I helped facilitate several Family Team Meetings fora family as they went from no parenting time to supervised parenting time. Dad eventually received unsupervised parenting time while the mother maintained supervised parenting time.
I had the chance to talk with the mother and she mentioned that it was nice to have someone else in the room that she felt was listening to her opinion. The mother stated she felt like she struggled to meet the foster care worker’s expectations. This mother struggled with addiction and her foster care case had been open for some time. This mother had started several services but struggled to complete them.
This mother talked about how she hated attending meetings but when she knew a third party would be facilitating the family team meetings, she felt that she could be open and share her thoughts and concerns. Each time I did a family team meeting for this family the mother appeared more relaxed and added to the meeting instead of sitting in the corner waiting for someone to ask her a question directly.
We may not know how we make a difference with a client but if we do our job with the same idea that we are making a difference, then there is a higher chance we are making a difference in a person’s life.
