Elmore Kid-Jail – September 2008

It wasn't long before Mary got kicked out of Forest Ridge too.

She was only there about two months, but like her other placements, her behavior was more than the staff could handle and required too many of their resources. Mary definitely was not getting better. Things were getting worse for her and it was tragic. This was the opposite of what we had expected for her when we had placed her over a year earlier, and it was the opposite of what we had been promised. This crazy merry-go-round of group homes she was on was not stopping, and I couldn't see that anything was being done to stop it or to help her. All that was being done, it seemed, was to stop any of my efforts to help her. And so Mary was now placed back in Elmore — the extremely punitive kid jail that had a history of abusing children — so she could wait, while the rest of us... well… we had another meeting.

I Call an Ombudsman

Next I called an ombudsman and told her about Mary's case. She also seemed concerned and wanted to talk to Mary's mother before she would recommend anything. I gave her Karen's phone number (Mary's mother) and waited a couple of days for her to call me back. When I didn't hear back, I called her and asked her if she had contacted Karen and what she had decided to do about Mary's case. She said she had contacted her, but had now changed her mind and didn't think it was important to do anything at this point. She thought it would be best if she just left Mary's case alone. I asked her why she had changed her mind and she said something like, "I just don't think it's a good idea to get involved in your daughter's case at this time." She was vague about her reasons.