01/09/2026
I never imagined I’d be writing this, but here we are. I am done being silenced.
This is what happens when an adopted child’s mental health needs are too complex and severe for the system built to protect them. No parent should have to choose between bringing an unsafe child home that harms siblings & pets or being threatened with criminal charges for demanding help, yet that is exactly what families are facing & thats exactly what we are facing.
I am the adoptive parent of a young child with severe developmental and behavioral needs. Since our child was two years old, we have done everything families are told to do: therapy, medication, psychiatric care, neurology, genetics, crisis services, referrals, evaluations, and waiting lists that stretch into years. We begged for help long before things reached a breaking point.
When things finally did break, we learned a painful truth about our mental health and child welfare systems:
• If your child’s needs are too severe, there is often nowhere for them to go.
• Crisis facilities are short term, regardless of whether a child has truly stabilized.
• Residential programs deny children who are labeled “too complex.”
• Foster and adoptive homes are told they cannot keep other children safe, yet when parents and caregivers say, “This is not safe, we need more help,” “my child is trying to harm the other children” “child assaults staff at facilities” “child tries to harm and kill pets” the parents are met with threats and criminal charges from CPS instead of help or solutions.
Families are being forced into impossible choices:
A. Bring a child home from a crisis center even when staff acknowledge the child is unsafe and a danger to themselves & others & after being told the child needs a higher level of care, only to have every higher-level program refuse placement because the child’s needs are “too severe.”
OR
B. Refuse to take a child home because it is unsafe, seek help through emergency rooms or crisis facilities, and beg for appropriate care, only to be accused of neglect or abandonment for refusing danger, and told by CPS that the child is “too severe” and that criminal charges will follow if the family does not comply and take the child home anyway.
That is not care.
That is not protection.
That is not a system built around children.
That is a system that abandons children and punishes families for refusing to accept harm.
That is a broken system and broken systems do not get fixed by silence.
I refuse to be silent any longer. Silence is how broken systems survive.
This isn’t about blaming one worker, one social worker, one agency, or one mental health facility. This is about a system with massive gaps for children with complex mental health, behavioral and developmental needs and foster and adoptive families are left to absorb the risk when those gaps swallow their kids.
There are so many adoptive and foster parents quietly living this same story, terrified to speak up because they fear retaliation of criminal charges & judgment from people who do not understand. I’m speaking out because silence protects broken systems, not children.
We don’t need more paperwork.
We don’t need more waitlists.
We need real, long term, high acuity options for foster, adoptive and all children whose needs exceed “standard care.”
We need systems that support families instead of criminalizing them, especially foster and adoptive families who step up for children with the most complex needs and are then left to face the consequences alone.
If you’ve lived this as a parent, a provider, or a former child in the system, you are not alone.
If you’ve never seen this side of our mental health system and CPS, I hope you never do, but I hope you’ll listen.
I’m not sharing this for sympathy. I’m sharing it because things cannot change if we pretend this isn’t happening.
Children deserve better.
Families deserve support.
Silence is no longer an option.
NO CHILD WITH NO WHERE TO GO
