Thank you for having me.
I also am an adopted child, one who was very celebrated in my growing-up experience. Frankly, I was so celebrated that I felt sorry for birth children. That is actually the truth. I remember that my mom would tell me how the rest of the families did not get a choice about the children they had, and they did have a choice. That was the premise in which I grew up. I'm very thankful for that.
I am also an adoptive parent. And I'm a foster parent, and I have been for 18 years.
We have two biological sons.
Adoption was a first choice for us. We had no difficulty having children, but we knew that adoption was going to be part of our family picture. Before we were even married we discussed adoption being part of our family, regardless of the ability to have children of our own.
We started as foster parents. Our daughter, which is the singled-out picture you have, came to us when she was 13 months old. She had 19 fractures. She had shaken baby syndrome and suffered from failure to thrive. We dealt with her situation closely, with medical and assessment teams, not knowing what the future would hold for her. The court process would take four years until she was actually available for adoption. We were madly in love with her the first time we met her, so we walked through her journey with her and then chose to adopt her.
Over the years, we have fostered 19 children. And our heart is for Canada's children.
We adopted her. She has some issues with learning disabilities. The post-adoption supports we have had do not meet the needs she has. We have paid for private school for her, and that is not covered through adoption. The reason we chose the school we did was that they provided specific supports for her. Aside from that, post-adoption pays for tutoring. We've had assessments done so that we can raise her up to her abilities. Just last night she told me that she received an award.
She is now in a public high school. We've taught her strategies so that she can be her own best advocate. She has been on the websites looking at the colleges she is going to go to. She's dreaming for the future. We are so thankful that we've had the opportunity to raise her and give her those privileges.
We did not receive any time off, because we received her through foster care.
The other single picture we have is of a little fellow we received when he was two. We will adopt him. He has fetal alcohol syndrome, and he came to us with two subdural brain hemorrhages from injuries that occurred in care. He has quite severe brain damage. We are using all the money we receive from foster care to provide the services he needs. We are paying for private school. We are paying for recreational activities that he excels at, because his academic disabilities are limiting. The system pays for assessments that are extremely expensive so that we can understand how to raise him and parent him in the way that he can best move into the future. We've gone to classes and learned that you can actually and prayerfully move forward in raising children with fetal alcohol syndrome.
I have also placed children into adoptive homes and have worked with the families that have adopted children out of my home.
As a government, the need that I see you can meet is giving the full parental leave that other families have. Families that bring children home that are adopted have, at the very least, attachment issues. The children and the mothers and fathers need those weeks to bond with their children.
The children in Canada, if they are children who have been taken from their families because of neglect or abuse, often have challenges that are daunting. If we support our families right from the beginning when they have been willing to take children into their home, and we give them the time they need to bond and build relationships with their children, that will be the best way to ensure family preservation.
You provide a tax benefit for families. It's under the “compassionate care” section. I would love to see that extended, to give families the full benefit of the opportunity for attachment, because families often need counselling and a variety of things. They may need medical attention, and there are all kinds of things that they need to be available for their children. Then also at another time, if crises occur—because so many of our children are affected with fetal alcohol issues and neglect issues, which come into play later in life—there could be a tax benefit for families that would allow them potentially as much as a year to have EI so they could take the time to preserve their family and meet the needs of their children.
I could go on and on.
Thank you.