My husband and I fostered a preteen young lady from this organization from May 2023 to August 2024. We grew to love this child and worked hard to help her with her extensive trauma. We even wrote DCS in Nashville, Tennessee to advocate to get this precious child in therapy. She finally began therapy eight months after arriving to our house. My husband and I spent hours working with her to help her progress in her education, making calls to try to get her in therapy, and showing her a different way of life.
Toward the end of May 2024, after much prayer and conversation, we decided to not adopt this child. We have three grown children and thought this child would benefit from having someone that could focus solely on her and her trauma.
Our case manager, Jen Davis, began the foster journey with us regularly praising our efforts and thanking us for being so involved in helping this child. She told us she personally knew a perspective, adoptive family, and believed they would allow us to remain in the child's life and even suggested us being called "aunt" and "uncle".
Over the next two months, my husband and I reached out to try to meet the adoptive parents for dinner to let them know they had our full support. Over the last 14 months, we had developed such a close relationship with this child and knew her personality extremely well.
Jen kept leading us on to believe that the family would appreciate our support. Two weeks before our precious foster daughter left our home, Jen tells us that the new family, being pre-adoptive foster parents did not want to meet us and wanted to start with a brand new slate getting to know the child. You cannot take a child that is almost a teenager and want a new slate. This child has an established personality, likes/dislikes, and many other character traits.
Of course we were shocked, disappointed, and sad. The pre-adoptive family consists of a school principal and a guidance counselor. We concluded that they felt they did not need any additional information about the child. My husband and I, both being career professionals, did not want to tell the new family what to do. We simply wanted to help them make the process easier for the child.
It has been over two months since we've seen or heard anything about the child. We understand that we have no rights. Jen Davis should have never strongly indicated that we would be able to remain in the child's life as a support system. We trusted her because she knew the family personally. She even said she told the family we should remain in the child's life, but they chose otherwise.
We continue to pray for the child and hope that one day she will reach out to us. We have made the decision to transfer agencies. Once trust is broken, it is very difficult to continue to work with an agency. Especially one that has told us from the beginning and throughout the last year, that we were the child's biggest advocates. Do your research before using this agency. read more
