Adoption kept our family together

By Bevanjae Kelley

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.

At that moment I got angry, not only at ACS but also at my daughter. A few days later, an ACS worker contacted me and said I could become a kinship foster parent.

Soon the girls came to live with me. After two years, the permanency goal was changed to adoption. I felt as if I were in mourning. I just wanted to be Grammy, not their mommy. READ MORE

KinGap allows me to still be Mommy

By Adisha Garner

Four months after my children were removed, my aunt and her husband agreed to take my kids and I was able to get unsupervised visits in their home.

Recently, I had a Family Team Conference to talk about KinGap . When the case planner first offered KinGap, I did not want to take it. I thought it was like signing over my rights.

But then my parent advocate explained that my rights would not be terminated. My aunt and uncle even agreed that I could have my kids on weekends, birthdays and every holiday. At that point, I agreed to sign the papers. READ MORE

Also: KinGap—An Alternative to Adoption

By Dominique Arrington

The K

inship Guardianship Assistance Program, or KinGap, is designed to help a child in foster care achieve a permanent home with a relative . The key difference from adoption is that the biological parent’s rights aren’t terminated and the child isn’t adopted, but the relative still receives the same financial support as an adoptive parent. READ MORE

LEGISLATIVE NEWS

On June 20, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would change the way we deal with drug addiction treatment and recovery. If passed in the Senate, the law would make it easier to keep parent and child together when a parent resides in a drug treatment program.

Rise parent leader Robbyne Wiley applauds the legislation and recalls how, when she was addicted, fear of losing her children to the child welfare system prevented her from getting help sooner.

"I needed this law during my addiction. I would have gotten my life together much sooner if I knew that my kids and I could have stayed together while I got treatment.

At the beginning, I thought that if I reached out for help, child protection would come to take my children. The fear of losing my children paralyzed me.” READ MORE