Arkansas.
The father has never been in the youngest child's life. He threw her out when she became pregnant, and has never tried to see his son.
To begin with,the children were taken from her illegally from the baby sitters house while my daughter was at work, by someone the children knew & trusted, & then she turned them over to the DHS. This person claimed to the sitter that she had permission from the DHS to take the children when she did not. What was the sitter to do, especially since the children knew & trusted this woman, & did not know what was actually happening?
When my daughter tried to get her children back from the woman who took them, there was an altercation, & my daughter was arrested, thus the urine test, & a few hours in jail. The DHS & judge admitted that the children had not been legally removed from the sitters house, but by then of course, the urine test had been done giving the DHS reason to say they had the right to keep them. The oldest boy was given to his Father in Texas by the court & then of course the younger remained in the custody of the DHS by court order.
What I can't understand is why they continue to refuse to give her son back to her, & do this to her & the child, when she has tried very hard to comply with all of their demands & as far as I know has lived up to what they have asked her to do.
She has not failed to be with her son on every occasion that they would permit her to be either. Has done everything she can to comply, and still they are treating her so unfairly. My Grandson has, of course, made it clear he wants to be with his mother. He is seven years old. The DHS has had him in an institution for the mentally disturbed for several months now, because he refuses to accept this separation from his Mother. They claim that he is mentally disturbed because he is unable to deal with this separation from a Mother that he had never in his life been separated from for more than a night or two at my house, or his aunts house, in all of his life. They have put him on 4 or 5 kinds of medications, & he basically is a walking Zombie now. Their treatment of him has been, in my opinion, much more cruel than his Mother ever might have thought of being.
There was never any physical abuse of the child, & there was always a caregiver for when she was at work, & etc. Me being one of them. They have given children back to parents who have done so much worse than she ever did, but for some reason they are refusing to give her any credit for all the things she has done to comply with their demands.
She did miss one court hearing in December, because she had the flu real bad, but her lawyer said that would not be a problem That she would handle things.
My daughter has no money, & we have very little, and the pro bono lawyer she has doesn't seem to be doing much to help her. In my opinion the lawyer does not seem to be trying to help her.
Is there any recourse we can take to try to prevent this adoption from happening. I love my grandson & do not wish to be separated from him permanently. My daughter is not perfect, but she's not a bad person. She just made some mistakes & who hasn't? Who in this world is perfect anyway? She's been a single mother trying to raise two sons on her own for many years, & doing the best she could. She loves her kids very much. She's been a much better mother than many that I've seen who got their kids back within 3 or 4 months, even after they had abused them terribly, or allowed them to be abused. I am at a loss as to what to do.
I have many questions as to why this ever happened in the first place. It all seemed rather pre-planned on the part of the woman who basically abducted the children, and nothing was ever done to her for taking them illegally. Why?
Please help me. Give me something to work with, please.
Deloris Ann.