In a budget bill, a funding committee has introduced a clause which states that federal government cannot end contracts with foster care and adoption agencies just because they discriminate, and yearly funding will be cut by a full 15% to any state which penalizes foster care and adoption agencies for discriminating.
Now. The article doesn’t go into exactly how this is going to have the kind of negative impact they’re predicting, so I’m going to, just so you understand that the first part of that clause is somehow actually the less horrifying one.
There are waaaaaaay too many kids in the foster care system (that’s where 90% of the kids waiting to be adopted are), way more than state level child protective services can handle. This is in part because of funding (it can be very expensive to keep a CPS department fully staffed). So they contract out to private agencies, usually non profits, to place kids with higher levels of need. You’re not going to hear me arguing that these agencies are perfect but a lot of them, seriously a lot, are REALLY GOOD. They’re often charities, they often specialize in various intensive mental health care and provide strict rules, guidelines, and training to any families and staff on board, a lot of these agencies do really fucking good work. And these agencies are critical. They’re almost universally taking in exactly the children that are so hard to place anywhere else (including adoptive homes) and they make sure those kids are safe, that they have free access to quality mental health treatment, that they are prepared to age out if that’s what’s going to happen. And most of the people who work at these programs take really low wages because these are charities and their funding is even more restrictive than the state, but they’re doing this because there are children in the system who need them, because there are a lot of bad things that can and do happen in the system and all they can do is keep protecting kids and keep fighting to prevent those things.
Now lets talk about the not so good agencies. The ones who may or may not be non-profits. The ones that are usually run on socially conservative values of family and discipline despite mountains of evidence and research showing how that directly leads to the kinds of bad things that can and do happen to kids in foster care. The kind that run overcrowded homes and discriminate. Where there is one emotional abuse against a child, there is ALWAYS more. And any of these agencies which gets penalized by the state that contracts with them could now argue it was because of the discrimination. And if they argue that successfully, THE ENTIRE STATE’S ALREADY MEAGER FUNDING GETS CUT BY AN ENTIRE 15%.
15% is a lot, folks. 15% is the difference between whether or not any child can be placed in an intensive support agency’s care ever again. A state that gets punished like this sees every single agency and department within it crippled, unable to serve a full additional 15% of the children they currently serve.
Except they can’t opt out of it. Because these are fucking children. Children without homes, children ripped from families for good or for ill, children with trauma with anxiety with high medical involvement with an enormous risk added to their future simply by virtue of having gone through a system that is already desperately overworked and underfunded. So the agencies don’t stop serving any children. Instead they cut pay to staff, they put fewer kids in the level of support they need, they turn a blind eye to smaller infractions by foster parents and staff because the kid says they want to stay and they can’t afford to disrupt the placement. Kids fall through the cracks. Kids run away and the resources to go looking for them aren’t there. Kids get caught up in abusive or cult like relationships with people who show care and affection to them because they’re not getting enough of it.
Don’t get me wrong, my heart is broken that the one fear I spent my entire childhood and adulthood reassuring myself I wouldn’t face – being told that my sexuality, my partners’ my parents’ made me an unfit parent – is at risk of becoming my reality. I’m fucking devastated by that. I’ve spent a lifetime trying to train myself out of the terror created by watching my mother’s friends’ kids ripped away from them because they were lesbians or bi and that made them unsafe to their own truly beloved children. The guilt created by knowing that if I ever spoke up about the abuse in my home it would be blamed on the sexuality my mom and I shared, and not on her actions. But honestly? In the end? This has a much bigger impact than just that grief. This effects far more children then the ones who would have been adopted or fostered by queer parents.
Which is why it’s so important that we make this a priority. This budget hasn’t been approved yet. This isn’t it’s final draft, and there’s still time for this clause to be written out. So please. For all the kids out there waiting for homes. Add this to what I’m sure is your ever growing list of things to write to congress about. Even if we vote everyone out in 2018 and 45 with them in 2020, two years of these kids’ suffering is too long. One year is too long. Anything more than they already go through is too long.
Just for reference: the federal minimum drinking age is enforced by similar budget incentives. Only states will lose just 8% of federal highway funding if they set the age below 21. This measure is just about double that incentive, which is astounding and draconian as these things go.
As messed up as Charlotte’s road system is, I have never been to any other city in America with a road system as chaotic, messy, and unpredictable as Greensboro, NC. The way roads work there is different than the way they work anywhere else, and it’s a Kafkaesque fucking mess that seems like it must have been designed by some malicious puzzlemaster with a knack for five-way intersections and suburban frontage lanes
Reminder that our people never had a bias against two spirit or wiŋkte (trans) people, and that most tribes thought wiŋktes were sacred!
Keep calling your relatives out on their colonized homophobia.
In my tribe people who are gay and ppl who are somewhere that’s unconventional on the gender spectrum are considered to be more spiritual and it’s like not a bad thing
The pool manager said it’s against city policy to wear cotton in public pools, according to Ismaa’eel. If it’s a rule, Ismaa’eel said, “it’s never been enforced.”To pick on her group is discrimination, she said. “There’s nothing posted that says you can’t swim in cotton,” said Ismaa’eel, owner and principal of the Darul-Amaanah Academy and director of its summer program. “At the same time, there…
Since that first incident on June 25, Ismaa’eel said she was “harassed” on two other occasions by the pool manager about her program participants wearing cotton. On July 6, Parks Director Kevin Kelley Sr. responded to an email from Ismaa’eel saying he explained to the pool director “the importance of acting in a professional manner.”
“Oh yeah, every time that dad forgets mom is dead, we head to the cemetery so he can see her gravestone.”
WHAT. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard some version of this awful story. Stop taking people with dementia to the cemetery. Seriously. I cringe every single time someone tells me about their “plan” to remind a loved one that their loved one is dead.
I also hear this a lot: “I keep reminding mom that her sister is dead, and sometimes she recalls it once I’ve said it.” That’s still not a good thing. Why are we trying to force people to remember that their loved ones have passed away?
If your loved one with dementia has lost track of their timeline, and forgotten that a loved one is dead, don’t remind them. What’s the point of reintroducing that kind of pain? Here’s the thing: they will forget again, and they will ask again. You’re never, ever, ever, going to “convince” them of something permanently.
Instead, do this:
“Dad, where do you think mom is?”
When he tells you the answer, repeat that answer to him and assert that it sounds correct. For example, if he says, “I think mom is at work,” say, “Yes, that sounds right, I think she must be at work.” If he says, “I think she passed away,” say, “Yes, she passed away.”
People like the answer that they gave you. Also, it takes you off the hook to “come up with something” that satisfies them. Then, twenty minutes later, when they ask where mom is, repeat what they originally told you.
I support this sentiment. Repeatedly reminding someone with faulty memory that a loved one has died isn’t a kindness, it’s a cruelty. They have to relieve the loss every time, even if they don’t remember the grief 15 minutes later.
In other words, don’t try to impose your timeline on them in order to make yourself feel better. Correcting an afflicted dementia patient will not cure them. They won’t magically return to your ‘real world’. No matter how much you might want them to.
It’s a kindness of old age, forgetting. Life can be very painful. Don’t be the one ripping off the bandage every single time.
I used to work as a companion in a nursing home where one of the patients was CONVINCED I was her sister, who’d died 40 years earlier. And every time one of the nurses said “that’s not Janet, Janet is dead, Alice, remember?” Alice would start sobbing.
So finally one day Alice did the whole “JANET IS HERE” and this nurse rather nastily went “Janet is dead” and before it could go any further I said “excuse me??? How dare you say something so horrible to my sister?”
The nurse was pissed, because I was “feeding Alice’s delusions.” Alice didn’t have delusions. Alice had Alzheimer’s.
But I made sure it went into Alice’s chart that she responded positively to being allowed to believe I was Janet. And from that point forward, only my specific patient referred to me as “Nina” in front of Alice—everyone else called me Janet, and when Alice said my name wasn’t Nina I just said “oh, it’s a nickname, that’s all.” It kept her calm and happy and not sobbing every time she saw me.
It costs zero dollars (and maybe a little bit of fast thinking) to not be an asshole to someone with Alzheimer’s or dementia. Be kind.
This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences. It was filmed and edited by Tijo Media at the Carpenter Theatre at Richmond CenterStage in Richmond, VA. Select images credited to http://www.sofakingcoolonline.com/.
Michael Bishop is a Richmond musician best known for his work with GWAR. In the late 1980s, Bishop started as the bassist for the shock rock band while in high school, creating the character Beefkake the Mighty. Bishop left the band to concentrate on Kepone, a post-punk group who released three records between 1992 and 2000. In 2012, he earned a Ph.D. in music from the University of Virginia, specializing in popular music ethnography and performance studies. Following the death of GWAR singer Dave Brockie in 2014, Michael became the band’s vocalist, the Berserker Blöthar. Today, he stays busy as a writer and learning strategist, a member of Kepone and a country and soul group called the Misery Brothers, and the bassist for Sarah White. He also works with composer J. William Adkins on music, stage, and animation projects.
This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx
Today I got to go on one of our runs to more rural shelters to help relieve overcrowding there. We ended up bringing back 21 kittens and 10 dogs. So fun day. But this morning, while I was getting stuff together in preparation for the 90 minute drive…. This happened.
Excuse you Tiniest Opossum, but you are NOT allowed to escape through the front bars of the cat carrier we were housing you in. I’m going to put you back.
“NO!”
I am going to catch you and put you back and you have no say in this matter.
“NO!”
Catching you and putting you back now.
“NOOOOOO!”
Aaaand back you go. Let go of the purple towel and go in the cardboard box.
“Noooooooooooo!”
Be the tiny possum of rebellion. The resistance is pretty effing cute.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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