The grief parents suffer when they lose children to foster care and adoption is “invisible and often goes unacknowledged,” explains Toronto-based social worker Kathleen Kenny and parent advocate Sheryl Jarvis, who run a 15-week support group for women who use drugs and have experienced having one or more children removed or adopted.
Q: How would you compare the grief of a parent who loses a child to adoption to a parent whose child dies?
Jarvis: When a child … Read More
I will never forget the night I received a call from my daughter, frantic and crying, “They took my kids, Ma. I don’t know where they took them.”
“Who?”
“ACS and the police.”
My granddaughters were 14 months and 3 at the time. I imagined the police and the worker snatching the girls from their mother. I imagined my daughter frantic, not wanting to let go. Then, off into the night they went.
NOT JUST GRAMMY
At that moment I … Read More
My kids were removed six years ago when they were 7, 6 and 2. That was the worst day of my life.
The problems started when my youngest’s father went to jail. I guess I was not ready to be a single mother because I did not put my partying to the side. My kids came into care for emotional neglect and lack of me doing laundry, cleaning and taking my kids to school on time.
Three … Read More
Almost three years ago, I signed a “conditional surrender,” giving up parental rights of my oldest child, who was eventually adopted. The agreement stated that I would continue to be able to visit my daughter. The adoptive parent broke the agreement and I have not seen my daughter in almost three years. Now I regret not fighting to keep my two children together.
Here, Margaret Burt, an attorney with 37 years of experience in child welfare … Read More
When I was 14 my father broke the worst news to me and my siblings. He told us he had one year to live.
Almost immediately after he told us, he placed my sister and me in foster care, where we were separated, because they said I was always telling my sister what to do and trying to be her “mother.” My brother was locked up and my mother had been removed from our home when … Read More
