Subsidy helps adoptive mom

Laurie Monsebraaten / The Toronto Star

May 13, 2011

As a single woman, Annette Schoelier never imagined adopting four siblings with severe health and emotional problems.

But she credits the London Children’s Aid Society for making it possible through adoption subsidies.

“There’s no way I could have done it without a subsidy,” says Schoelier, who was living in a two-bedroom townhouse outside London, Ont., and earning less than $30,000 when she took on the challenge.

As a trained child development specialist who works in a child and family crisis centre, Schoelier figures she was more equipped than most to step in when the CAS removed three siblings — a 4-year-old, 2-year-old and 8-month-old — from their troubled family in 2000.

The birth mother, who abused drugs and alcohol during each pregnancy, soon gave birth to another baby. Before the infant, who was 11 weeks premature, left the hospital, Schoelier was caring for all four siblings.

It was a harrowing couple of years. The 2-year-old was recovering from a liver transplant and the premature newborn spent her first three months in hospital.

By 2002, when the children became Crown wards, Schoelier had fallen in love. She knew she wanted to adopt.

But how could she afford it when the children needed $3,000 a month in medication, including expensive anti-rejection drugs for the girl who had the liver transplant?

How could she meet car payments on the van she had to buy to transport them to appointments?

Schoelier knew London CAS provided adoption subsidies for special-needs children. But the agency had no subsidy money that year, so she put her adoption plans on hold. The CAS continued to pay Schoelier the foster care rate of between $20 and $40 per day per child, as well as the children’s medical and therapeutic costs.

“It’s awful that we put more money into foster care that perpetuates uncertainty than into permanent solutions like adoption subsidies,” she notes.

Schoelier’s adoption subsidy came through in 2007. She got an Ontario Drug Benefit card to cover the children’s medication. And to help pay the family’s living expenses she receives an adoption subsidy of about half of what she received when she was fostering.

As a result, she has been able to trade her tiny two-bedroom townhouse — where the children slept in bunk beds with a single dresser — for a modest five-bedroom house with a big yard.

“We still have to watch our budget,” says Schoelier, 40. “But without it, we would be living in very deep poverty.”

All four children say they are grateful to be adopted and living together.

“I get a nice mom and I get to be with my nice brother and sisters,” says her second eldest, now 12. The other children are now 13, 11 and 9.

“I have never regretted it — ever,” Schoelier says. “I think it was my destiny. I don’t know if I found them or they found me.”