Adoptive family of girl with multiple diagnoses requests BC Ministry of Children and Family Development to provide them with support to continue living as a family.
The girl, now eight years old, was adopted by the ministry when she was two years old.
Global News is not identifying his adoptive family for legal reasons.
The girl’s adoptive mother said the birth mother drank and used drugs while she was pregnant.
“She’s indigenous,” the adoptive mother said. “She was the fourth child. She was born while her mother was incarcerated for armed robbery. Sadly, she has now died of a drug overdose.
The adoptive mother said that when the girl was two years old, she was an easy child.
“We started to notice a difference when she started daycare, while I had finished my parental leave and returned to work,” she said.
“She was about three and a half years old, and that’s when we really started to notice that she couldn’t function socially…The added stimulus, she couldn’t function. Understanding peer relationships, sharing, all that kind of stuff.
At kindergarten, the foster mother said the girl would run away, destroy the classroom and hit and kick other children.
“I begged the ministry,” she said.
“I asked for a respite. I asked for help with special needs. I also begged people to come to the house to help me strategize. I asked for a break.
The child’s adoptive mother is a special education assistant in the school system and told Global News she has raised two other adopted children with complex needs who are now adults, so she comes to the table with her skills and his experience.
She said the family has been fighting for years to get adequate support from the Ministry of Children and Family Development.
“She took on such a huge and difficult task,” the adoptive mother’s wife told Global News.
“Look what she has already done for two girls who were in over 15 foster homes. And then she decided to adopt another one. You know, stop the judgment. He’s a struggling parent.
The little girl, who should be in year 3, has now been hospitalized on several occasions in child psychiatric wards because she is considered a danger to herself and others.
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Her adoptive mother said her daughter was even subjected to restraints.
“How is this reality? » she asked. “And then how can we help him?” Because… she’s lost in there.
The adoptive mother said the little girl suffered from fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, autism, moderate intellectual disability, ADHD, an unspecified anxiety disorder and a language disorder.
Last month, the foster mother said the little girl tried to throw a fish tank and table at someone and started punching holes in the wall.
She said they had to call the police.
The girl is now back in the care of the Ministry of Children and Family Development as they said she needed multiple caregivers at the same time.
The adoptive mother said she was fighting for a special needs agreement, which would allow her to retain guardianship and make educational and medical decisions.
“I know she is sad and scared and confused and I am doing everything I can to help her,” the foster mother said.
“There is a huge void in me, in our family right now. If she could understand and understand him, I hope she would know that this is her family forever and that we love her no matter what.
The Ministry of Children and Family Development said it could not comment on this specific story due to privacy concerns.
However, Minister Grace Lore said keeping children safe with families is always the first choice, where possible.
“Layering supports for families…is always the first choice,” she said.
B.C.’s child and youth watchdog Dr. Jennifer Charlesworth said thousands of children aren’t getting the support they need.
“Our estimate was about 80,000 children,” she said. “So… 80,000 children who are not eligible or are not receiving the supports they need to be able to thrive with their disability.
More than 1,000 British Columbia families with children with disabilities have been interviewed in a report published last year by the Children and Young People’s Representative.
Nearly 75 percent of respondents reported feeling “no confidence” or “little confidence” in their ability to receive the services they need.
The report also details a gaping flaw in the system, namely the lack of support for certain complex diagnostics. For example, children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder or Down syndrome are not eligible for services that children on the autism spectrum receive.
More than 34 percent of those surveyed said they have children with disabilities who are not eligible for any help.
Twenty-one percent of families who made the difficult decision to place their children in child care said they did so only to get services their children would not have gotten if they had stayed in their own home.
“We get children six, seven and eight years old in group homes,” Charlesworth said.
“It’s not a normative experience for children. So you are right. When we look at the big picture and we look at the costs, just the economic costs, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. »
The Ministry of Children and Family Development said it was working on a new framework.
The eight-year-old’s adoptive mother said she is now fighting in court with the department to maintain guardianship.
“She’s alone,” she said.
“It shouldn’t be this hard to fight for our children.”
–with files from Rumina Daya