Inspiring Foster Care Story

“Florida social worker Connie Going had spent a decade struggling to find a loving family for a boy from a broken home – until she recognized that he was meant to be with her all along.

Miss Going, of Clearwater, has had a great track record, successfully matching more than 1,000 foster children with adoptive parents over the years.

But Taylor Diaz was a special case. The son of drug addicts, Taylor entered the foster system in 2003 along with his two sisters.

Early on, a family had adopted all three siblings but ended up returning Taylor, citing his anger issues.

What followed next for the boy was a succession of more than a dozen foster and group homes.

Following her personal mantra that every child is adoptable, Miss Going continued working to find Taylor a new home – and succeeded.

But her triumph was short-lived: the family that took Taylor in returned him a short time later because of his lingering anger problems.

‘I was just so mad because I thought that they weren’t going to keep me,’ Taylor told CBS News’ On the Road. ‘I was just trying to test them.’

Connie Going was beginning to despair, frustrated that no one was willing to look past Taylor’s flaws and recognize his potential.

‘All I could think about was how he was feeling and how he was blaming himself, again,’ she recalled.

And that is when the 50-year-old divorced social worker was struck by the sudden realization that she was meant to be his mother.

Taylor’s adoption was finalized this summer, and the teen moved in with Miss Going and her two biological daughters.
The teenager has continued to grapple with his temper, and even threatened to run away last month, but his adoptive mom let him know in no uncertain terms that she was not going to give up on him.

‘He’d go, “I’m leaving. I hate this,”’ Connie said. ‘And I’d be like, “I’m not sending you away Taylor,”’ she said with a laugh. ‘And he would look over at me, take his backpack off and head back in.’

After their face-off, Taylor and Connie turned a new leaf in their relationship.

‘She knows my worst side, and she still cares about me and still loves me,’ the teen said. ”

Inspiring story of social worker who adopted troubled teen after he spent TEN YEARS bouncing around foster homes

[Daily Mail 9/7/13 by Snejana Farberov]

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