Viktoria´s adoption

My sister became a foster parent in 2014 for the first time. As a single mom of three biological sons, she always wanted to be a foster parent to help children in need. In 2017, their life changed when they got the phone call for a little baby girl that was being released from the hospital. My sister already had her brother as her foster child and was surprised to hear that the biological mother had another baby (she had never met the birth mom at this point). My sister accepted placement of this brand new baby girl and was told to be at social services within an hour. We went to babies r us and bought $250 worth of newborn clothes, diapers, etc for this baby girl. Bringing home this brand new baby was exciting, heartbreaking, nerve wracking and all the other emotions you can imagine.

When it comes to foster care, the goal is always reunification with biological family. In this case, baby girl visited with her birth mother once a week. Her father visited a little more sporadically and within a few months, he stopped coming all together. At the end of the year, the birth father went to prison, where he will spend the next few years. At that time, the birth mother asked Helga if she would be willing to adopt the baby as the two of them had bonded and she wanted the baby to stay with the only mamma she knew.

It was at that time that social services started fighting against birth mom and tried to move the baby to paternal family members that did not want to take on the baby. Helga hired an attorney to represent her in court and birth mom had an attorney representing her. It took months and thousand of dollars, but Helga was able to win sole custody of the baby when she was almost 15 months old. Winning sole custody was such an amazing victory, but it was just the first step in a long journey to permanency for this beautiful baby girl.

The birth mom and Helga have a wonderful relationship and the birth mom supports the adoption in every way. The birth fathers rights will need to be terminated through the courts before the adoption can continue. Besides the fight to terminate the rights, there is a home study that needs to be done and attorney fees that need to be paid. Because the baby is no longer in foster care, this adoption now has to be paid in full as if this was a domestic infant adoption and that is incredibly costly. Helga has already exhausted her funds by fighting for custody and really needs help to get the adoption covered.

Ways to help Viktoria:

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With immense gratitude,
Karlotta Walford and Family