The incident with Violet really rattled Pia. After that, we told social services we preferred to foster infants and toddlers.
Our second placement was a 4-day-old newborn. He came to us straight from the hospital because he was born with cocaine in his system. They kept him in the hospital until the withdrawal symptoms were gone. That lasted less than 24 hours. The family of the biological mother gave the county social services hell. We don’t know all the details. We just know that the next day the infant had to go back to the family.
In fostering, reuniting the infant or child with the family is the number one priority, regardless of whether it’s the best thing to do or not. It wasn’t unusual for the biological family to encourage social services to let the Foster family adopt to get the kids. Unfortunately some families see it as a way to break the cycle of drugs and alcohol that has plagued their family.
From what I’ve seen, many times the biological parents also had an unhealthy childhood because their parents struggled with their own demons. This is a subject I’ll write more about later.