Help Our Adopted Special Needs Family

Hi, my name is Craig. I am asking for donations to help our adopted special needs family.

I am a special needs teacher. I have had to stop working due to chronic migraines that cause me to miss so much work that I cannot maintain a job teaching. I hope to return to online graduate school this school year to finish my master's in special education. Our hope is that this degree will allow me to get a job on the west coast, where my doctors and I think my migraines may not be as bad.

Because of my migraines, I cannot even get an interview at local schools. Due to this my husband and I are struggling to pay the mortgage and utilities. We are afraid of losing electricity, gas, or even our home.

On August 16th the adoption of our special needs son, Kaden Rittenhouse, was completed! We are now parents of an amazing son!

We have been involved in Kaden's life for multiple years since he was a student in my former classroom. He is 18 now, and with his permission, we adopted him, and will go through adult guardianship soon. We had to wait until he was 18 to adopt him because we were given incorrect information that he would lose all of his state funding if we adopted him before he was 18. As we could not provide the lost funding for him to stay at his residential facility, we waited to adopt him. He is now in an adult group home, but we hope to somehow be able to get him home with us permanently.

Kaden is staying at an adult group home that is an hour away until we can find a way to allow him to stay with us permanently or when he is older and ready, his own apartment. We drive to get Kaden for visits as often as we can. Because his group home is so far away, we don't always have the gas money to drive to get him. But, he has visited a lot, including an entire week during his "adoption week"! Thanks to your amazing help, we have been able to create his own room with a bed, TV, and thanks to my brother a PS4 game system he can play. We still need to get him some basic things like a dresser, wardrobe, additional waterproof bed linings, sheets, etc. This is his first bedroom. He has never had his own bedroom before. He has been in state care since he was young.

This is very hard to do, but for the sake of my family, I need to ask for help to pay basic bills to keep our home and to allow our newly adopted son Kaden to be able to stay with us as much as possible. We have made some amazing steps with the help of great people. However, due to my health and Kaden's needs, we are still struggling daily.

Everything donated will be used only for bills such as mortgage payments, utilities (gas, electric, etc.), groceries, as well as items to give Kaden so his room and our home feel like his forever home. When you grow up in state care, you have very, very few things that are your own. We want to be able to help make up for all of the "normal" things Kaden never got to have or do growing up.

If you can help, you will never know how much it truly means to our family during this incredibly difficult time. Thank you so very much!