The Ramblings Of Jenn Shuey

I spent a few hours talking to someone close to me.  I was given permission to blog about what’s going for advice on as long as I don’t use her real name or tell how we know each other.  No problem, so we’ll call her Kate.  This will be an extremely long post, so I will be using the “more” tag, so to finish reading you’ll have to continue below the fold.  I’m extremely upset right now while typing this, so the post may be even longer than I’m imagining.  I don’t want to leave out any details.  Kate and I both are looking for advice on what she can do in this situation to make sure what needs to be done is done.

Kate stopped by basically to vent about the situation she’s in.  She started a babysitting job a few weeks ago after the elderly woman she was caring for was moved into a nursing home.   Originally she agreed to babysit 4 little girls ages 2-6 2 days a week for $150 while the mother was in school.  Quickly the mother started calling Kate in on extra days during the week, and didn’t think paying her any more was justified.

According to the mother she tried to get daycare assistance, but she couldn’t.  Then she tried to put the children in daycare with money provided by her family, but no one would take the 5 and 6 year olds all day long because they are home schooled and there are no day time classes for children in their age range.  Kate decided she’d be willing to take the job because it was for 4 hours 2 days a week.

Kate said the first 2 days of the job everything was fine.  The little girls are all sweethearts, and she had absolutely no problem with them.  The only thing that seemed off to her was that the little girls seemed dirty (mother claimed each time they had been playing outside even though it’s been in the 30s-40s everyday for the past month), and Kate noticed the 2 year old’s teeth were black and rotting.

Kate asked about the teeth and the mother went into a long story about how the father had taken care of the children while she was at school up North, and he hadn’t properly taken care of them resulting in baby bottle tooth decay in the baby.  The kids had been removed from the father’s care by child serves, so she dropped out of college and returned home.  She claimed she didn’t have insurance on the children, and the state wouldn’t give her insurance because she chose to go to school instead of finding a job once she moved back.  Later she said the kids were all covered under the father’s health insurance, so it doesn’t add up.

Kate showed up on the 4th day to find all the little girls covered in dog feces.  The mother claimed she had placed one of the dogs in the bathroom because it was sick, and it had used the bathroom on the floor.  She said she didn’t know about it until the girls came in covered in poop, and the mother acted like she was completely shocked that the girls “played” in it.  She claimed to be running extremely late for a class (even though her class wasn’t scheduled for an hour and Kate showed up on time), and she couldn’t take care of it, so Kate would have to.

Kate cleaned up the bathroom, bathed the little girls, and changed them.  While Kate was bathing the 5 year old she noticed a wad of gum in her hair.  She tried to remove it with peanut butter but couldn’t get it out, so she decided instead of cutting it she would wait until the mother got home and find out how she wanted to handle it.  When the mother came home she said she would take care of it and thanked Kate for not cutting it.  Kate went home thinking the day had been just “one of those days”, and everything would be back to normal the next day.

Not so.  The next day Kate arrived to find all 4 little girls still dressed in the exact same clothes Kate had placed on them after bathing them the day before.  The house was freezing cold, and the 2 year old was asleep on top of the heating vent in the kitchen.  Kate commented on how cold the house was, and the mom said under no circumstances was she to turn the heat up because she had just received an $800 power bill.  Kate thought that was absurd since the woman had plainly told Kate she didn’t allow the washer, dryer, stove, or oven to be used when she wasn’t home, and all lights had to be turned off if no one was in the room.  Kate was only allowed to heat up food for the girls in the microwave.

Kate was worried about what she saw and thought something wasn’t right about what the woman was telling her.  Her gut feeling told he something was wrong and she should quit, but then her heart told her she should stick around to see what was really going on with these little girls so she would have evidence if she needed to go to child services.

A few days passed and Kate started noticing more things that seemed off.  Each morning she would arrive to see them dressed in the same clothes as the day before.  After a few days Kate decided she wasn’t going to change the girls to see what happened.  She arrived the next morning to find the same clothes still on the girls for the 3rd day.   She began taking photos with timestamps on them after she dressed the girls and then again the next morning when she found them in the same clothes.

Kate had also been told the girls were not allowed in their bedrooms during the day because the vents in unused rooms were closed during the day.  In the second week Kate found herself extremely curious after what she had witnessed, so she decided to peek into the girls rooms to see if there was another reason the mother didn’t want her in there.  What she found was that one room was packed floor to ceiling with boxes with 1 twin bed stuffed in the corner.  The other room was a completely empty except another twin bed.  Kate was horrified at the thought of these 4 little girls sharing 2 twin beds, so she immediately called child services.  She explained what she’d seen, told them she hadn’t seen any evidence of the 5 & 6 year old girls being home schooled, and was told someone would look into it, but she was then rushed off the phone.

The girls smelled, and it seemed like they weren’t getting any hygiene care including baths at all unless Kate took care of it.  The 6 year old was scratching herself in private areas, and Kate described it as “violently”.  She called the mother’s cell phone and left a message telling her girl needed to be seen by a doctor immediately, but she didn’t hear back from the mother.  When the mother came home from school her only response was to tell Kate it was “none of her business” and she “shouldn’t be paying that much attention to her private areas”.  Kate was shocked and couldn’t believe the mother couldn’t see that the little girl was in pain and that something was wrong with her! Kate told the mother she could no longer work for her, and she left.

Kate spent the weekend trying to figure out what else she could do since it seemed like her complaint to child services really didn’t do much.  She was worrying about the little girls and her own job situation at the same time.

She signed up for care.com to begin looking for another sitting position, and what she found completely shocked her.  The mother of these little girls had a care.com babysitting profile.  I promised not to share the profile link, but the profile says she is certified in CPR and first aid, has experience with special needs, and will care for up to 6 children at one time in any age range.  Kate couldn’t believe this woman was trying to babysit other children when she wasn’t even taking care of her own, so she contacted care.com about it.  Of course she received a generic customer service email in return, so Kate made another call to child services and filled them in on what she saw.

Monday morning came and her phone started ringing off the hook.  The mother called her 18 times leaving her nasty messages about how she really had to get to work and Kate “better show up right this minute”.  The mother threatened that she’d have to leave the little girls home alone, and if something happened it’d be Kate’s fault.

Kate immediately drove other there afraid the woman really would leave the kids there alone, and when she got there the little girls were all in an out building out back playing on an old tractor in below freezing weather in nothing but t shirts.  The mother was still there, but was sitting in her car waiting on Kate.  She pulled out of the driveway as soon as Kate showed up.  Kate got the girls inside, changed their clothes and turned the heat up to warm them up immediately.  She called child services again, and was told yet again they’d “look into it”.  Kate told them she was tired of being told they’d look into it!  These little girls were in serious danger with a mother who wasn’t taking care of them!

In the building Kate also found a mother dog and a litter of puppies making the total number of dogs at the house 6.  She talked to the 5 and 6 year old, and they told her they had another dog in the woods at it’s dog house.  Kate called the mother and left her a ton of voicemails yelling at her over how she was treating her daughters, how she wasn’t sane if she thought it was ok to treat her daughters this way, and how if she couldn’t even take care of her daughters she definitely didn’t need to have that many dogs around the house that she wasn’t taking care of either.

She received no calls back, and when the mother returned home she had yet another dog in tow.  She acted as if nothing was wrong, told Kate she couldn’t afford to pay her for the day’s work, then started telling Kate how she had just adopted this new dog from the vet’s no kill shelter (which is MY vet, so I plan to fill them in), and she even asked Kate if she knew anything about starting an animal rescue.

Kate told the woman off, and stormed out.  She immediately went to the child services office to talk to them in person.  A woman spoke to her about the situation, told her yet again they’d look into it, and rushed Kate out of her office.  Later that evening the mother called Kate and told her child services had shown up to her house again.  Kate asked again?

The mother gave her this totally bullshit story about how her ex husband had been trying to get the girls back so he kept calling child services on her everytime she got a new babysitter trying to claim she was unfit, but the babysitters weren’t doing their jobs.  Kate decided to snoop, so she asked the woman how many times complaints had been filed against her, and the mother said this was the 4th time.  She also said she’d learned if she didn’t cooperate with them, they left her house and she claimed her daughters had never been removed because she had faught them in court, and the judge saw her ex was just out to get her.

As soon as she got off the phone with this woman Kate called a friend who she remembered had told her she’d called child services on a family she babysat for in the past.  After talking to the friend Kate discovered it was the same woman, and they decided to go down to the child services office together.  They both told their stories, and were yet again sent home.

Kate immediately came to my house extremely upset.  After she told me what was going on I was fuming mad.  It’s bad enough that this woman isn’t willing to take responsibility for her own children.  It’s even worse that she’s online trying to convince other parents that she’s worthy of caring for their children.  Most of all it’s absolutely absurd that child services is doing nothing at all!

I’ve seen many cases where they’ve been quick to jerk a child out of a home when absolutely nothing is wrong.  My own family had experience with this when a teenage girl got mad at another teenage girl and filed a false report with DSS saying the other girl was beating her kid sister in front of her.  The family spent months dealing with the outcome of one false statement, yet this woman’s children are in extreme danger and NOTHING is being done about it!

So now I want to hear from you.  I know there are a lot of my blogger friends out there who are going to become just as extremely upset over this as I am.  I honestly think the woman should be beat for the way she’s treating her children.  I know a lot of you may have other ideas on who else we can contact to get something done about this.

So…

I’m all ears.  Let me hear it!