Please help us bring our son back home to his family.

We need your help!

We have been trying to get our son back home for the past 21 months and now we are getting ready for our final court case. A 3 day trial set for June. We have already put almost $20,000 towards our legal fees and now we need to come up with at least $30,000 more before court.

It has been an uphill battle fighting untruths, false allegations, and unfair treatment by Children's Services Northwest Region in Alberta. The Grande Prairie office is full of caseworkers that are willing to lie on court documents just to get what they want. We have shown proof of the untruths of almost every allegation made by CS, but they continue to give false information to serve their narrative.

I am not going to lie or sugarcoat anything. I did make mistakes. Huge mistakes.

Between major depression, relationship issues, losing 2 very close friends (one of which was my best friend), isolation due to Covid, and dealing with all the pressures of raising my 3 young children with FAS and ADD among other things (my youngest also being an opioid baby) I was not handling things well and I made some parenting mistakes.

I admit I am not perfect. I was feeling all kinds of feelings and not handling things well at all even though I thought I was.

I was yelling a lot, I was sending my son to his room when I couldn't deal, I was making parenting mistakes. I felt alone, like I was having to do everything on my own and I felt like I had no help and nobody to turn to for help.

I knew when I decided to adopt my 3 children that things would not be easy, especially coming from the trauma they came from. I knew all my children probably have FAS among other things and I had been taking courses every chance I got to better help them. When Covid arrived on our doorstep things became much harder. It is not an excuse, it is just a statement of fact.

My son was put into foster care July 2022. They said they were going to take his younger sisters as well but that did not happen.

We agreed to and completed all the Terms set out by CS, but apparently that was not good enough for them. If they told me to do one thing then I would do five instead. I love my son and would do anything to get him back.

Since then I have completed many parenting courses, some of which I have even taken a 2nd time, and I have learned so many things and better ways to parent my children. Things have changed drastically in our home.

When CS decided to end our therapy with no notice, I took it upon myself to find a new therapist to talk to. We do couples counseling as well as individual therapy.

We passed our parenting assessments. Who knew there are actual tests to tell CS whether you are a good enough parent or not.

Our home support also came to an end without notice. I did discover that we met all the requirements, including safety in our home, that were set out by CS, when they set up our home supports in 2022.

We have had multiple appointments with a dietician regarding the way I feed my children. She has seen nothing wrong with how I feed them and said there was no point in continuing the meetings unless my son was living at home and/or coming to the meetings.

The only things we have been unable to do are talk to the trauma specialist and behavior specialist. We were told that that would have to be our son's therapist. We were then lied to for months and months and months about his therapy not starting yet.

I could write a book just based on all the lies that CS has told us over the past 21 months.

It is scary to know that we are not the only family that this is happening to up here.

In September 2023 our contact with our son ended. In October 2023, our daughter's stopped being allowed to see their brother as well.

No family has seen my son for minimum 6-7 months (longer for some other family members). They kept saying they would set up sibling visits but it never happened.

Now when we ask them anything, at all, we are told that since trial is in June we can bring up the questions at trial instead.

I am hoping to get enough money to help with legal fees as well as possibly to help out my parents. They moved up here a year ago to do kinship (another CS lie), and took on monthly rent and bills when they didn't have rent or mortgage back home. My parents are retired and my dad had to recently go back to work.

We have been selling things, working overtime, constantly trying to come up with ways to get more money. Its hard when just day to day is financially draining let alone when emergencies arise and you are trying to save for a lawyer all at the same time.

These past 21 months have been hard on the entire family, emotionally and financially.

Any little bit will help.

Please share.

tammalu@hotmail.com