I Tried To Change Foster Care…Here’s What Happened

For years, I've been asking a question that should have a simple answer: Why can't adopted children have access to their own stories?

When my husband and I adopted our children through foster care, we were given medical records...but almost nothing else. No caseworker notes. No placement histories. No stories about their first steps, favorite toys, birthday parties, or the people who cared for them during the first years of their lives.

Those records exist. But families like ours are often unable to access them.

In this episode of Melissa Unfiltered, I share why I decided to stop complaining about the system and do something about it. I take you behind the scenes of creating the Healing Through History Act, working with Illinois lawmakers, testifying before the Senate, and the surprising obstacles we encountered along the way.

Every child deserves to know their story.

And every family deserves the information needed to help them heal.

If you're involved in foster care, adoption, or child advocacy or if you've ever wondered how laws are really made, I hope you'll join the conversation.

And if you're in another state and want to help bring these ideas to your community, I'd love to hear from you.

~ Melissa

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

When you adopt a child through foster care in the state of Illinois, you are given the smallest amount of information about that child. And it usually just pertains to their medical records. Many times parents who are adopting are adopting children who are not newborn babies and they've been in previous foster homes before they came to them. That's not always the case, but many times. When our children came to us, we were literally just given their medical records. And I knew that there was so much more information that told their story. And it's not that this information doesn't exist, it's just that it's behind so much red tape and no one seems to care or think that it's important for these children or their families to have this information. Welcome back to Melissa Unfiltered. I think it's dumb is dead. Everybody watched out that the bomb is lit. I've got that. I've got the bomb is dead. All right. Welcome back, guys. Thank you so much. I've really enjoyed reading all of your comments and just seeing the following that um we've been putting together. I really enjoy messaging back and forth with you. I will say the funniest comments that I've received so far are about sometimes the video quality. I need to explain to you that it's not my producer's fault. Totally my fault. I'm recording this show sometimes using my iPhone, sometimes using my MacBook. I've tried cameras, that was a total disaster. I felt so bad for my guests because the camera that I ordered was absolute trash. I have no idea how this stuff works. But the funniest comments, I had to laugh and agree. Um, so when my producer, when I send him all these clips in different angles and he like shakes his head and goes, Oh my gosh, you clearly have no idea like how to film anything. He's like, I can't do this speed with that speed. I don't know. And these comments came in that were like, Well, was this recorded on a potato? And I was like, I'm so sorry, guys. So if you're listening, just keep listening. Um, this podcast is new and I'm learning, and some of the equipment is super expensive. So I'm deciding, you know, what I'm gonna invest in and what I'm not. Um, but I just thought that was funny before I dive into this topic. So thank you for that funny comment. I think one other person was like, is this from 2000? Like dial up speed? Yeah. So sorry about that. When I record by myself, the quality is a lot better because I use my iPhone, which is new and has better recording um capabilities. But when I'm doing different angles and I don't know about the speeds, um, sorry to my producer Nathan, who I send this all to, and I'm like, best I could do. I don't know what to tell you. Um, okay, so I have a lot of notes here and I've got my laptop today because there was just so much information that I wanted to share with you all. Um I, ever since adopting our kids and just being involved in the foster care and adoption process when we were in Illinois, have realized that there's so much opportunity for growth in terms of creating new laws and working on helping change the system rather than just complain and say the system's broken and it's the caseworkers' fault, it's a judge's fault, it's this fault. Just take it back one layer at a time and try and figure out what's one thing that could change that would make it better. And something for us and our family that we came across was the records pertaining to our children were just uh non existent in our possession. Um, my daughter was four when she came to us, and my son was three. They came together at the same time and they had been in foster care their entire lives. If you listen to a previous episode, I go into our story, um, but they never lived with their biological parents. And when you're in foster care, you have weekly visits from caseworkers, sometimes biweekly. Um, you get phone calls from all these different departments. So there's a lot of notes that exist and a lot of paperwork, or at least they're supposed to be. Um, and I would always ask during the adoption process, why can we not have this information? And even our attorney uh was super frustrated and agreed. She said, This is absolutely ridiculous. You, as their parents, should have everything about their lives. And we just weren't allowed to have this information. I have tried different um lawyers, I've tried contacting DCFS, and I want to share with you the information that we were given. So this is for my son. I don't want to share like his personal data, but like you can see, this is just medical records. And when I say medical records, it's there's a lot of just nonsense in here. It'll just talk about from the time he was born, you know, where he was born, did he get his vaccines, um, you know, going to the doctor, and the doctor will put notes in there. And I should mention, I I read through all of this and I was really just upset to find that um they diagnosed him with a lot of allergies beginning in his life. And then the doctor would ask, you know, the foster parent when they'd bring him in for the visit, um, what's his diet like? And they'd be like, good diet of milk and you know, fruit and vegetables. My son's allergic to milk, so either the doctor wasn't doing their job or the c or the previous foster home, which I think this is more the case, was giving him things that he was allergic to. But this is all we got about my son. This is it. And two photos, okay? There were two photos pertaining to his entire life that were devastating. This is the first photo I was given. Does that look like a good picture to you? No. And I'm just gonna cover this. Was the second photo, okay? He's clearly on the way to a visit, um, food all over him, and just really sad looking. That's all that existed for the first three years of his life in terms of what DCFS is willing to give the adoptive parents. And I was like, oh, I'm sorry. There was this photo when we found out we were um getting him, which is even more sad. He had his hair in a ponytail as he'd never had a haircut, okay? And he was wearing clothes that didn't fit him. He actually came to us wearing 18-month-old clothing at three years old. So that should have been a red flag somewhere. Um and then for my daughter, same thing. Never had a haircut. Trying to cover this up, you guys. I'm sorry, because the internet sucks and people are doing gross things with pictures. Um, here's my daughter wearing clothes that don't fit her. Her straps were like tied, and no toys in sight. This was and then we have some sad baby photos of her where she's literally like not smiling in any photo. What else? This one's particularly sad. This one, you know what? I'm gonna show you her face because this is just so sad to me. Like she's being transported and she does not look happy in any of the photos. And then her medical records as well, which I have right here. Hers were thicker, but it's just because there's a lot of like this is what a baby should eat and shouldn't eat, and just a lot of redundancies in here. Um and then also when we adopted, they added in the doctor visits like that we had taken them to. Um, but there was absolutely no information about the two foster homes. I believe two foster homes. Some of the caseworkers told me that there was more than two foster homes. Some said there was only two. Um my kids just don't remember. They were so little and it was very traumatic for them. They I'm not able to know were their other children living in the home with them. Was it just them? I'm not able to know where they were living. I'm not able to know when they took their first steps. Did they crawl? What their first words were, what was their favorite toy? Did they have a birthday party? Did they go to school? Anything you would want to know, or you as a parent do know about your child, we don't have that information. And again, my daughter was four years old, and we've had her younger sibling since he was born. So we know everything about him. And we were able to fill in the blanks. So when I don't even have pictures to show her about her life, um, she was hanging out with other kids, it's just absolutely ridiculous. So I was like, I need to do something about this. I want to create um a bill. I didn't know much. I still am learning the legislative process. So correct me if I'm wrong in the comments about certain things. I'm not super familiar with how all of it goes. I'm getting familiar as I've been doing it. Um, but it had to start with a bill and get someone to back it and sponsor it. So I was like, yeah, let's let's do this, let's start the process. Um so I reached out to a friend of mine who I'm just gonna keep her information private for now because I don't know, you know, I don't want to get anyone in trouble or have any issues with anything because everyone wants to sue everyone these days, unfortunately. Um, but I reached out to a friend of mine who is in the foster care adoption world and um asked her, you know, I know that she works with different senators and legislators, and she's on a bunch of boards to do with all of this in Illinois. And I said, hey, you know, what do I do? And so she suggested that I draft up um the language. So of course I use AI to help me because I'm just like, I know what I want it to be, but I don't know how it should be drafted. Um, and then I went through and edited, and then I sent it to her, and she made her suggested edits, and I named the bill the Healing Through History Act. Because when I talk to my daughter's therapist and talk to other children who'd been in the foster care system, it's really about healing. And you're not able to heal if there's so many parts of your life that are missing, and you don't really understand why you're reacting to certain things the way that you are. So I decided to name it the Healing Through History Act. And I reached out to someone that I know through at the time I didn't know very well, but I have spoken to her before, and I knew that she had just became a senator in the district that we lived in in Illinois when we lived there. And so I reached out to Senator Darby Hills with uh this proposal and said, Hey, you know, I know that you do a lot for your uh platform is helping families and um helping children in Illinois, which she is so great at um through her charities that she had before entering into the world of politics. And when I reached out to her last year, they were ending session. So um they really don't like to propose something at the end of session because it takes time to go through all the different um processes that it needs to go through. But she said, yes, I'm interested in this. Let me do some digging, have my team do some digging and see if this is any, if this already exists. And they came back and they were like, hey, you know, it seems like you get records or you can get records through this channel and that channel. And I had to then again like explain, no, you only have medical records. Um, you we don't have anything else, and you know, these rec this doesn't exist, or the records exist, but we're not able to access them. And, you know, they just keep saying because of privacy when I'm like they could easily redact, you know, names and addresses. I don't need that, just the information. So she said, um, okay, yeah, let's move forward. And so we started emailing when the next session started. She reached back out, which was awesome. Um, and I got to know her through this process. I just absolutely love Darby. She is an incredible human, so genuine, so uh nice and kind. She reminds me of one of my best friends, Betsy, actually. They're just like genuine souls. Like when you talk to them, you know that that's who they are and they're not fake, which is so hard to find these days. Um, so we started the process again of like, what how do we do this? And um, she was newer into politics, so her team kind of guided along, and her team drafted it into an official bill. So I will read you a little um synopsis here of like what it's about. So the Healing Through History Act requires the Department of Healthcare and Family Services to provide prospective adoptive families no less than 30 days prior to adoption finalization with a complete unredacted copy of child's full case records, including but not limited to all placement histories and foster care home records, all caseworker notes and observations, all educational, psychological, and behavioral reports, all therapy or counseling notes subject to certain federal requirements, and all medical require all medical records in full, including historical records, provides that former father foster youth aged 18 or older are entitled to receive the same information and records at no cost in both physical or digital form. Contains provisions concerning ongoing record access, post-adoption, post-emancipation, the development of department protocols and infrastructure necessary to collect, preserve, and transmit full child records, exemption, and confidentiality protections. And then just says when it would take effect, which they were trying to get it in effect for January of 2026. Um and since we had proposed this, we put in some edits in there to say that it would redact the names of the previous foster homes and their addresses, so to be in compliance with federal and state laws, um, which is totally fine. I mean, I have no problem with my information to help another family had I been a foster family, but I understand if people don't want their name and information out there. Um, so that's fine. So that's what we proposed, and um they drafted the bill. This is the bill, and we went to them and we set up. So I don't know if this was required or I think they were just trying to gain support. We had some Zoom calls with DCFS and their team. They had a team that like works on this stuff and puts things forward. Our first Zoom call before this even went to the state. I was appalled by the language and just the tone of the call. The there was a woman on there who was just very negative and was saying how, well, we can't do this because confidentiality, confidentiality. She just kept saying confidentiality. And then I would rebuttal her and say, Again, we're telling you that we can redact the names, we can redact the address. And she's like, Yeah, but I don't know, that's not gonna work. And then I asked her, Do you have kids? You know, as a mom, can you even imagine not being able to go to your child and be like, you took your first steps on this day, and here's a picture or a video. And she just didn't even care. She just kind of like, whatever. I think these people are just so desensitized. Like, I don't know if they don't have a heart or a soul, but I can't imagine hearing that and saying, Oh my gosh, no, they shouldn't have access. But this lady did not care. They were just really rude. Actually, after we got off the call, um, Darby and I, um, Senator Hills spoke separately, and we were like, what is wrong with these people? And then I was like, I knew I liked you even more because they were just rude and they they couldn't give us reasons. So, what I said to her, I believe wholeheartedly the main reason that DCFS was against this is because if they provide all the records, all the case notes, everything to the adoptive parent, even if they redact the names and addresses, if there was anything that DCFS or the caseworker was doing incorrectly, or um something was reported in the notes and the child wasn't moved, it opens them up to a whole world of potential lawsuits. And I know exactly that that's what they were trying to prevent. And that wasn't the purpose of me wanting to do this. I'm not looking to like, you know, rip open uh mistakes of caseworkers, but certainly if there are mistakes or there's things that are going wrong, you know, those should be fixed and make sure that this doesn't happen again, but they don't want to let people in. And they wouldn't say that part out loud because they can't, because it makes them look bad, like, oh, sorry, we're doing bad things. For example, my children, I actually know who they lived with before me only because my son had horrible eczema and I had to get him some creams when he was young. And I called in a prescription to Walgreens Pharmacy. And when I used his date of birth and name, they had an address listed. And I obviously wrote the address down real quick when they said, Oh, that's not your address. And then I did some digging on the internet, and I was able to figure out where my kids lived, and I was able to match the background of that room that I showed you that horrible photo with a photo on this person's social media. It's crazy. What's out there on the internet, guys? Like, you give me five minutes in a computer, and I'll tell you a lot of information about someone. Um, but I was able to figure it out, and then I did some more digging, and I was able to figure out that she had her felon son, a convicted felon, living in her house with children, which is completely um unacceptable and not allowed. And there was just some more information. So I'm sure that, you know, again, these are some of the reasons that they didn't want this to pass because there's information that they don't want you to know, and it's just easier to say confidentiality. And I even suggested like asking the state to develop an AI tool that would do all this work for them and redact the names. And I swear these people live under a rock because they were like, oh, you can't use AI for that. It's not safe. And I'm like, do you understand that like so many large corporations with way more sensitive data than that use AI on the regular? There are ways to use it safely so that the information can't be breached, but you know, whatever. Let them let them live under a rock. Um, so that was the bill. And let me see here. I want to make sure I give you guys all the information. Okay, so ultimately, once we had all those calls, I was feeling like this is never gonna pass. And then they proposed this other bill. DCFS came forward and said, Hey, um, we have a better idea. We don't like your bill, your bill stinks. Um, we're gonna give you this instead. We're just gonna amend the adoption act and the foster parents' bill of rights, and you'll be totally happy with that, even though we're not putting in anything that you asked for. So it said amends the adoption act, requires the following information to be provided if a child was placed in foster care before adoption, whether the child was in foster care, more than one foster home, and the reason a child was moved, whether the child lived in a foster home during the time of child's placement in the foster home, basic developmental milestones that occurred before adoption, and amends the foster parent law to delete the right of a foster parent timely training to meet hair care needs of the child placed in foster care. What? Like, what of that has to do with anything that we're asking for? Okay, we already can see, you know, this doctor, that doctor, milestones. That's just like someone calls you on the phone and reads you a chart and goes, are they hitting those milestones? Answer yes or no. Checkbox, yes or no. Okay, it's so ridiculous. And then what is this thing about a men's foster parent law to delete the right of a foster parent to timely training to meet the hair care needs of a child? They wrote this in here. I'm gonna find the exact line. Yeah. What like what we weren't talking about hair care. So we don't we don't need training about hair care. I'm we were also confused by that. The emails going back and forth were hilarious in the side conversations. We're like, um, no, you can take this amendment and shove it because that's not what we're asking for. And you're not admitting as to why you won't give us what we're asking for. They just kept dodging our calls. I actually emailed the one woman and um because there was like a whole board of people, there was some kind of group, and I said, Can you provide me the names and email addresses of everyone who was on that call and everyone who's in this group that you guys keep or counsel or something? And she just like never replied to me because she doesn't care. Um, and there's no point in me saying her name. It's just I'm mad about it, clearly. Um, so I figured I'm like, this is done. Like, they're not, this isn't gonna work. We're gonna have to try something new. But in the background, I was calling all these senators, I was working with Darby, we were still moving forward. And it turns out that a lot of senators agreed and said, Oh, this is a great idea. This is a no-brainer. We had no idea that foster parents um and ad and kids who age out couldn't get access to their records. That doesn't make any sense. Like the records exist, they're there. The child deserves to know about their own life. Like, this isn't a secret. Yeah, we all agree. So the bill did end up getting called forward. I'm not really sure how that all happens. Um, but I will have Darby on in a later episode to discuss all about her um kind of side of this and some of the other stuff that's going on in the background. And I should say, um, I should have mentioned this in the beginning. The reason I'm talking about this right now and why this is urgent and important right now is sessions on break for the summer, and then it starts back up. So now's the time when you have to be contacting people, making connections, and working towards what's going to happen in next session. If you wait until the session starts, a lot of times it's too late, especially for something this large. So I would really like to connect with senators and representatives in other states. So if you're someone who's listening who knows someone in another state, I haven't connected with anyone in Tennessee yet or any of the states, let me know. Please reach out to me because I really want to get this going. I think this should be something that all 50 states take on if they're not already doing it. There's just, it's so hard to figure out what's going on in each state because the laws are different. And I do know that there has been a big push, regardless of what political side you're on, there has been a big push from the First Lady at the White House this um term to help with a lot of things for children in the foster care system. So I think that's really good. There's been a lot of other bills and a lot of other things that are happening that are great improvements for the foster care and adoptive system. So anyway, um going back, so our bill gets called and I'm like, oh my gosh, yay, okay, what happens now? So the bill had the first reading. Um, this was in February of this year. And I'm like, what are the next steps? It merely has to be read several times, and then it gets voted on each time, and then it gets voted on at the end and then passes and then goes to the House. So it gets read, total support from everyone. I keep calling senators to make sure that they're aware of the bill and emailing them. And I will say it is such a nice process when you call these senators' offices. All the staff is really nice and friendly on both sides. Um, whether that's just what they're told to do or whether they care, I thought it was really nice and a really easy process to call and talk to people about this. Um, so then I get an email from someone on Senator Hill's team, and they said, if we would love for you to read your testimony at our next hearing on this and share with everyone, you know, why you did this. We think that'll really help the bill and be very powerful. So, of course, I was like, Yes, let me make this work. And I happened to be flying through Illinois from Tennessee to uh meet my mom and then fly to Dallas to go to my other sister's um baby shower. When this all kind of timed out, I just extended my trip flying back to Illinois and was able to drive to Springfield and read my testimony. So, right now I would really love to share that video with all of you and just kind of let you see the emotion behind um why I did this.

SPEAKER_00 24:27

Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the committee, for listening today and allowing me to speak about Senate Bill 2895, the Healing Through History Act. Senate Bill 2895 is something that's very simple but very important. Making sure children and families have access to the truth about a child's history before an adoption is finalized. This legislation came to me after hearing from my constituent who adopted three children from Illinois' foster care system. She was able to access information about the biological parents, but she could not obtain any records detailing where her children had lived in foster care, what they had experienced, or any of the trauma that they had endured. She shared how difficult it was to help her children heal without understanding their full story. Adoptive parents are opening their homes and their hearts. They understand that children who come from foster care may have experienced trauma. They are ready and willing to provide love and stability, but they cannot fully support a child's healing if they do not have access to the child's complete case history. I want to thank the Chicago Bar Association, the Public Guardians, DCFS, and the many experts who work closely with my office to thoughtfully craft this legislation. Their collaboration has been invaluable. I also want to thank Melissa for her tireless advocacy on this issue and for traveling to Springfield today to testify. Her lived experience has helped shape this legislation in a very meaningful way. Members, this bill is about transparency, healing, and giving children and families the information they need so they can move forward together.

SPEAKER_01 26:42

Thank you so much, Senator Hills. My name is Melissa Cam Kunavan. I'm an adopted mother and the constituent advocate who worked with Senator Hills to bring this bill forward. I'm here because my children deserve to know who they were before they became mine, not because I would have chosen differently had I had more information. As a parent, I'm sorry. As a parent, one of the most basic things I'm supposed to give my child is their story. Their first years, their memories, their milestones, but I can't. I can't tell them their first word. I can't tell them when they took their first steps. I can't tell them what toys they loved, what made them laugh, who tucked them in at night, or whether anyone celebrated their birthday. I don't know who they lived with. I don't know what they experienced, and I don't know what happened to them. My children have no memories of those early years, and the system that witnessed those years holds the only record to their lives, yet families and former foster youth are denied access to it. This is not about curiosity. It is not about digging for faults. It's about a child's right to their own history. Thank you. Research consistently shows that children who understand their story, even the painful parts, demonstrate stronger identity formation, greater emotional resilience, and lower rates of anxiety and depression. Studies on narrative identity and trauma have found that having access to truthful personal history is directly linked to improved mental health outcomes. Former foster youth are significantly more likely to experience depression, PTSD, and identity instability. When we withhold their own records from them, we are compounding that harm. Children from foster care already lose their first family, their first home, and often their name. They should not also lose their story. This bill simply says that the records already created about a child's life should be accessible to the people raising them and to the youth themselves when they become adults. It does not change who families adopt. It does not expose children to harm. It does not remove confidentiality protection for others. It allows a child to know the truth of their own life because you cannot heal what you are not allowed to know. You cannot make sense of your life if the first chapters are locked away. Most of us in this room could go home tonight and ask our parents or other family members about our first words, our first home, our baby pictures, and our stories. Children who come through the foster care system cannot. I'm asking for your support so that no child has to grow up wondering what happened to them simply because the state refuses to share the truth of their own life. This is about dignity. This is about healing. This is about giving children back the story that already belongs to them. This is a basic human right and something most people are able to take for granted. This bill does not create new information. It simply returns a child's own history back to them. I respectfully ask for your support and thank you so much. All right. As you can see, I got super choked up in reading that and I felt so stupid. I don't know why I felt stupid, but I just did, because usually public speaking is a strength of mine. But when it comes to talking about my children or something that's just so um important to me like that, I can't help but get emotional. And so I was so grateful to have Darby sitting next to me, but that was really hard to read and get through. Um, but they were all so kind and so nice after I read that and um came and spoke with me afterwards, and we're like, um, I know one of the senators, uh like Keisha Collins, she spoke about her uh experience with foster care and said that this was so important to her. And there were several other senators, and then DCFS obviously got on board because they couldn't say why they weren't on board. Um, so that was really powerful. So the bill did then go on to the final reading. I was not there for that. Um, and Senator Hills gave some really nice words around it, and it passed unanimously with full bipartisan support in the Senate right away. And almost every single senator that was involved added themselves as a co-sponsor. That is incredible and pretty unheard of for the first time around for a bill. It was the first bill I had ever worked on. I was blown away. I'm like, oh my gosh, yes, like this is looking good. This is gonna happen. We were celebrating. Um, then moved to the House, and Senator Hills told me that another senator who was actually um a Democrat, Senator Hills is a Republican, really wanted to pick it up because she appreciated the bipartisan um support in the bill and she really wanted to represent this. And so she said, yes, let's do it. And it gave had its first reading and it got sent to the rules committee, and then it went out of rules and got sent to the executive committee. And again, it went right back to rules. And I was so confused. I'm like, what's going on? What is this rules committee? I'm calling representatives, and I will say calling representatives was different than calling senators' offices. I really didn't get a lot of response back. Only two of them had their um, I don't know if they're assistants or person who kind of like manages their calls. Only two of them reached back out and it was very um plain answers. They weren't really addressing anything. And we reached, I called the governor's office. I was reaching out to people who I knew who had the director of DCFS's information. I was um Senator Hills was reaching out to everyone, and ultimately she called me and said that she felt like this bill was being blocked because of politics. Um, she's up for election in November, and she felt like there was people blocking this on purpose because they didn't want her to look good because there's someone else who they want in her seat. And I totally believe her because that kind of stuff happens all the time, unfortunately. And it's really ridiculous because it's like, who's caring about the kids here? Like, we can't let Senator Hills have this win because you want this other person to be in office, so you're gonna let kids suffer and not have access to their records that already exist. Like, that's ridiculous. I also think this is totally speculation. I have no proof of this, I have not done any digging on this, but I also think there could be a part of this where DCFS really did not want this to happen. And when they when it happened without them, they were probably nervous. And maybe they have more connections in the House than they did in the Senate on this, and they it never got voted on, so no one voted no, but maybe they pulled some strings to get it sent to rules because typically uh it gets sent to rules to die, and then the bill is done, and you have to start all over from scratch, and it's kind of frustrating because this should have been done. Um, but yeah, I do want to clarify it didn't get voted on, so it didn't get voted no, which is you know super upsetting because no one got the chance. And I was calling to try and get it moved to the proper committees, and it was session ended, and there's nothing um that we could do. It just went and died. So again, that's just my speculation, but I really think that you know they don't want their dirty secrets getting out. And if there was just that one in my case, imagine how many others there are. I know there's a lot of scrutiny around them, but they're never gonna fix the problems if they're not willing to, you know, let all the skeletons out of the closet. Um, but ultimately this just was really hard for me. And my daughter is so sweet. My daughter is almost 12 years old, and we're very open with our kids about everything. And she knew that I was working on this. My son, who's 10, is just like typical boy. He's like, whatever, mom, just running around. And my younger son, he's only six, so um, you know, he thinks it's cool to be working on stuff, but he doesn't really grasp what it is. But my daughter uh was really disappointed to hear about this because there's so much that she doesn't remember and she wants to know about her life. And I just it breaks my heart that I can't give her those answers. And, you know, I pray with her and tell her that, you know, don't worry, we will get this information for you and we will find out um, you know, more about your life and who who you were with and some of that information. But the fact that politics gets in the way of this is just disgusting, and we should be doing better. And I hope more people want to help with this. I have some really great ideas for some other bills and laws that I would like to see passed that I think could make a huge difference in the foster care world and really help um children who've been in foster care um just heal. That's ultimately what it's about. If you've been through any type of trauma, healing is really what you need to move on with your life and just have a really fulfilling, uh, successful life. So I appreciate all of you for listening to this. And again, please reach out to me. You can comment on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, um, you can stream this anywhere, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and reach out to me, send me a message, send me an email, and I would love to, you know, meet with some people and talk about how we can get this ball rolling in a few other states this year and see this passed. If Illinois is not going to be the one, you know what? Illinois can keep going down in a dumpster fire. They're doing a great job all on their own. I'm happy to get this passed in other states. They could have led with this and had a big win, but they are choosing politics, and that's not the answer. So thank you again, everyone. And like, comment, subscribe. Tune in every Tuesday for a new episode. Thanks. Bye. Melissa Unfiltered is a Delac Media Group production.