The adoptive family of a girl with multiple diagnoses is asking for the B.C. Ministry of Children and Family Development to give them support to carry on as a family.
The girl, who is now eight years old, was adopted from the ministry when she was two years old.
Global News is not identifying her or her adoptive family due to legal reasons.
The girl’s foster mother said the biological mother drank and used drugs while she was pregnant.
“She’s Indigenous,” the foster mother said. “She was the fourth child. She was born while her mother was incarcerated for armed robbery. She now, unfortunately, has passed from a drug overdose.”
The foster mother said when the girl was two she was an easy child.
“We started to notice a difference when she started daycare when like I had finished my parental leave and went back to work,” she said.
“She was about three and a half or so, and that’s where we really started to notice she could not function socially… The extra stimulus, she couldn’t function. Understanding peer relationships, sharing, all that kind of stuff.”
By kindergarten, the foster mother said the girl was running away, destroying the classroom and hitting and kicking other children.
“I’ve begged the ministry,” she said.
“I begged for respite. I begged for special needs support. I’ve begged for people to come into the home to help strategize, too. I’ve begged for a break.”
The child’s foster mother is a special education assistant in the school system and told Global News that she raised two other adopted children with complex needs who are now adults, so she comes to the table with skills and experience.
She said the family has been fighting for years for adequate support from the Ministry of Children and Family Development.
“She’s taken on such a massive and difficult task,” the foster mother’s spouse told Global News.
“Look at what she’s already done for two girls that had been in 15-plus foster homes. And then she decided to adopt another. You know, stop the judgment. She’s a parent that’s struggling.”
The little girl, who should be in Grade 3, has now had multiple stints in hospital in child psychiatric wards because she is considered a danger to herself and others.
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Her foster mom said her daughter has even been put in restraints.
“How is this reality?” she asked. “And then how do we help her? Because … she’s lost in this.”
The foster mother said the little girl has fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, autism, moderate intellectual disability, ADHD, unspecified anxiety disorder, and a language disorder.
Last month, the foster mother said the little girl tried to throw a fish tank and a table at someone and she 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 have stated she requires multiple caregivers at the same time.
The foster mother said she is fighting for a Special Needs Agreement, which would allow her to still maintain guardianship and make educational and medical decisions.
“I know she’s sad and scared and confused and that I’m doing everything I can to help her,” the foster mother said.
“There’s a huge empty hole in me, in our family right now. If she could process it and understand it, I would hope that she would know that this is her forever family and that we love her no matter what.”
The Ministry for Children and Family Development said it cannot comment on this specific story for privacy reasons.
However, Minister Grace Lore said keeping kids safely with families is always the top choice, where possible.
“Layering supports for families… is always the top choice,” she said.
The watchdog for children and youth in B.C., Dr. Jennifer Charlesworth, said thousands of children are not receiving the support they need.
“Our estimate was approximately 80,000 children,” she said. “So,… 80,000 children who are not eligible or not receiving the supports that they would need in order to be able to thrive with their disabilities.”
More than 1,000 families in B.C. with children with disabilities were surveyed in a report released by the representative for children and youth last year.
Almost 75 per cent of respondents reported feeling “no confidence” or “minimal confidence” their child would receive the services they need.
The report also detailed a gaping hole in the system, which is a lack of support for certain complex diagnoses. For example, children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder or Down syndrome don’t qualify for services, which autistic children on the spectrum receive.
More than 34 per cent of respondents said they have children with disabilities who are ineligible for any support.
Twenty-one per cent of families who made the difficult decision to place their kids in care said they did so solely to get services the child could not get had they remained in their own homes.
“We are seeing six-, seven- and eight-year-olds in group homes,” Charlesworth said.
“That is not a normative experience for kids. So you’re right. When we take a look at the bigger picture and we take a look at costs, just economic costs, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”
The Ministry of Children and Family Development said it is working on a new framework.
The eight-year-old girl’s foster mother said she is now fighting in court with the ministry to maintain guardianship.
“She’s alone,” she said.
“It should not be this hard to fight for our kids.”
–with files from Rumina Daya