We've finally found Elizabeth Amaro's mother, thanks to the diligence of our social workers and donor support, despite the many obstacles threatening to keep mother and daughter apart.
Elizabeth Amaro
How suspicion led to a search
Lira Babies' home received and admitted an abandoned child, Elizabeth Amaro, in Nov. 2020. After being brought in, a woman contacted us about fostering her daughter—she stated her daughter was Elizabeth, the very child she had just admitted into our care. Red flags began to appear from the woman claiming to be her mother, based on the information gathered from the person who brought Elizabeth in.
What piqued our interest was the sudden interest in fostering the very child that she abandoned so soon. Indeed, for us, this created doubt that she might be related to the child.
She had much interest in visiting the same child, re-naming the child, and receiving updates on the child's activities and whereabouts; however, all this was denied to her when suspicion began to set in.
We tried to gather more information about the mysterious woman using basic social work skills, which inevitably helped us trace Elizabeth's biological mother.
Setting out for tracing to find the truth
In March of 2021, the institution officially began to trace Elizabeth's biological family. The home used the information gathered at admission as a starting point to trace the child's origin; the mysterious woman was not initially aware of our suspicion. Upon reaching the supposed location where Elizabeth's biological mother lived, we found it was all a lie based on the information gathered from Elizabeth's admission.
We called the unknown woman for directions, but she refused to direct us. Instead, she informed us that we couldn't get to the home because it was in a "deep area." We insisted, but unfortunately, she ultimately refused.
Not giving up
Frustratingly not having more solid leads of information, we waited for the mystery woman to visit Elizabeth; This time, we had police support. She was asked by us and by police to take us to where her caretakers abandoned Elizabeth. But, again, she still didn't take us to the location, so she was arrested by police and held in jail temporarily.
Finally, in prison, the woman gave us the true story. She wasn't Elizabeth's mother, and she knew her mother instead. Despite coming clean, she warned us that her mother was not traceable due to Covid travel restrictions.
Eventually, we could schedule a time for the woman to look for the mother herself and bring her to us, which she did. Now the home's social worker has gone to carry out a family assessment.
We are currently looking forward to resettling the child with a biological mother in the future. However, reunification will not be without its challenges, as our home's finances are not stable—mainly due to Covid-19, and the mother is still young.
The reality of these situations
We're very fortunate to have social work as a considerable part of our tracing and reunification as we emphasize the benefits of family-based care on child growth and development. It's crucial to have skills to dig out information from the clients and recognize where something is off; this helps the social worker handle the different and sometimes complex cases.
Despite how fortunate we are to have such excellent staff, we still struggle to fund this work as a CCI. Traveling and associated expenses for our fieldwork and social work are never-ending; it's also challenging to facilitate such travels. In addition, there are many expenses while locating a child's biological family, even without involving legal authorities.
This work is so important to us here at Lira Babies Home because we've seen first-hand how harmful it is for a child abandoned by their family. We believe in spreading community-wide sensitization on the roles of a parent to a child and the negative impacts of child abandonment.
In the future
We look forward to the day we can resettle baby Elizabeth with her biological mother. Reunification is enormously positive to a child's growth and development when it is possible.
We are so grateful for having traced Elizabeth's birth mother. For more stories like this, sign up to get updates by email on our website below so that you can be a part of our community that is making history with Lira Babies Home.
Elizabeth's Story Update
View the second update in Elizabeth's Story here: