New Social Services Worker

So today FEJ hired a new staff member, Berline, to work in the Social Services department at Lamardelle. Today was her first day on the job and boy, do we have a lot of work for her to do. Her desk was filled with adoption dossiers by mid-morning and she was already hard at work trying to put them all together. Due to all the countries re-opening for adoption, we have a lot more new matchings and active dossiers that need to put together to start each of their adoption processes. I am happy that there is someone else here to help me and Brunette. We are just way over-worked and over-loaded. We shall see how all this works out with the new staff member. Best of luck to everyone!

We had two new admissions today, as well. It was a busy day. The biological mother came with her two children, one 6 years old and another 3 years old. The girl, from first glance, you can already tell she was severely malnourished. Her hair was bright red/yellow color and her feet were so swollen for a 3 year old. She kept on crying and wouldn't stop shaking. The mother said that she was hungry, so I ran to my room to grab some peanut butter energy bars for the children. They were so happy to have it and they wolfed it down. They finally stopped crying, so I was comforted. Turns out the biological mother has 10 children, two of whom have passed away due to illness. All the children have the same mother, but three different fathers. The two children that were admitted today have two different fathers, so they are half-siblings. These kinds of stories are sadly the norm in Haiti. Many fathers pass away due to illness or some accident and the mother is forced to go find another partner so that he can support her and her children. But the conditions are always she must have more children, because the new man in her life wants his own biological children. So the system and condition just keeps on repeating itself. It is really quite sad to see all of this. And as a result, many children are admitted to orphanages because the family no longer has the financial means to continue supporting them.

It is going to be hard to find a family for these two. At the moment, we don't even know if they will be adopted as a sibling set or individually, since they do not have the same father. We shall see. In the mean time, I have started to bond with the two children already. I wish them the best of luck and will do my best to take care of them while they are with us.