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Sam had been a good student until the 2nd grade when the DSS returned him to his stepfather, who had spent time in jail for beating his mother. When his stepfather began beating him,..
DSS returned Sam to a foster home. However, whenever anyone “got into his face” Sam would get into fights.
Angry, hurt, and abandoned at 12, his social worker said he would punch the air even while asleep. Finally, a teacher went to break up one fight and got nicked on the leg. Sam was told to leave school and never come back. No other town would allow Sam to attend because he had been expelled (without a hearing) for “assaulting a teacher.” Sam lay around foster homes for 2 years with no school.
When MAC got the case, Sam’s file revealed not only several delinquencies, but also diagnoses ranging from attention deficit disorder to conduct disorder and substance abuse. MAC immediately obtained a high quality evaluation for Sam and learned that these diagnoses were inappropriate. He was, in fact, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of all he had been through.
Obtaining the diagnosis of trauma for Sam made an enormous difference-his state caretakers switched from seeing him as a “bad kid” to a “hurt kid” and new case managers were assigned. Once the school understood that his behavior was trauma related, it was willing to look behind his defiant façade to understand his vulnerabilities. It offered to return him to school – to an “alternative education placement.”
Of course, the alternative education placement for disruptive children was not acceptable. In order to obtain a high quality placement for a child like Sam who had no parents to advocate for him, it was necessary to take the case to a hearing. After two days, the hearing officer was so angry at the way the school had responded to Sam’s trauma related behavior that she told the school she was ready to issue a very strong order. The case soon settled and Sam was given an excellent placement.
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