So, my blog post earlier this year (Emotional Pain Part #1) dealt with my wife and I kinda being screwed over by Toronto's Children's Aid Society back in 2010 with regards to adopting a child.
Fast forward to March of 2017...
My wife and I were out at a legion singing karaoke and we
bump into an acquaintance we hadn’t seen in many years. While chatting and catching up she asked if
we ever adopted. She mentions she
remembers us wanting to adopt a child back in the day. We tell her that it didn’t happen, and she
asks if we’re still interested in adoption; because she knows of a 10 year old
girl that needs help. My wife and I go
home and discuss…
Well, our life has changed a bit since we last tried. Jobs
and finances are stable enough, we have the space, and we still have that
desire to help a child in need. After
much discussion, we decide to find out a little more about this 10 year old
girl.
We meet up again a couple more times with this
acquaintance from years gone by, and get more details on this girl. The
acquaintance asks us if we’d like to meet the girl. We decide, yes. Turns out the girl has weekend time with her
brother on Saturdays and they go to Chuck E Cheese. We were told to head over that Saturday and she’ll
be with a social worker who can introduce us.
We go. Everything
works out as planned. We meet the
girl. Vanessa. What a delight! We watch the girl interact with the other
children, and she’s so friendly and polite.
She ends up coming over and the social worker introduces us. She sits down with us and starts digging
right into our pizza. We have laughs
write away. I mean instantly. I had my phone out and she saw the Snapchat
app, she asked about it, and I told her I honestly don’t know how to use
it. She said she’d show me and grabbed
my phone. I still have those Snapchat
pictures and videos on my phone.
We ended going to Chuck E Cheese a couple more
times. Meeting with this acquaintance
afterwards for a little more in-depth discussion. My wife and I agreed that we had lots to
offer this girl and wanted to proceed with the adoption process.
Turns out, this girl had been taken from her home by the
Children’s Aid Society for a couple of reasons, and was in the process of
becoming what they call a “crown ward”. She
was currently living with a foster family and this lady acquaintance was trying
to help Vanessa find a ‘forever home’ before she became a crown ward.
During one of our meetings with this lady acquaintance,
while she was talking to my wife, I starting questioning all this in my
head. Something just didn’t add up. Then
it dawned on me… This lady, this acquaintance is Vanessa’s mother!
We confronted her, and indeed that was the case. CAS took her daughter away and was granted
‘no access’. That complicated things a
little, but nothing we thought we couldn’t handle.
‘In a nutshell’ … this lady had lost her child to CAS and
wanted to keep tabs on her. Once the
child became of crown ward, Vanessa would be lost in the system. If Vanessa was adopted by us, she’d know
where she is.
Still, we decided to proceed, with caution. Bottom line was there still was a girl that
needed help and we were in a position to help her.
We had a lawyer draft a letter of our intentions to the
Children’s Aid Society. Since we knew
this lady, there was a possibility of a bit of fast tracking through their
kith/kinship program.
CAS contacted us, and we were assigned a case
worker. Our case worker was
awesome. Friendly, helpful and we really
felt she ‘had our backs’ on this. Over a
few meetings with our case worker, more information was shared. The reasons were a little more serious as to
why Vanessa was taken from her home. It
had already been to court and the judge determined that Vanessa should be kept
far away from her mother, indefinitely.
Our worker also agreed that we were ideal candidates to adopt this
girl. We passed the home inspection
easily. We had to apply for police
background checks. No problem. The more we talked with our worker, the more
we were determined this girl needs help and we were the ones that were going to
help her.
We asked to meet with Vanessa’s CAS worker. That request got put on the back burner as
Vanessa was changing social workers.
We met up a couple more times with Vanessa, even had her
visit our home briefly. She didn’t know
at the time, we wanted to adopt her. It
wasn’t for us to tell her. Her worker
would ease her into that situation at the appropriate time.
Things slowed down quite a bit at the end of April, when
my wife and I went on vacation. We met
up with our CAS rep when we got back.
We felt it odd that we still hadn’t met with Vanessa’s
work yet. Our CAS rep was still trying
to get that meeting for us. Turns out
Vanessa’s case worker and the ‘higher ups’ and Children’s Aid were slowing down
the process on purpose. There were
afraid that because we knew Vanessa’s mother, we couldn’t protect her
appropriately. We assured them that
wasn’t the case. If CAS gives the
condition not to give the mother access, then that’s what we do. We would play by whatever rules they laid
out. If the mother shows up causing
trouble, the police get called and the take her away. We were confident we could handle it, but CAS
kept dragging it out and slowing things down.
In the meantime, we were invited to Vanessa’s birthday
and the home of her brother. My wife had
to work, so I went alone. She remembered
me and we had fun playing Pokemon Go and Minecraft. I was starting to get that rapport with her
that I wanted.
At the same visit, this social worker shows up with all
kinds of gifts for Vanessa. Turns out,
all these gifts were from her mother.
The social worker would pass the gift to Vanessa and say something like
“This is from your old teacher!” Or this
is from Bobby down the street”. But it
was all bullshit. When Vanessa’s worker
found out the mother was passing gifts along through this social worker, CAS
panicked and said no more visits by anyone.
Even though we had nothing to do with these fake gifs, we got shut out.
So, we have our CAS rep go back and try to explain we
didn’t know about these fake gifts and her mother’s manipulation. She believed us; but the ‘higher ups’ at CAS
wouldn’t listen.
So, we got shut out, and it was all put on hold. For months.
We’d lost all momentum and traction we had. The rapport was gone.
Mid-December 2017, we get a call from our rep saying it’s
over. CAS has decided not to move
forward with us adopting Vanessa. We had
a pretty sad Christmas that year.
Actually, the saddest ever. We
were told earlier that we’d have Vanessa by then, so we were looking forward
Christmas with her. My wife’s mother
passed away that fall. So, Christmas that
year had neither of those special people we thought we’d celebrate with.
But wait, there’s more…
Mid-January, we get a call from our CAS rep! Vanessa’s case worker wants to meet with
us! Well, we find the sudden turnabout
as weird, but we’ll take it!
We met with our CAS worker, Vanessa's worker, the foster
father and his worker. We met for an hour and made a plan that everyone
loved. So, we started things up
again! The foster family were going to
have us over. Everyone was of the plan
that if the foster family had us over and we did some fun activity, maybe she'd
warm up to us again and we’d get that important rapport back that we had.
3 weeks went by, and
we never heard from them. We reached out
to our rep and called for a meeting with her.
At the meeting, our
case worker said Vanessa’s worker and the foster family were having trouble
with Vanessa. Every time they mention
adoption, or us (she calls us the 'Parrot People' because the time she was at
our home and met our parrot Wizard) she’d go into her room and close the
door. She won't even discuss it with
anyone. And it's not us. It's the prospect of her leaving the safety
of where she is. They're trying to force
it, and it's just making it worse. She
gets her defenses up and won’t listen.
So, we decided we should tell everyone to stop pressuring her into
something she's not interested. It
wouldn't be fun to have a 12 year old at our home that truly doesn't want to be
there. Then you get into more behavior
problems and possibly runaway type stuff.
So, again it
started, and again it's over.
If the 'higher-ups'
at Children's Aid hadn't gotten ‘scared’ that summer and shut us down, we could
have continued with the momentum we had with certainly a different
outcome. They were afraid that us
knowing the actual biological mother would complicate things. Only recently
they realized it really had nothing to do with everyone's plan of care for
Vanessa. By that time, we'd already lost
her.
I still think about her often and wonder how me and my
awesome wife would have been able to give her a home and family.
#torontoCAS
