Emotional Pain Part #2

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