Alabama DHR Destroys Another Family: Baby Taken Away Because Young Mom was a Foster Child Kidnapped from Loving Parents

All that Shanley wanted for her 20th birthday on February 22 was to get her son back from DHR, and to no longer be considered a foster child herself. Ashton was born while Shanley was in foster care, and when she was kicked out of her foster home last summer at the age of 19, she was not permitted to take her son with her. Alabama social workers tell her that she cannot get him back at this time because they still consider her a foster child, even though she is legally an adult, living on her own with both a job and an apartment. Shanley is not accused of any kind of neglect or abuse, so it doesn't make sense to her that Walker County Department of Human Resources (DHR) refuses to allow her to have her son with her. Shanley was taken out of the home of her parents at the age of 14 because she got pregnant on the night of April 27, 2011, a date that most in the south will never forget, as 252 people lost their lives in the 62 tornadoes across the state of Alabama. Her parents were accused of parental neglect because they had a house full of neighbors that night and did not prevent their daughter from getting pregnant. Her parents and other family members wanted to raise the baby in a loving home, but Alabama DHR did not allow them to raise the baby, and they lost their 14 year old daughter as well.