Watching Children Struggle

The past few months have been a mental health struggle around our house. Maggie has her issues -- that has not changed. However, something odd has been going on with Miquela -- she has been upset and having screaming fits and becoming violent. This has happened at work, her pro home, at respite and when she comes for home visits. We have done some mixing it up to see if less or more visits would make a difference and it has not. The question is if it is neurological, mental health or another developmental issue.

Yesterday Miquela had an emergent appt. with her neuro-behavior doctor due to a huge outburst and destroying her room, being suspended from work and the list goes on. As the appt. ended Miquela had a freak out about leaving and not having a treat. She began to kick the doc and refused to get up. Hospital security was call -- the hope being that she would calm down and be okay to get into the car. However, as we have seen for the past several months she continued to escalate. SLCPD was called and Miquela was handcuffed. The hope again was that she would calm however, that did not happen so she was taken to the psych unit on a "pink sheet hold". That means that she was a danger to herself and to others. I was in my yearly review for work as all of this happened. I came out to my desk to a message of all of the drama. I'm grateful to work where I do -- I looked at my co - supes and said I have to go. By the time I go there Miquela was in a obs room. She was slightly calmed. Her pro parent was giving them all of her med info, history of the past few weeks and I filled in the history. The psych unit is very efficent they had her to the floor quickly. However, she did not want to walk into the unit. Miquela stood by the door and wouldn't move. Eventually they had me come in and help get her settled with baseline vital signs, etc. We then met with one of the psych nurses to go over her history. They told us that we could visit and gave us the code number.

The pro parent needed to give her medicaid card etc for admissions so I stood in the lobby and waited with her stuff. Her phone rang and it was the agency. All I can say is I know for sure with Miquela I am done working with this agency. Her two workers have been unhelpful, disrespectful and can't communicate to save their lives. Her DSPD worker is awesome! On our way out I wanted to stop by the doc's office to make sure she was okay. We met for about half an hour and it was the doc's rec that Miquela be moved to a group home as she is a danger to herself and others. The doc had a reccomendation of another agency and I made a call to someone I know there to start the ball rolling to look for a home that might work.

I then phoned her DSPD worker -- who was glad I'd called as she was really confused because what the doc was saying wasn't matching up with what the agency had said. I told her how I had been asking for play therapy and a behavior plan since November, how the agency worker wouldn't return calls, and about Miquela's outbursts. The DSPD worker was shocked. I told her that we did need to move her and that I was concerned as the agency was upset that Miquela was in the unit. 

At this point all is on hold until we can find Miquela a group home -- It is hard to move your small/big child into one but it is time.  Stay tuned for updates. (This was written in Feb and I thought I had posted it).