Help These Children Stay With Their Grandmas and Grandpas

One Midland couple is fighting to free their three grandchildren - two girls and a boy -  from the Florida foster care system, but they’ve been told their house just isn’t big enough. They have been fighting this for more than a year as the kids have been shuffled from one foster home to another with at least one Florida foster home the children were living being investigated for alleged child abuse involving her youngest grandson.

The Spegel's have met every adoption requirement, except for one -- their home does not have enough bedrooms for their three grandchildren.

The children already lost both their parents from whom they were taken because of drug abuse. FAMILY should not be held to the same requirements as strangers on material issues such this.
Transfer to grandparents custody should be automatic as is transfer between parents in a divorce. Absence any of them being unfit, it's a done deal. Had the chidlren given their grandparents the chidlren prior tot hem being tken into state custody, no one would count bedrooms and consider that reason to take the kids away.

But Mary and Dan didn't even know they had three grandchildren, but Mary said she didn't think twice about rescuing them from the Florida foster care system. She has only met the oldest child.
"It's just what you do," she said.

So in order to adopt them, Dan and Mary Spegel have to put an addition on their house.After TV5’s original story aired, the Spegal family has been flooded with phone calls from contractors, plumbers and volunteers wishing to lend a helping hand.

The family has until June 29 to finish the work or their grandchildren could be adopted by someone else.

Anyone wishing to make a cash or check donation can do so by calling 989-837-9757 or making them payable to Caregiving Network, and mailing them to 607 Gordon Street, Midland, Mich. 48640.  "Spegel Adoption" must be designated on all donations to the Caregiving Network. All donations are tax deductible. 

Slideshow: Family’s Home Begins To Take Shape

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And shame on any state for putting such pressure on a family!  It's the size of thir heart not their house that matters!  Tear apart of loving, caring family to provide babies for strangers??  Why? For federal funds for the state?

UPDATE - ANOTHER CASE INVOLVING A BIRTH MOM:

Another set of grandparents has contacted me, after reading about this, with very similar  circumstances.

Marcie Keithley-Roth and her husband also have three grandchildren also in Florida. They are trying for custody of two of the three as there are multiple fathers and grandparents involved.

To complicate matters, the grandkids are Marcie and her and her husband Roger's via the daughter, Jesse, they relinquished for adoption.

Jesse was relinquished 1978. She found her father 200. Roger and Marcie married 2008 and were  reunited as a family on Fathers Day 2008.

After the reunion, documented here, their daughter lived with them for a year before returning to Florida.

Jesse had a FAR less ideal life via adoption: emotional abuse that led her to drugs and onto welfare.  
her adoptive mother convinced her to place two babies for adoption.  CPS has taken the remaining 3 kids and they are in foster care.

Marcie lives in Indiana and asks if anyone has ever heard of birth grandparents obtaining custody?