Results: "I Didn't Think Anyone Would Come For a Teenager"

Ashley Lacasse spent her life without a permanent home, attending 19 different schools as she moved between parents, family members and foster care. Now at 17 (and a half) years old, she has walked out of a courtroom in Ottawa, Ontario, officially adopted and part of a new family. Ashley's new mother Amanda Jette Knox said the adoption was technically a "permanent custody", which allowed Ashley to keep her last name. "She has a relationship with her parents," Amanda explained, "it's just she's not able to live with them. So we worked with her to create a situation she's really happy with. We found out she was going to become a crown ward, which means the province would be her caregiver until she aged out of the system. We didn't like that, it was so unfair. She's such a wonderful person, she deserved more." Amanda and her wife, Zoe, had gotten to know Ashley through their daughter, Alexis, since they were friends at school. So, after spending most of her life being bounced around the system, for the first time she has a home, a bedroom of her own and a family to call her own. As the picture in her new bedroom says "You are home". Do you know anyone who has either adopted an older child (over the age of 5, which is the age considered an "older child") or been adopted as an older child?

American author Bruce Feiler discovered he had a rare form of bone cancer in 2008, and days later, his concern shifted to his then very young twin daughters growing up without him by their sides to advise them. He decided to create a "Council of Dads", and wrote a letter to six of his friends asking them to be father figures to his children. He wrote about it in his best selling book, "The Council Of Dads", which became a PBS documentary special, and soon, in March, a new series on NBC. (On a good note, Feiler beat the cancer, and is very much present in his daughters' lives, as are still the six men he asked to be his girls' father figures). Have you ever been asked to step into a "parent" role because someone felt they could not or would not be able to fill that role (for whatever reason)?

"Family isn't always blood. It's the people in your life who want you in theirs; the ones who accept you for who you are. The ones that would do anything to see you smile and who love you no matter what." (Quote source unknown) Do you agree with this quote?

Do you feel that in the case of adoption, allowing the birth parents to still maintain a relationship with the adopted child is good for all concerned?