Repeat after me, Social Workers are NOT your friends

Who is it that warns on their blog to not treat your foster kids social workers as friends? Whoever it is, should kick my rear for not listening to her. I mean kick it hard.

I had no intention of becoming friends with any of the foster kids workers. I only wanted to develop good working relationships with them so that we would be allowed to continue fostering and hopefully actually get calls, but I did not intend to befriend them. If you'll recall we went an entire year without a placement ... we are not exactly the favorite family down at CPS. Maybe their favorite agnostic family, since we're the only ones? But over a year of someone coming into your home for several hours once per month and telling you everything about themselves from their childhood to their past relationships to every detail of all their cases, even their sex life with their spouse, and you kind of start to feel a little more relaxed with the person. You start to feel that if they share something, you are supposed to share something, afterall isn't that how friendships begin? And before you know it, you are talking as freely and openly as if you are BFF.

God I am an idiot.

My first clue should have been when she called me on my cell, only an hour after leaving here, to let me know that she would no longer be doing a particular part of the case, that it was going to be staffed to someone else. My second clue should have been when she stopped texting me. She is a texting fiend. The last I received from her was on May 10th when she text'd "Happy Mother's Day". The third clue should have been when I got the kid's pictures taken recently and emailed them to her, she didn't reply but she did forward the email to someone who replied. And lastly, I finally got a clue when she emailed asking for a date to do next month's homevisit and it was copied to like a gazillion other people. Perhaps it was for proof or backup or reinforcements or just to activate my paranoid tendencies, if so it worked.

*update: I asked her what was up, 'cause I'm confrontational like that, and turns out the email was just to other foster parents and nothing to worry about, and it is best she not be involved in the rest of the case because of what I told her put her in a bad position. I understand, but still it could have ALL been avoided if I had of just kept my damn mouth shut. If I had remained professional, never letting my guard down, this wouldn't have happened. Or rather, it would have been delayed roughly 6 months but it still would have happened, only it wouldn't have felt like my fault then. So there, more guilt.