First the good news. Ayn is home and happy. I’ll get to the
stupid news soon enough.
Amie and Derek, Ayn’s mom and dad, are no longer a couple,
yet there is mutual cooperation with respect to Ayn, and they will each enjoy
having Ayn live with them at agreed upon times. Recently when she was with
Derek, Ayn ran to the computer and logged on to YouTube to find the concluding
theme song from Stuart Little, “Home.” She played it over and over as she
smiled continuously and hugged her two brothers and her daddy.
A family is happy now. So is everyone in her immediate
family and extended family as well and almost 4,000 people who have been her
supporters on her three-year-old Facebook page entitled, ‘Help Bring Little
Autistic Girl Back to Daddy.” Three years, that’s how long she was gone.
Neither she nor her family did anything wrong in terms of violation or
negligence or abandonment. In June 2011 it would have been imprudent to even
accuse Derek of carelessness, because he surrounded her by a tall back yard
fence and was watchful as a parent can be, and she playfully scaled the barrier
and wandered down the street to a neighbour’s home. He couldn’t leave his two
other children, sons, one of whom is also autistic. His call to 911 led to an
alert that put an RCMP eye-in-the-sky and on the ground searchers. Three hours
later Ayn was found in a nearby neighbour’s yards, unharmed and content. The
father daughter reunion lasted only hours before the Ministry of Children
social workers showed up. Rather than offering authentic assistance to a dad
whom they deemed was overwhelmed by his parental responsibility, this officious
crew removed her from her daddy and brothers and threw her confused spirit and
mind into a distressing whirlwind of confusion and fear controlled for too long
thereafter by a surplus of anti-psychotic drugs.
She had seven caseworkers during these past three years. This
family waited for a social worker with a keen sense of what was right to at
last make her return happen. Thrilled, delightful, overjoyed are words that
understate their states of mind, so try euphoric and rapturous. Try FIFA world
cup crazy as a descriptor of this family’s emotions. They deserve to be happy.
Okay, I promised you stupid news. MCFD returned Ayn to her
mom and dad with three sets of clothing after three years. After the tens of
thousands of dollars expended to retain Ayn in a Foster environment, this girl,
ostensibly removed to help a dad overwhelmed with parental duties, gives her
back with a depleted wardrobe. They could have written a check for $1000.00 to
replenish a growing young woman’s clothing. That would be ‘assistance.’
How about we send some clothing/gift certificates to both mom and dad for Ayn? Just a thought.
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