Help Candace Bring Her Special Needs Son Home
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$1,932 raised of $3.3K
44 donations
"You're the only place I feel safe, Mom. I want to come home."
Candace, our close friend, hears this from her special needs son often when he calls her from the hospital.
What is happening now is she has been told by the powers that be in the system:
"If you don't have a suitable home by the October 20 for your son, we will be keeping him for a much longer and unknown period of time. "
Layton, her special needs son is in a forensic hospital and it would make you weep if you heard what they have put him through just this year. They ignore his special needs and punish him often for not acting “normal”. He is scared and we need your help bringing him home to help him heal from the trauma he has endured.
We are helping a mother with limited means to get her son home to her.
If you haven't clicked on the YouTube video yet, I highly recommend watching it. It's a video Candace made with her own lyrics and visuals.
It's powerful.
It reminds us of a world millions of families are navigating too.
Update!
We have some exciting news! WE FOUND CANDACE A HOME!!
It's a beautiful spot on shared land with a couple friends, surrounded by thousands of acres of national forest. Layton will have room to roam, nature all around him, and a community of people who care about him.
The owner of the new place says we can pay in payments.
Now we just need to help Candace so she can keep it.
We're raising $3,333. The bare minimum. For rent and food.
Though we hope to have a little extra money to fill the fridge with things Layton loves. Comforts.
Even $10 or $25 helps”
Candace gets calls from Layton almost daily, her son who is in a Forensic Psychiatric Hospital, her son who is autistic and who we believe would have never ended up there had the system been trained to work WITH someone like him. Not against.
Layton is 31 years old now.
He was diagnosed autistic at 2 or 3. He has often been misunderstood and was always "different." He would speak of world peace and run away to Indigenous Reservations to learn from elders who told his mother he was special, spiritual, shaman-like. Even at 16 years old.
Even as a child he would listen to John Lennon's "Imagine" over and over again. At 9 years old he would speak of how we need to save the world, help each other and "make sure everyone has a home".
Candace has always seen how special he is.
I have seen videos of the two of them cracking up, making jokes. Him doing little dances just to make her laugh. They have a very special connection, and I hear ALL the time how much she misses him and wants him home.
What we're raising:
Our goal is $3,333. That will cover the cost of the new place for them both, a couple of months of rental fees and some basic things to help Layton feel comfortable, safe and welcome and at his new home.
Like clothes, socks, maybe a TV and his favorite comfort foods after all he has been through.
If 214 people gave just $25, we'd reach our goal!
About Candace:
She is the BEST place for Layton to be. She is the one who KNOWS what he needs. The one who has space to listen before trying to quiet what he's experiencing. The best chance Layton has to feel safe in this world again.
For nearly 30 years, Candace has worked in youth programs, homelessness outreach, mental health, corrections, Housing First, and family support, including starting a youth center from the ground up.
This last year while Layton was in the hospital she published three books, created a free nine-week course for families, and is now helping build an app to support families navigating mental-health crises.
She deserves this, and she NEVER would have asked for it herself. She is fiercely independent, which I guess you have to be when you're a single mom of two and one of your kids needs a tremendous amount of support. She's been doing everything she can with almost no money coming in, and she still never asked us for help.
We had to step in and say,
"Sis, you need a village now. Let us help you."
This is us being that village.
Can't give? Please share this. That helps too.
We are deeply grateful for any and all of it.
We are praying that on October 20, Candace will be able to say to Layton,
“We got a home. You can come home now.”
Further Reading if you choose:
Below are a couple of her very heartfelt Facebook posts that got a lot of attention, especially from other mothers who know exactly what she is going through.
FB Post 1:
“Yesterday morning, my son called me from the forensic psychiatric hospital.
He told me they had given him until 3:00 p.m. to agree to an antipsychotic injection.
He didn't want it.
He told me it was harming him, that it makes his skin feel bad and gives him heart palpitations.
He believes this medication could kill him. He is already on so many medications.
And he asked me what he should do.
He asked if I could help him.
"Please, Mom. I'm begging you to help me."
I'm his mother and his legal guardian. I've already raised concerns about his medications and tried to advocate for changes, and they aren't changing it. They don't hear me, and I feel helpless to support him as the hospital overrides my authority.
So what am I supposed to tell him?
I told him,
"I understand. It does feel wrong. You shouldn't have to take something you don't want in your body. I have tried to change this, but they don't listen to me either. But you're in the hospital, and if you don't comply, it's going to cause further problems for you. I know it feels wrong, but please don't fight them on this. When you get home, we can start making changes."
And the moment I said it, it felt fucking wrong.
Because how is it right to tell another human being to surrender to something they are telling you is harming them?
How is it right for me, as his mother, to say:
I hear that you're scared.
I hear that you believe this is hurting your body.
I hear that you don't consent.
But please let them do it anyway, because I'm afraid of what will happen to you if you resist.
That's not a choice.
That's trying to choose between two things that both feel wrong.
Later that afternoon, he refused.
He was handcuffed and held down while the injection was forced on him. He fought, and now we are facing the possibility that what happened during that struggle could result in further legal consequences.
The very thing I was afraid would happen if he didn't comply happened.
And this is the part I cannot get past:
We can debate medication, involuntary treatment, capacity, risk, psychosis, and what hospitals are supposed to do when someone refuses treatment.
But yesterday, I wasn't having an academic debate.
I was a mother on the phone with her son, telling him to surrender his body to something he believed was harming him because I was afraid of what would be done to him if he said no.
It felt wrong when I said it.
And it feels wrong today.
I think we need to be willing to talk about that.
Because it's so much deeper than, "Just take your medication."
FB Post 2:
“I'm sitting here this morning missing my son and wondering how the hell we ended up here.
Sometimes I look back over the last 15 years and I honestly can't believe all of this even happened.
I think about how full of life and light he was, how funny he was, how much of himself there was in everything he did.
And then I think about him now, sitting in a forensic psychiatric hospital, angry and on more medication than I ever imagined one person could be taking.
And I miss him soooo much.
I keep thinking about how differently things could have gone if there had been somewhere safe for him to land when things were falling apart.
Somewhere that understood extreme states and disability, where the response wasn't always more control, more force, more medication, more police, and more systems.
I think about him trying to get away from staff who were trying to forcibly inject him, and how something that happened in the middle of that struggle eventually became part of a criminal process.
I know these situations can be incredibly complicated and that other people can be affected too, but as his mom, I can't stop asking how someone who was already struggling so profoundly ended up being criminalized instead of having somewhere better to go.
He deserved so much better.
Looking back now, I think that's one of the things I have the hardest time making peace with.
There should have been somewhere safe for him, somewhere built on compassion, autonomy, and human dignity.
Maybe that's the grief underneath all of this for me this morning.
I can't change what has already happened to my son, no matter how many times I replay it and wish I could.
But there needs to be another place for people like my son to land.
And I don't think I'm going to rest until we create it. ♥️”