My little girls; Esther (2 years old March 29th, 2006) and Cerena (1 year old June 9th, 2006) were taken from me while I was made to struggle without my husband in a homeless shelter almost a year ago.
The whole thing started in the hospital. My youngest girl was born 9 weeks early and spent her first two months of life in the nursery. I lived out of walking distance of the hospital, and had no car of my own, so visits were not as often as I liked, and a nurse saw to it CPS came knocking because of my 'neglect'.
Only a couple months later, I am in a homeless shelter, doing my best to arrange day-care for my babies while I go and work to get us out of the bad situation we're in. The shelter denies my husband entrance to the shelter because it's for family and we didn't have our marriage certificate. An administrator whose office is two doors down from my room gets tired of hearing a baby cry because she misses her daddy and doesn't feel right where she is, calls CPS and tells them I'm abusive. It's the word of a respected administrator (who has obviously never had kids!) over mine... Our children were whisked away and my husband and I have been treated horribly through the whole ordeal.
We have been through 3 agents handling our case so far, and none of them can bother to call us or answer thier phones. The very parenting classes and counseling we agreed to attend, we aren't cleared for because they won't do a few peices of paperwork. Where the court has requested to place the children with my parents, CPS has drawn out the paperwork and investigation as long as they possibly can.
Our final court date is July 28th, and we haven't seen our babies in 4 weeks today, July 1st 2006, because CPS says we haven't done enough.
The foster family talks behind our backs and acts like my girls already belong to them. The saturday after Mother's Day, the foster grandmother seemed quite pleased to tell me my 1-year-old called HER 'momma' on Mother's Day. They didn't even bother to call or show up on Mother's Day when I was supposed to be kissing and hugging my girls for the measley supervised hour a week I get them.
CPS of Texas is setting us up for a 'slam dunk'. They get a check for 176 dollars for each child they adopt out. Just look at the State of Texas website and how they brag about thier leaps and bounds in child adoptions.
I may not have been able to give them all the creature comfort in the world, but we had what we needed and we were a strong family.
God, please show me my children's happy lives are worth more than $176!!!
