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Keep CHOICES Adoption OPEN!
Verica I.
started this petition to
Minister of Child and Family Development
Choices is a private non-profit adoption agency that provides a range of social services, to birth parents and adoptive parents throughout British Columbia. This organization has been offering counselling to pregnant mothers and adoption education and placement for 30 years. Choices also assists adoptive families from several provinces with inter-country adoptions. Choices has facilitated over 1,000 adoptions of children including babies, both domestic and inter-country.
There are only 3 such private adoption organizations in British Columbia.
The Ministry of Child and Family Development has not had the resources for many years to handle this and has relied on Choices to fill the essential role of providing family counselling, adoption home studies and adoption education services and placement.
The Board of Directors has announced that Choices will close after 30 years, on May 31,2019. This is sudden and unexpected.
There are currently 141 families who are in various stages of the adoption process who have been blindsided by this closure. What are they to do now? The only 2 other private adoption agencies in BC are located in North Vancouver and Kelowna and they are full.
The Ministry of Child and Family Development does not appear to have the resources to take on these families and continue to provide the adoption services in a timely manner. We have reports of families waiting 2 years for a social worker to do a home study! Children’s lives are at stake here and 2 years is an eternity to a child.
These 141 families will be left without the services necessary to proceed with adoption. Also, these families have paid significant money depending on how far they are along the adoption process.
Choices has been providing crucial social services that government has been unable or unwilling to provide for over 30 years. If we don’t keep this vital organization open, families and children will suffer as a result. Placements will not happen and children will be delayed or denied their forever families. This is tragic and unnecessary!
We need organizations like CHOICES TO STAY OPEN!
We the undersigned appeal to the Government of British Columbia, to do whatever is necessary to KEEP CHOICES OPEN!
There are only 3 such private adoption organizations in British Columbia.
The Ministry of Child and Family Development has not had the resources for many years to handle this and has relied on Choices to fill the essential role of providing family counselling, adoption home studies and adoption education services and placement.
The Board of Directors has announced that Choices will close after 30 years, on May 31,2019. This is sudden and unexpected.
There are currently 141 families who are in various stages of the adoption process who have been blindsided by this closure. What are they to do now? The only 2 other private adoption agencies in BC are located in North Vancouver and Kelowna and they are full.
The Ministry of Child and Family Development does not appear to have the resources to take on these families and continue to provide the adoption services in a timely manner. We have reports of families waiting 2 years for a social worker to do a home study! Children’s lives are at stake here and 2 years is an eternity to a child.
These 141 families will be left without the services necessary to proceed with adoption. Also, these families have paid significant money depending on how far they are along the adoption process.
Choices has been providing crucial social services that government has been unable or unwilling to provide for over 30 years. If we don’t keep this vital organization open, families and children will suffer as a result. Placements will not happen and children will be delayed or denied their forever families. This is tragic and unnecessary!
We need organizations like CHOICES TO STAY OPEN!
We the undersigned appeal to the Government of British Columbia, to do whatever is necessary to KEEP CHOICES OPEN!
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