I have been threatening to write an article about this for a couple of weeks now, but haven't had the nerve to do it. The reason is that my family and I have face one of the toughest things we have had to face. I have not been able to talk much about it, and I'm still not sure I want to. What I am about to share is not about going on a crusade for change, not at all. In fact, my sole purpose is to let others know what happens within the "system" so that they can make an informed decision.
As you readers may, or may not, know, we went through the state classes and became licenced foster parents with the intent to adopt. We were eager to give a couple of young children a shot at a better chance, to break the cycle of career dependency.
We sent our home study off for two separate sibling groups, being rejected for the first one because we had biological children. The second one, however, we were selected, along with two other families to have an interview with the "team" on two little boys, aged 5 and 6.
We were excited. We had prayed that the Lord would provide us with a speedy placement, and we thought He was answering that prayer.
We went to the interview, three hours away, and were asked a barrage off questions. We asked a lot ourselves, in the end, we ended the interview with a good feeling and left it up to the Lord.
On our way home, we got a call on the cell phone and they notified us that we had been chosen. We could hardly believe our ears. We were getting two little boys to call our own.
I'll spare all the details here, but suffice to say that the foster mother the boys were living with made every effort to get them into our home as quickly as possible, even suggesting that the adoption could take place sooner than the standard six month period. We really thought God was working in this.
We got the boys and had them in our home for six months. All was proceeding well, and as we got closer to the time to file the paperwork for the adoption, we felt we needed to exercises our right to view their files. So we made the three hour journey to the DFS office. This is where things took a turn.
We had all four (our two girls and the two boys) kids with us in a room reading the files. We hadn't been there for 30 minutes when my wife turned a folder to me and asked me to read something. I read it and couldn't believe what I had just read. Almost instantly, I knew that things were about to change, here's why.
Back during our classes, it was made clear to us that acting out sexually is a major problem with many children in the foster care system because of molestation. It is because of the importance and teaching the instructors placed on this that we knew, with two little girls in the house, we could not adopt children with a problem in that area. At our interview, we asked several times if there was a problem with either of the boys acting out sexually. They assured us there was not a problem, that there was a secret that the oldest boy had with his grandfather and they suspected sexual abuse but the he had never acted out in any way, no problem. At the end of the interview, we were asked if there was anything that could change our minds about adopting these boys, should we be selected. We answered that there were two things that would change our minds; violent behavior and sexually acting out, because of our girls. Again they assured us that this was not an issue.
This is what we read in the file, repeatedly. There in fact, was a problem. The oldest boy had been caught acting out several times. We asked the case worker about this and she, again, downplayed the whole thing and said that there is not a problem. We read on and found more of the same. We knew that we had to make a decision, and a tough one at that. We had formed bonds with the boys.
We then asked for the removal of the oldest boy with a desire to keep the youngest, whom had made tremendous progress, given the cognitive problems he had. In a nutshell, DFS told us that we either keep both or neither. We wanted to appeal that decision and began the process. Not an hour after I got off the phone with the Circuit Manager discussing this, we got a phone call telling us that they got a court order to remove the boys the next day. We hadn't even told them yet. It was a very painful thing, but we had to protect our girls.
To sum up this story, the Department of Family Service (our government) lied to us on several occasions. Had we known, up front, about this we would not have accepted the placement. We had decided, for the sake of our daughters, that sexually acting out was not an option in our home. DFS didn't allow us to make that decision for our family, instead making it for us. DFS continued to make decisions for us and came and got the boys. They have been gone for almost two weeks now, and our hearts have been broken ever since. DFS is not concerned with broken hearts.
We love those boys, don't misunderstand that. This was the hardest thing I've had to do, believe me. I do not feel confident that the boys will receive the care and help they need within the system. I had to do what is right for my family and no matter what decision I made, I was going to hurt someone, but I had no choice. We now know that God is protecting us because God does not opperate through lies, He had not ordained this, the father of lies did and we know who that is.
I write all of this, again, not to begin a crusade for change, but to make anyone out there thinking of adoption or foster care aware that this happens. It happens quite regularly, I found out from others who've been there. I will not tell anyone not to adopt. But I will tell people to be aware. Thanks for listening.
2 comments:
We went through something similar, about 10 years ago, and we will never forget it. It is amazing how inhuman they can be...
I am so sorry. I know how hard it is to bond with children and then say good bye.
Our last episode with the government we never actually met the children, but a small bond was there anyway. We tried to take in a sibling group of 6. We have room for them, we lived on a farm and had lots of room in our hearts. The door kept closing, and we would take it as God's will that it was not to be. Then it would open without us even trying. This went on for almost a year. We finally got excited because it looked like we were going from a family of 3 to a family of 9. The one thing they kept coming back to us about was homeschooling. We really felt led to homeschool. We had homeschooled our son and would do the same with this bunch. They ended up telling us that they did not pick us because our house was not completed and we did not have vehicle big enough for all of us. What they did not know was that I had a good friend who had gone through training to foster and adopt in the county these children were from. Two examples they gave to the couples in class were about bending over backwards to place a large sibling group together. For one family they had purchased a van, because that was their one hold back and for the other, they actually put an addition on their house. We had told them that we had lots of friends who did remodeling and if they told us we got the children we could have the remodeling job done in a week. We also told them that we would gladly buy a big van if we were getting the children, but we were not going out to buy a van to haul 9 people when there was currently only 3 of us. Oh well, our hearts were broken and in the end, not all the children went to the same home.
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