No Foster Care for Brenna!
Donation protected
Hi We are Shana & Kirstin Elliott. We are sisters who live together in rural East Texas. This is the short version of our story :)
Baby Brenna entered our lives right before the 4th of July making her appearance more than 3 weeks early and weighing just under 5lbs.
Brenna is our cousin, her 21 year old mom, J, has been living with us off and on since March of 2012 in the hopes that she would be able to put her life together and regain custody of her 2 year old Daughter who resides with other relatives.
We came home from the hospital with Brenna and within hours Child Protective Services(CPS) showed up on our door after receiving notification from the Hospital that they believed that Brenna was in danger if she stayed in the care of J. CPS allowed Brenna to stay in our home with the understanding that J would continue to live with us, and that J would not leave the house alone with Brenna.
J has been unable to overcome her addiction and mental health issues to be able to safely parent and on July 28th went out to watch a movie with friends and decided not to return home. We have had several brief conversations with J, but she has shown no indication of being able to care for Brenna or a desire to return home. We were strongly encouraged by CPS to pursue guardianship of Brenna immediately and to retain legal counsel if we wish to keep her from going into the Foster Care System.
We found a great lawyer who thinks we can get legal guardianship of Brenna and perhaps even be able to adopt her in the long run, but they can't/won't start working for us until we can give them $5000 retainer!
Kirstin & I live a simple life in the country. We made some big finance mistakes in our twenties and are only now starting to dig ourselves out(Thanks to Dave Ramsey's amazing program!). We simply do not have that kind of money.
We know money is tight for a lot of people so we aren't looking for 10 people to give us $500 each. We are hoping people can help us out with the price of their morning Starbucks :) $5 will add up quick if we get lots of people to help.
Thanks so much for reading our story! Shana & Kirstin
Baby Brenna entered our lives right before the 4th of July making her appearance more than 3 weeks early and weighing just under 5lbs.
Brenna is our cousin, her 21 year old mom, J, has been living with us off and on since March of 2012 in the hopes that she would be able to put her life together and regain custody of her 2 year old Daughter who resides with other relatives.
We came home from the hospital with Brenna and within hours Child Protective Services(CPS) showed up on our door after receiving notification from the Hospital that they believed that Brenna was in danger if she stayed in the care of J. CPS allowed Brenna to stay in our home with the understanding that J would continue to live with us, and that J would not leave the house alone with Brenna.
J has been unable to overcome her addiction and mental health issues to be able to safely parent and on July 28th went out to watch a movie with friends and decided not to return home. We have had several brief conversations with J, but she has shown no indication of being able to care for Brenna or a desire to return home. We were strongly encouraged by CPS to pursue guardianship of Brenna immediately and to retain legal counsel if we wish to keep her from going into the Foster Care System.
We found a great lawyer who thinks we can get legal guardianship of Brenna and perhaps even be able to adopt her in the long run, but they can't/won't start working for us until we can give them $5000 retainer!
Kirstin & I live a simple life in the country. We made some big finance mistakes in our twenties and are only now starting to dig ourselves out(Thanks to Dave Ramsey's amazing program!). We simply do not have that kind of money.
We know money is tight for a lot of people so we aren't looking for 10 people to give us $500 each. We are hoping people can help us out with the price of their morning Starbucks :) $5 will add up quick if we get lots of people to help.
Thanks so much for reading our story! Shana & Kirstin
Organizer
Shana Elliott
Organizer
Ashland, TX
