Red Tape

Red Tape.  Lots and lots and lots of it.

We're trying to cut through it, trying to go around it, trying to avoid it. 
But they don't call it red tape for nothing.  And right now, we're running into it every step we take.

Mr. J is currently at the local Juvenile Detention facility.  On Sunday, he began threatening to kill my husband and myself as well as our unborn son, and he even went into explicit detail as to how he planned to accomplish this.  And if it says anything about the mental state of our son, after screaming "I want to kill you!" over a hundred times, he paused in mid-threat and said calmly "I want a drink.  I'm thirsty.  Can I have my water bottle?"

Unbelievable.

Because of the length of Sunday's rage and the huge scale of the threats Mr. J was hurling at us, we had no choice but to call the police...again.  For the fourth time.  We're actually getting to know a couple of the officers now, and they are familiar with our situation.  The difference on Sunday, though, was that Mr. J didn't shrink into a ball and choose to calm down.  This time he made the same threats against us in their presence, smashed his fist into his bedroom window in anger, shattering it, and then assaulted two police officers.  They were not amused.

Our son was arrested. 
Handcuffed. 
Put in the back of a police car.
Driven away.

And now he's locked up in Juvenile Detention for ten days...supposedly enough time to figure out how to keep our family safe, and to (hopefully) decide what the next step for Mr. J is going to be.

And now comes the Red Tape.

There are very few facilities that specialize in treating RAD children and truly understand the different methods needed to reach these traumatized kids.  Most residential treatment facilities use a "behavioral modification" method, which is a series of privileges earned and lost by the child as he/she chooses behaviors.  When the behavior is good, privileges are gained.  When it's not good, there are consequences.  This is not a bad method.  In fact, it's the method that is used in most families, including ours.

The problem is, it doesn't work with attachment disordered children.

If you're interested in learning why, here is an excellent explanation that I found:  http://caloteens.com/whyCalo.aspx

We desperately want our son to be in a facility that will actually help him, not one that will give him the opportunity to feel in control by manipulating the system as he has done at home.  If he is going to be away from us for a year or more, we want him to spend that time healing!  And in the meantime, now that we understand how sick he is, we need to implement some of those same attachment techniques into our home in order to ease a transition back into our family. 

But all of the facilities that specialize in attachment are in other states, and all are astronomically expensive...as in up to twice the cost of our home.   

Insurance will do anything to get out of paying, or so it seems, and adoption medical subsidy will only pay for facilities within two hundred miles (all attachment facilities are significantly further).  To our knowledge, school funding will only help pay if our child has an IEP or has been labeled as emotionally impaired at school, which will not happen because our son has his "mask" on at school.  We need to get him a proper childhood trauma assessment, but the waiting list is months long.  We need to somehow get the attention of people who know the right people who are willing to help.

It seems that all the avenues of getting funding that we are exploring are more interested in money and documentation and red tape than in what is best for our son.  We could get funding for one of those behavioral modification residential treatment centers (those within two hundred miles of our home) that would probably do nothing but make him sicker, not addressing any of the attachment issues that are at the root of all his problems.

This makes no sense to us.  Why is the state willing to pay for something nearby that won't help, but refuses to pay for something further away that could change our son's life?  Why won't they give him a chance?

We want our son to heal.  We want to give him the best opportunity at life that we possibly can, and we want him to become who God created him to be before the trauma and neglect of his early childhood wreaked havoc on his brain. 

We don't just want to send him away...
get rid of him...
get him out of our hair.

He's our son. 
We want to help him heal.

Somehow, God, please help us cut through all the Red Tape before we lose our son for good, before his choices take him in a direction from which he can't escape.  And if we, as his parents, are not following the path you've chosen, please make that clear, too...and then show us where you want us to go from here.

Feel free to pass this on as you feel led.  We never know what ways God will use to provide us with the wisdom and advice and help that we need to accomplish what He wants to accomplish...and we're in need of as many prayers as we can get!