Carly and Connor: Even when you get housing, `there are not simple solutions'
“Today we find out if we get our daughter back,” Carly said, bursting into tears. “It's now or never.”
Carly was 19, and her boyfriend Connor was 20, when Fast met them in 2008. They were trying to meet all the requirements from social services to regain custody of their one-year-old daughter.
Their efforts were complicated by unstable housing, addiction, and several health crises. Connor was schizophrenic and his behaviour could be erratic, and Carly struggled with long bouts of depression. Still, Carly perpetually made lists of what they had to do to get custody, which included:
Go to residential treatment; Find a place to live; find employment; go to food banks and dropin programs; attend meetings with social workers, probation officers, doctors, drug and alcohol counsellors, and housing agencies; do not arrive late for supervised visits with your kids; do not lose your cool in these meetings. Ever.
She quit using drugs several times, but Connor was not as committed to giving up crack. Social services said Carly needed to leave Connor to gain custody of the two young children they now had together, but she loved him.
By 2013, the couple moved into a rental apartment in south Vancouver, with the help of a government program. When Fast visited, Carly greeted her at the door wearing “a large purple fuzzy robe and pair of oversized cartoon character slippers.”
There were framed photos of the couple with their daughters in the bedroom decorated for their kids. Pasta and cereal were tidily arranged in the cupboards, fruit and vegetables filled the refrigerator drawers.
To get their daughters, though, the couple was required to complete individual residential treatment programs. They couldn't do it, even though Carly was drug-free at that point.
“We got the apartment. Got all the stuff in it for our girls to come home. The only thing we didn't do is give up each other,” Carly said.
The last time Fast saw Carly was in 2017, in a different apartment where she lived with her third baby, a boy, and a dog. During this pregnancy Carly did everything social workers asked, including staying away from Connor, who was not the father.
“She informed me with pride that the social worker would soon be closing her son's file,” Fast wrote. “She had even started to hope again that she might regain custody of her other two children as well.”
We got the apartment. Got all the stuff in it for our girls to come home. The only thing we didn't do is give up each other.
She and Carly kept in touch by phone and Facebook messages. Carly said she was in school to become a drug and alcohol counsellor.
“It seemed to be going well,” Fast wrote.
And then the messages abruptly stopped. Despite coming close to achieving her big city dream, Carly died of a drug overdose in 2018.
“There are not simple solutions here, even when people get housing,” Fast said.