Reunification of Foster Child Logistics - Weekend Wisdom

Question: My 15-year-old foster daughter, “Anna”, is scheduled to move back in with her mom at the end of the school year. She is currently on my phone plan. I also pay for her access to Spotify, Netflix, and Hulu. Should I ask her mother now how she wants to transition Anna onto her phone plan? Do you recommend continuing to pay for a 3-6 month period until the mother figures it out? Should I just keep her on my account for Spotify, Netflix, and Hulu as long as it doesn't cost me anything extra? She also has some of her own furniture that doesn't fit in my car. Should Anna's mother be responsible for getting those pieces to their home? She is going to live almost 3 hours away. 

Resources:

• Working with Birth Parent's for the Child's Best Interest
• Working as Part of the Foster Care Team
• Former Foster Care Youth Voices

Transcript

Please pardon any errors, this is an automated transcript.

So if you want to see me answering this question in the real flesh,
then you can hop right over to YouTube and check us out over there. All right,
today our question is from Noelle. She says, "Hello, my 15 -year -old foster
daughter," and I'm making up a name for her, not using her real name unless I say
Anna. "My 15 -year -old foster daughter, Anna, is scheduled to move back in with her
mom at the end of the school year. She is currently on my phone plan. I also pay
for her access to Spotify, Netflix, and Hulu. Should I ask her mom now how she
wants to transition Anna onto her phone plan? Do you recommend continuing to pay for
a three to six month period until the mother figures it out? Should I just keep
her on my account for Spotify, Netflix, and Hulu as long as it doesn't cost me
anything extra? She also has some of her own furniture that doesn't fit in my car.
Should Anna's mother be responsible for getting those pieces to their home? She's
going to be to live almost three hours away. Thank you. Noel, I think those are
great questions and I think it really helps to begin with thinking what your overall
goal or your mission or your hopes are and I'm assuming that your that your hopes
for this is a Successful reunification. Now, you also may want to have some type of
ongoing Supportive role in Anna's life and Anna's mom's life to be a support for
them But I think it's important to have your goal in mind, which let's say it is
to have this Reunification work and to be successful and long -lasting and and then
try to make all your decisions With that in mind. All right, so I think,
first of all, you need to check with your agency because your agency might either
have rules or they may even have support to kind of ease into this transition.
That's especially the case if you're working with a private agency. Sometimes they do
have funds that can be used for some of these things or they may have rules for
how they want you to handle it. So anyway, first of all, you need to check with
your agency. Now, assuming that your agency doesn't have specific rules and doesn't
have ongoing support that can help to offset some of this, I think it's helpful to
break it down into the three specific issues that you've talked about. That is the
phone, the streaming services, and the moving of the furniture. All right, let's
start with the phone. Some of the questions to ask is, does her mom have a plan
where she can add a family member? And how much would it cost for her mom to add
her daughter to add Anna? Can she swing that financially immediately? So if not,
let's assuming that her mom either doesn't have a plan that she can add or she
can't swing the finances of doing that. One option would be the one you suggested
where you could continue to pay for a period of time. I would make certain,
if you were to choose that option, to have it be a date certain and I would lean
towards it being a shorter period of time rather than a longer period of time.
Because one of the concerns you have to realize that might happen, you may hope it
doesn't happen, but it might, would be that your communication with Anna and her mom
might drop off. So communicating when you are planning on terminating your support or
terminating and no longer having Anna on your plan can get complicated because you're
not going to be, you may not have the regular she / name I'll be responding, you
may not have a way to communicate directly with them. So that's a real concern I
have. Your goal is to make this transition as smooth as possible for Anna.
And the reality is that when we get financial entanglement, that often complicates
relationships.
So if you're going to do it, you need to be as clear as you possibly can be. But
another thought that might even work better would be, can you give her, say, a six
months on one of the independent plans where you pay by the month, they don't have
all the services that the big ones, but you could still keep her on,
you could still pay for an X number of months, However, you think you can afford
it. If for birthdays coming up, you could give that to her as a birthday present
or Christmas, one of those things you could do. And that keeps you financially
uninvolved going forward. Now, as to the streaming, of course, the obvious question
is, what services does her mom already have? And keep in mind that a lot of the
streaming services have changed. Netflix is an example. They've changed so that it's
really hard to share with people outside of your household. And some of the others--
I know Hulu is an example of this-- where they charge you extra if you're going to
be sharing with people outside of your household. So you need to check on what your
plan currently allows. Would you be allowed to even do that? And then,
of course, the question is, could you keep it on your account without incurring
additional costs or significant additional costs? And you really have to assume that
once you allow Anna on your plan and Anna's mom on your plan that either or both
of them will also share it with others or at least that's been my experience with
teens. They go to a party and they want to watch something and the friend doesn't
have the streaming service and so they plug in your information and almost never do
they actually log you out afterwards. So now your service is on another,
and does that impact your ability in your plan? How much you're going to have to
pay? Because some of the ones that you pay for additional households, they limit you
to how many households. And so you have to think about that. So again, your goal
is to make this as smooth a transition as possible, and you really want to limit
the possibility for misunderstandings in the future if it doesn't continue to work
out. And there could be a lot of potential complications here. Does she have a
favorite show? And if so, would it be possible for you to give her or your
subscription, again, as a gift, either it could be a birthday or a Christmas gift
or something like that, or could just be a welcome to your unification, welcome
moving back to your mom. I'm so happy for you. Here's a gift. I'm giving you
Netflix for a year. Again, you're going to have to figure out if you could afford
to do that. And maybe you could only do it for six months or even three months,
but that's a way to allow them some transition time that keeps you out of the
financial part of the relationship. Now let's talk about moving the furniture. Now,
honestly, for that one, to me, that's the easiest of all of these because it's the
one that doesn't have ongoing financial entanglements, which risk the future
misunderstandings that money just tends to always bring into relationships. So some
practical questions. Do you have a friend who has a pickup truck that they might
lend it to you or actually offer to help? They could do it and you pay for the
gas or lend it to you so that you could get the furniture there. It is a, you
know, you're talking six hours, three hours each way. On the other hand, it's a one
-time deal, you're doing this, it's a kind and supportive thing to do. Then the
other question is open up the discussion with Anna's mom. Does she know somebody
that could come pick up the thing? How much would it cost to rent a U -Haul and
do you have the hitch on the back and the ability to haul a U -Haul or you can
rent the U -Haul truck? Would that be something that you could swing financially?
Then practically, it's the furniture really worth this. Now, this is not saying if
it has a lot of emotional value. If it does, if it's her grandmother's furniture or
something like that and has emotional value, that's a whole different thing. But
let's assuming it's just furniture that doesn't have any emotional values. Is it
really worth that? Or would it be easier to buy her a bed at Costco or Walmart?
Or if you're lucky there's an IKEA nearby, would it be easier to replace some of
the things with something you and probably cheaper in the long run. Bottom line is
your goal is to facilitate as much as possible a smooth transition, facilitate
communication by opening up discussion with Anna and her mom preferably when they're
all in the same room. Again, misunderstandings can happen unless you're all there. So
to talk about all of these things, but before you do that you need to think
through what you're willing and able to do, keeping in mind the goal to distance
yourself if at all possible from ongoing financial interactions, just because the
potential there for misunderstandings is so great. Noelle, your heart is in such the
right place. I wish you the absolute best of luck with this. And I want to thank
everybody for joining us today for Weekend Wisdom and to remind you that if you
really want to help creating a family, and I hope you do, what we really need
right now are ratings on whatever app you are listening, or if you're on YouTube
watching, whatever app you're on, if you would please go on there and give us a
star rating, and if you're feeling generous, you are written comment on YouTube, you
actually just have to leave comments. Let me quickly go over Spotify. I'm going to
have to read this, but with Spotify, to leave a rating, you select the highlighted
ratings on the podcast page and that's how you can leave a star rating to leave a
comment or a written review. You just comment on the podcast page itself right below
the show notes. On Apple, to leave a rating and a review, you go to the Creating
a Family podcast page itself. That's where you see all the list of the episodes and
you scroll to the bottom and then you can tap on the stars to leave the star
rating and then right below that there's a button that says writer of you and on
YouTube as I mentioned you just leave a comment so thanks for listening to this
week's weekend wisdom if you liked it please tell a friend subscribe to
thecreatingafamily .org podcast see you next week