Discussions

My wife and I of 14 yrs are unfortunately splitting up soon, and we have two children. We were looking for some information on joint custody and how to make this as painless as possible for the children. One of the first places we tried was CFS. duh, big mistake!! We had one half-hour meeting with an intake worker and she DID point us in the right direction to get more support and information from other services. ok fine. good thanx. We went to a few other places and got some very good info and I feel confident we are now moving in the right direction. Our next meeting with the cfs worker was coming up, and so I phoned them up to tell them them thank-you, but we no longer require your assistance. Didn't work. We were not allowed to cancel our next meeting, she showed up at our door unnannounced to tell us this and schedule a meeting, (and get a look at our place and the kids I assume). we went to the meeting and right away she tells us that she's recieved information from an unnamed source that said our kids were pale and too skinny. Now I come from a broken family as does my wife, with moderate abuse. Since being a teenager the most important thing in my life is to have a healthy, happy, stable family. NOTHING is more important to me then my kids and my family. We are on social assistance for a medical disability i have, and we still somehow manage to spend probably 700 - 900 a month on groceries for 2 kids and two adults. and believe me most of that is for the kids. They ARE picky eaters, but we feed them healthy food, make sure they get as much as they want (and more sometimes lol), they get vitamins everyday, they are very active and socially outgoing etc. We are good parents. now we are in their system with no easy way out. This is the last thing we need right now in the middle of this delicate time of a huge change for all of us. We go to them looking for help to get us through this difficult transition, and they manage to insult us and lock us in their system to put us under the microscope. I was polite, and it was hard, but i even got her to say "no, you don't have a choice" well they did give us one choice.... we could either stay in their mainstream program, with the kid's listed as "under protection", or we could opt for a "voluntary" intensive parenting program where we need to be motivated willing participants in order to learn how to be better parents and make our kid's lives better. If all goes well in this program they could be out of our lives "in as little as 6 months!! " So , as i'm sure you'll see, it's not really that much of a choice. Of course we want to opt for the "voluntary" program. Of course we don't want our children to remain"under protection"!! But believe me it's not easy to look forward to this intensive parenting program when we've been bullied into it and we already have ongoing appointments with other organizations that ARE actually helping us. All they are doing is over-complicating our lives and creating a huge amount of stress for us. I am being pretty much forced to nod and say yes i'm a bad parent and i would love your help, because the only other option is to have the kids remain under their "protection" with possible removal, and my wife and i to appear as bad parents for not taking advantage of this "voluntary" program, when we so obviously need it(in their eyes).  
This is a horrible enough time for my poor family with my wife and I moving apart. Thanx for making it unbelievably worse CFS. All because of one half-hour meeting WE scheduled to try to get help.  
BLAH! sorry lol done now.  
 
 
Edited by fred ackleberry, 2010-08-18 15:55:51