not able to accept that disastrous plan.

I rarely get angry – but I was angry.  Very angry. Angry and disillusioned.

This would not happen. We had come too far, and he would not end up living indefinitely in a motel with no one to love and care for him.

The following afternoon I received permission to leave my school early. I had one thing on my mind, only one thing ….

I would not allow this to take place. I would arrive at his school before the DOCS workers took him away. I was still his foster mother. I was going to bring him back home.

I kidnapped him.

I took a child who officially and legally was a Ward of the State, and therefore "belonged" to DOCS, and I brought him back to our home – his home. I had no idea what the outcome of this might be. I didn’t really care.