Foster parents feel caught by Catholic Charities controversy

Four years after becoming foster parents through Catholic Charities, Susan and Thomas Westcott have watched their family multiply.

Last summer they adopted 6-year-old Scott and 8-year-old Victoria, siblings who were previously abused by family members before entering foster care.

Now the Westcotts fear that Catholic Charities? legal battle with the state over foster care may disrupt progress on their adoption of a third foster child. Other foster families also are worried, they say, after a recent ruling that Catholic Charities does not have a legal right to continue its contract with the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services to provide such services.

For the last two years, the Westcotts have sought to adopt their 2 1/2-year-old foster son, who has lived with the family nearly all of his life. Born three months premature and addicted to drugs, the boy, whom the couple declined to name since he is not yet adopted, spent more than four months in the neonatal intensive care unit before the Westcotts brought him to their Pawnee home.

?We?re the only parents and home he?s ever known,? Susan Westcott said. [more]

SOURCE

State Journal Register (Springfield, Ill)

?

?

Source: http://www.cathnewsusa.com/2011/09/foster-parents-feel-caught-by-catholic-charities-controversy/

pop lcd channel 4 news anarchy crude oil price crude oil price new york stock exchange