Reaching Out to Former Foster Kids?
I was a foster parent that fostered two half siblings for 6 years I'll call "Jen" and "May" (not their real names). The Child Services Placement desk insisted they had no where to go and needed to stay together as siblings.
When I got them I found they had been being raised seperately in their bio homes. Their personalities were complete opposites and they often argued. Basically Placement lied.
They stayed with me for 6 year. I kept taking them to visit their bio mom and hoping she could get custody back. She was doing a lot of work and they both missed her. The caseworkers kept being changed or leaving CPS all together. We went through 6 caseworkers. Both kids had behavioral issues but we worked with them and took them to therapy.
At 6 years parental rights ended up being terminated. The latest caseworker told us their Mom never had a chance at regaining custody. Us, the kids, and bio Mom were lied to so many times by the caseworkers. At this point the caseworker asked us to adopt them both and we said ok.
Except when Jen and May were told they had complete opposite reactions. Jen was happy to be adopted but May lost her mind. May said she didn't want to be adopted and had a mental meltdown over a period of 6 months. She screamed non stop, threw things, had episodes of psychosis, and did so much property damage we struggled to deal with it financially.
The caseworker refused to allow us to seek proper therapy or give May the option to live with us but not be adopted. We were told if May needed a new placement we could still adopt Jen. But the minute we agreed to that the caseworker yanked Jen and May claiming "sibling bond can't be broken". They had lied to us again. We never even allowed to say goodbye to Jen.
They told it us it was in Jen's best interest. However, Jen was always anxious and afraid to be seperated from us even for school. It's been years now and I tried to tell myself maybe they were better off in the adoptive home.
Recently, I found out the adoptive home is controlling, mentally abusive, engaged in religious extremism, has isolated them, failed to send them to school until May was held back, the Dad is an alcoholic, and CPS investigated them. The adoptive family is living off of foster adoption stipends. The adoptive Dad works minimum wage jobs and quits on the regular.
I am beside myself in finding this. I'm so upset! We wanted them to have good lives. Jen will be 18 in a couple years. I'm wondering if I should reach out to her at 18 and see if she needs any help or wants to stay with us? I'm assuming May wouldn't want to hear from us.
Maybe too many years will have passed? Maybe they both resent us for not adopting May? Or have grown up being falsely told we rejected them? I don't know what to do. Opinions appreciated. Has anyone here reached out to adult foster kids and if so how did it turn out?