Fiona's clinician emails me!

August 25th I spoke with Fiona's social worker and asked for a clinician contact because Fiona is in a new school. She gave me her name and email and phone number. I the clinician right off. I told her who I was and what I had been and was now in Fiona's life. I told her that I write every week or ten days to her and that I like to send small gifts throughout the year and also holiday gifts, which would require some input from her. (I count on staff letting me know what she wants and needs as well as what the school allows as not all wants are allowed in residential settings). I received no response.

I never really know how much to bother such folks. The reality is that my only recognizable tie to this young woman is that I am adoptive mother to her biological brother, and her disrupted foster to adopt placement. Not exactly a set of circumstances that all clinicians feel warm and fuzzy to. The previous clinician in her treatment setting was decidedly cool to me. She was very controlling over the content of my notes (remember that I have written to Fiona ever since she was moved from the RTC near us when KC was still a baby) I complied with all her demands and she eased up but was never what one would call warm and was certainly not given to really having much of a role in Fiona's life. This angered me, and saddened me in equal measures. She needs people in her life who love her. Being pushed away seemed unnecessary but I am not a clinician either and there may have been therepeutic reasons for it.

At any rate, this week I decided that I had been patient enough and even allowing for the Labor Day holiday, the start of schools and an influx of new students, the clinician should have responded by now. So I sent another friendly email. Lo and behold, I received a prompt reply indicating that she had never received my prior email. She said their server had crashed one day in August and perhaps this was the day I had sent my mail. She asked that I re-send my email if I still had it and I did.

Her correspondence was very friendly. She wants to talk w/ me by phone. She would like to meet with me in person. The latter is logistically challenging as the RTC Fiona is in is a very long way away from where I live. It is also in a Very Big City and I am not a Very Big City driver. Scares the bejesus out of me frankly! But I want to meet this woman also, and i am going to look into train or subway if I drove 1/2 way to the Very Big City. It can't happen as quickly as the clinician suggested--she gave me 3 dates this week, but I will need to negotiate time away from work to do this.

She said her goal, if the dept of children and families support her in it, is to develop a strong kinship connection with Fiona and us. She is willing to send us a picture. (I haven't had pictures of her since she left the school near us. I offered in my email to pay for school pictures if they would promise to send me one, or to send a disposable camera if a staff member would take her pictures for us and then mail it to me for development. ) She loved the picture idea and said she would meet with Fiona's mini team to see what they could do to create a photo project. She also said she liked my notes to Fiona (I make a card each week or so with a picture of someone in the family--like Blake getting his doggie hair cut, or the kids at the farm on Sunday).

I don't know where it is all going but for the first time since I met Fiona I feel like there is a strong team of loving people advocating for her and I am so unbelievably grateful.