Sent Monday, June 5, 2006
Dear Judge Kelley --
First, please forgive me if I've misspelled your name.
Since this has been impressed upon me to where it's all I think about/worry
about constantly, I feel that this subject should be first: LB 1031 and time.
I have been told repeatedly that I'm about to lose my daughter for two reasons:
I'm apparently not ready for her to come home and she's been in foster care for
more than fifteen months out of twenty-two. I want to address the matter of time
first and directly.
The reason my case has taken so long is because of two things: The original
court order to "obtain a legal source of income" and "obtain independent
housing." I did both those things but they took a very long time. Here's why...
Let me throw some dates at you: I originally applied for SSI on October 22,
2002. I, of course, just like the vast majority of people who apply for SSI, was
denied immediately. I don't even remember why. Through my SSI attorney, Timothy
Cuddigan, I applied for an appeal hearing in December 2002. I got my appeal
hearing on Monday, April 19, 2004 (a full seventeen months later), at 8:30 AM.
Then I went home to wait for my decision. I made the mistake of
thinking/believing that after waiting about two months I should have a decision.
The sick joke was on me. I was still waiting when, on Friday, July 9, 2004,
Jessyca Vandercoy and Brooke Eggert showed up on my doorstep. The next Monday,
Jessyca came to my home on yet another completely unannounced visit to tell me
that she'd decided to offer me intensive family preservation services. I
accepted because she also said she'd help me get Deirdre into Head Start, which
I had no idea how to do, much less the money to pay for, living on ADC as I was.
When the Visinet family support worker, Toni Bonsera, and I met about a week
later, we went over the goals Jessyca had assigned for us to work on. I do not
remember all of them, but one of them may make your eyebrows rise: find
independent housing.
At first I was enthusiastic about that particular goal, because I no more liked
living in a very tiny shotgun cottage in Little Mexico surrounded by
non-English-speaking Hispanic neighbors than anyone else would. I also didn't
enjoy living with my parents, who bickered all the time and expected me to keep
Deirdre confined to our bedroom all her waking hours. Imagine trying to keep a
healthy, active, intelligent, curious, mobile three-year-old confined to a small
bedroom fourteen to sixteen hours a day. Yeah, right.
However, when I really began to think about it, I became unenthusiastic about
finding my own place real quick. The reason? Here's where I answer a question
with a question: Have you ever tried living on $293 a month with no outside
financial help? I'm sorry, I couldn't imagine how it was possible unless I
decided not to have a phone or anything else one needs to live...like running
water and electricity.
Not only that, but every single federally subsidized and/or income-based
apartment complex we applied at had a year, year and a half, two year long
waiting list before they even called you to come in and take a look at an
apartment, then make arrangements to move in. And where, pray tell, was I going
to get the money for first and last month's rent and deposit, plus utilities
deposits? The nonexistent money tree that my parents and me kept in our small
backyard?
Plus, Toni was constantly bugging me: Have you considered working again? I kept
trying to explain my physical disabilities to her, but I might's well been
talking to the proverbial brick wall. I was also deathly afraid that if I did
anything that even remotely resembled being employed, that would be the end of a
favorable decision for SSI, and I was not willing to risk my entire future, and
that of my daughter, on what the SSI people called "failed work attempts."
Friday, September 17, 2004, a little after 5:30 PM, Deirdre was taken from me.
The Douglas County Sheriffs' who invaded our tiny home that hot early evening
had shoved a bunch of papers at my dad when they walked in uninvited, saying,
"If you want to know why we're taking her, it's all in those papers." Here's
another date: Wednesday, September 29, 2004. My thirty-first birthday, and the
day that I first walked into your courtroom and met Jenny Creighton and you.
When you handed down your first order, my attitude was, "Ok, I'll do what I'm
told, follow the court order to the letter, try as hard as possible to keep a
positive attitude/outlook, and see where this goes."
I prayed every single day that I'd get my SSI as soon as possible so that I
could fulfill the "obtain a legal source of income" part of the order, and then
begin working on the "obtain independent housing" part of the order. I couldn't
do one without the other, because I had to be able to pay bills in order to keep
a home. And I had no income whatsoever. There was something else that was
wonderfully ironic about your order, too: Remember the complete physical
examination I was supposed to have to determine if I should be on all my
medications? The beauty part is that, by the time I had the exam, I had no
medications. My Medicaid had been cut off starting November 1, 2004. So I was an
insulin-dependent diabetic with no insulin, an asthmatic with no inhalers.
You cannot imagine my joy when you ordered that I be put back on Medicaid
immediately. I really did want tell you that I appreciated that immensely, that
I was eternally grateful, but I didn't know if I was allowed to talk, so I kept
my mouth shut. I figured that if it was a court order, then Health and Human
Services would have no choice but to comply no matter what their regulations
said. It was a court order. Another one of those "yeah, right" moments
followed, when Edna Castro called me a few days later and let me know that even
with the court order in place, I still couldn't get Medicaid. Exasperated,
heavily disappointed sigh.
The SSI decision was made by Administrative Law Judge Peter Belli on January 25,
2005, I learned of it around 8:30 AM on January 31, 2005. My dream, which by now
was closer to a fantasy, was realized: I had finally gotten SSI. The very first
thing I did was get a copy of the decision and hand-deliver it to my Food Stamp
caseworker, who immediately put me back on Medicaid. I then made an appointment
with my doctor and gave him a list of every single medication I was supposed to
be on, and within two hours of seeing him, I was back on all my meds. Except
that I found out that I was now insulin-resistant, and had to be put on a
diabetes pill, Actos. I didn't even care that I wasn't going to see any money
for up to ninety days after the date of the decision, all I was really
interested in right then was getting back on my meds. Then I spent a week
throwing up because a side effect of Depakote is nausea and/or vomiting.
Then I started looking for my own place in earnest. However, I didn't find
anything until I was assigned a lovely young lady, Meghan Greteman, as a family
support worker, who took me to the Federal Housing Authority to get a list of
all the federally subsidized housing in Omaha and Council Bluffs. We found the
place I'm at now that very day, July 25, 2005. Strattford Square has a year and
a half waiting list, which was completely bypassed for me.
I moved in here on Wednesday, August 31, 2005. That's when
reunification efforts began in earnest.
Now you can see why my case has dragged along why it has.
Some more disturbing numbers to throw at you, which will also explain why my
case has dragged on forever and a day:
I have had ELEVEN family support workers and/or visitation specialists:
-Toni, Family Support Worker, Visinet
-Lona, Family Support Worker, Visinet
-Mandy, Family Support Worker, Visinet
-Angie, visitation specialist, Visinet
-Reavis, visitation specialist, Visinet
-Meghan (mentioned above), Family Support Worker, Owens
-Mike, visitation specialist, Visinet
-Kimberly, family support specialist, Child Saving Institute, Intensive
Family Preservation
-Susana, family support specialist, Child Saving Institute, Intensive
Family Preservation (current)
-Valerie, Family Support Worker, Visinet
-Jessica, Family Support Worker, Visinet (current)
I have had FOUR CPS caseworkers (also called "case managers"):
-Jessyca Vandercoy (investigative only)
-Edna Castro
-Chessie Rohrer
-Michele Janky (current)
I do not want to lose my daughter because of a law that was designed to keep
kids from lingering in foster care like it was Limbo because their parents don't
care about them. I love her and I cannot imagine a life without her in it. If
you believe anything, believe this: I'd literally die for my daughter.
Deirdre does NOT do change at all...so every single change in personnel has
caused her to act out. Guess who (not WHAT) gets blamed for her behavior? If you
guessed, "her biological mother," then you guessed right.
A lot of what's happened in my case has been in the control/hands of others, not
me. If I had my way, we'd have Valerie as our family support worker, Michele as
our case manager, and I don't know what to say about the intensive family
preservation. It just seems like as soon as we get to know a person, get
comfortable with them, they're taken from us and a new one appears in their
place. For instance, we lost Valerie, our last FSW, because Visinet has decided
to split regular family support and Visinet-foster-home-kids-family-support in
two separate categories, so we got attached to Valerie and after having her for
a grand total of three whole weeks, we were assigned Jessica. Another thing:
almost (but not quite) every family support worker and/or visitation worker
we've had has been about ten years younger than me, give or take a couple of
years. Toni, Valerie and Susana are older, the rest were ten years younger, give
or take. Only one has been around my age (Kimberly).
Please, I am begging you, do not take my daughter away from me. I do not know
what I'd do without her. I love her to distraction. I want to have her come home
and live with me and for us to have a completely normal family life...and I
don't want to look at my best friend's daughter, Veronica, who I consider to
almost be my own daughter, and feel a spear piercing my heart when she hugs me
and tells me she loves me because my own daughter lives with someone else. Have
mercy on my daughter and me. Do not separate us. You have to keep in mind that,
even though you haven't met her, she loves me just as much as I love her, and
never seeing me again would probably be as painful to her as it would be to me.
Thank you very much for reading this very long letter and taking it into
consideration when you make your decision.
Thank you so much in advance,
Cathi de Beaulieux
Deirdre Nelson's Mom