Disabled mom’s plea to find home for young daughters spurs emotional responses

A desperate plea by a disabled Edmonton single mother to keep her young daughters out of foster care is getting a strong response on social media.

Sarah Vibert is trying to find a home for her girls, aged eight and nine. Vibert was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2008 and suffered a spinal injury the following year that left her paralyzed. She now lives in a care home.

"Until entering my care facility, I had always been their primary caregiver; and this despite the fact I was in a wheelchair since 2009, I was able to provide for their needs--both physically and emotionally," Vibert wrote in a blog post soliciting help to find her girls a home.

Vibert said she was forced to hand over her daughters to their father in 2011 but last June he left the country and the children were put in the care of family friends. However, they can no longer keep them, she said.

"It was never supposed to be a permanent arrangement," Vibert wrote.

"I now have less than two weeks to find them a home before having to resort to placing them into the foster system ...

"From what I've been told, if I turn them over to children's services, I will lose my rights as a parent and they will no longer have access to their mother. As things stand, they visit me 3-6 times per week.

"I'm aware that I likely won't have as much access if they are able to find a new family, but with the foster system probably turning their young lives upside down and being forcefully removed from both their guardian and mother's care, they will lose the one remaining anchor of stability that they have."

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Vibert told Global News she's been unsuccessful in getting help from groups such as legal aid and Catholic Social Services. She's facing an impossible dilemma: Find another family to take care of her daughters or put them in the hands of the province.

“It upsets me because they are the sweetest little girls and to see them dumped into a foster system that is giving me options of all-or-nothing is unreasonable," she said.

Vibert said the girls are rarely apart.

Global said its story received hundreds of comments on the Edmonton station's Facebook page, including offers from as far away as New Brunswick to take the girls.

"We know it's far but thanks to computers and Skype now these girls could still see and be in contact with their mother ... my heart truly goes out to this mother," wrote Barb LeBlanc. The publicity helped generate 300,000 visits to Vibert's blog.

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Alberta Child and Family Services told Global it has also received a lot of calls from people offering to help. Spokesman Adam Holm added that foster care isn't the only option to help Vibert and her girls.

“It’s actually enshrined in Alberta law that we take the least intrusive approach, which basically means we do everything we can to ensure the safety and the well-being of a child within their family unit," he said. "And only look at those kids leaving that family unit only when every other option has been exhausted.”

The girls certainly don't want to be parted from their mum. The younger daughter said she hoped they would be able to keep visiting her.

“That I get to hug her, that I get to cuddle her sometimes ... 'cause no matter what, mama will always love us and we will always see her.”