S2E15: Fancy Prison for a Child
Fancy Prison is Tina's first book. It's a memoir and plea to advocate for innocent children, all in one. Tina thinks ALL children are beautiful and deserve the utmost of our attention, energy and care. It comes on the heels of, yet another, multi million dollar, wasteful government election and Canadians have had enough. Rather than wallow in anger over government's stupidity, Tina's book is a call to action to solidify what is already so positive and so loving about our country and move forward as one, with our children firmly by our sides.
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google Fancy Prison by Tina Fumo
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Podcast Transcript:
[00:00:00] Damaged Parents: Welcome back to the relatively damaged podcast by damaged parents. We're dedicated, fancy, strong people come to learn. Maybe just, maybe we're all a little bit damaged. Someone once told me it's safe to assume. 50% of the people I meet are struggling and feel wounded in some way. I would venture to say it's closer to 100%. Every one of us is either currently struggling or has struggled with something that made us feel less than like we aren't good enough. We aren't capable. We are relatively damaged. And that's what we're here to talk about.
In my ongoing investigation of the damaged self, I want to better understand how others view their own challenges. Maybe it's not so much about the damage, maybe it's about our perception and how we deal with it. There is a deep commitment to becoming who we are meant to be. How do you do that? How do you find balance after a damaging experience?
My hero is the damaged person. The one who faces seemingly insurmountable odds to come out on the other side, whole those who stared directly into the face of adversity with unyielding persistence to discover their purpose. These are the people who inspire me to be more fully me. Not in spite of my trials, but because of them. Let's hear from another hero.
Today's topic includes sensitive material, which may not be appropriate for children. This podcast is provided for informational purposes only in this not intended as advice. The opinions expressed here are strictly those of the person that gave them.
Today we're going to talk with Tina Fumo she has many roles in her life grandmother mother advocate and more we'll talk about how her daughter had her child taken from her by the authorities without good cause and how they found health and healing let's talk
Welcome back to Relatively Damaged by Damaged Parents. Today, we have Tina Fumo with us. She is the author of Fancy Prison: Calling BS on the Child Welfare Industry. Welcome to the show.
[00:02:09] Tina Fumo: Good morning, Angela, how are you doing today?
[00:02:12] Damaged Parents: Fantastic. We're just all, we already started with a little bit of a conversation before the recording and gosh, what an interesting story you have.
[00:02:22] Tina Fumo: Well, interesting. I guess that's, definitely a word for it. When I saw the name of your podcast here you know, having damaged in it, it definitely caught my attention because of how we dealt with the system in British Columbia, in Canada. When dealing with child protection and they, when they took my two-week old grandbaby away from us, we were definitely damaged.
So we had that. I know when I saw that word, it kind of hit the nail on the head.
[00:02:57] Damaged Parents: Yeah, it does feel like damage and it stays with you when you may have overcome it.
[00:03:05] Tina Fumo: We healed. Yes, we did. It was very traumatic when they took the baby and we got her back after 27 days, which is a relatively short time when you're dealing with the system. But trust me, it was the longest 27 days of our life, but it didn't just stop there because physically we were able to get our baby back after 27 days, but they kept dragging it.
on and dragging her on and finding these BS reasons to keep perpetuating it, keep hauling us back into court.
And then finally, by the grace of God, when the baby was seven months old, we finally got a judge who had half a brain and he just started asking questions and really that's all that needed to be done. It was like, there was just so much BS and going on in this kangaroo court that they were creating but it took a judge to finally put an end to it because of the way they were exploiting the court procedures and just trying to drag it out unnecessarily.
Yeah, it was pretty frustrating.
[00:04:10] Damaged Parents: So I bet there was some panic in there initially.
[00:04:13] Tina Fumo: Oh. definitely. it took my, daughter many years to finally talk about that moment when they announced they were taking the baby, because of course her and I had different reactions because we're two different people. Her being the mom and me being the grandma.
[00:04:31] Damaged Parents: And were you living together at the time?
[00:04:33] Tina Fumo: No, we had to end up living together as part of the court orders. But no, we actually, we lived in separate provinces. I live in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and she was living in my grandbaby, was born in a small town in British Columbia, which is the neighboring province. I don't mention which town it is because it actually isn't really relevant to the story.
This could be happening. Anywhere in Canada. The problem with a lot of small towns I find is that everybody knows everybody else's business and they exploit gossip and it can be very hurtful. So Yeah.
I mean, in that regard, small towns can be a bit of a nightmare when you're just trying to carve out some autonomy for yourself.
And I know that's what my daughter was trying to do. She was just trying to do the best that she could. with becoming a mom. And to me, housing was the big issue. It's like, well, why are you making all of this? My daughter is a danger to her child. She's not She needs better housing, but ironically enough, that was the one thing that they signed off on.
I'm not like you gotta be kidding me like this, place is disgusting. And if this is your standard of. Okay housing, then that's like red flag, right there. There is something wrong with the system. If you're actually, you know, cause I'm the grandma and I'm like, there's no way in hell my grandbaby's growing up in this house.
so that's why I dropped my life to go there. And, my number one priority was to help my daughter just get into better housing.
[00:06:05] Damaged Parents: And so it wasn't just the housing, I'm assuming, I mean, you were in the system.
[00:06:11] Tina Fumo: Well, no, they took no, they took the baby. So we had to deal with the system. Fortunately prior to this happening, I was never in the system.
So I was absolutely blindsided with dealing with the social workers, the way that I had to. In fact, I probably thought like, most people thought that, oh, they're here to help.
No, like I saw no evidence of that and I can't speak for every single case. I can only talk about our case with 100% accuracy. But if anything, I saw social workers working against us, not working with the family. Yeah one policy that they have is they take the child as a last resort. No, they no I think that's actually the first thing that they did.
And then they intentionally caused that trauma and then watch us kind of pick up the pieces from there.
[00:07:01] Damaged Parents: So they came in and they didn't ask questions. I mean, they just, were they in the baby's life day one or did they just come in and it was like, we don't like this. We're taking the baby right now.
[00:07:13] Tina Fumo: No, no, it was what the, they do have to follow or at least go through the motions of following policies and procedures, which eventually they don't do anyway. But what had happened was, and where we can only speculate because I don't think they're very forthwith about the reasons for coming in and getting involved.
All those, they seem to pontificate as their power to take the child and they use that as a major intimidation factor, but we think that what happened was somebody called in and complained that my daughter was a meth head. And when she was maybe about seven or eight months pregnant, we're guessing we're not, again, they're not very clear about
why they're involved because come Friday afternoon. And when you read my book, you start to realize that yeah, Friday afternoon it seems to be when they'll insert. Oh, okay now here's another reason. Okay. Oh wait. Now Friday afternoon, here we go. Here's another reason why we're going back to court kind of thing.
Right? So, they just. The reasons were very fluid. And I think they do that on purpose to keep it vague so that they can keep changing the reasons and keep prolonging the, hell that we went through. So the initial call was we think that someone called to say, my daughter was a meth head but they had evidence.
They went and coerced a signature out of her to get urine samples from her pregnancy. And they came back clean after the baby was born umbilical cord samples and those came back clean. and then I arrived and I'm like, why aren't we still in court? I mean, you've got evidence, plus the fact that my daughter is telling you, telling you that I don't use meth I never have, I never will like that.
And you've got the evidence. So when I got there, they had sent the placenta samples out to a lab for testing and tried planting those seeds of doubt in me. So. I would turn around and start fighting with my daughter, which didn't happen because I was just really confused. So and fortunately, , because I was just so confused, I was very quiet, so I didn't start fighting with my daughter.
I didn't start fighting with the social workers. My fight with them came later and it was silent. It was like in my head, I'm like, you just wait to see what I'm going to do to you people. And that's good because if you fight with them out loud, then they'll go, aha. You're not stable and they're right on their Clippy board.
that you're an unstable Grammy or something like that. Yeah. So , it was very unfair and it was very one-sided. You know how they went about it?
[00:09:46] Damaged Parents: So, I mean, and then at 27 days to have a baby taken away, I mean, it seems like by 27 days they had this evidence.
[00:09:56] Tina Fumo: No, there's still never had the evidence
[00:09:58] Damaged Parents: I mean, they had the evidence that she was clean,
[00:10:00] Tina Fumo: They had the evidence from the very beginning. Yeah. They just kept choosing to push their agenda.
[00:10:06] Damaged Parents: oh, so it's like confirmation bias. They were trying to confirm what they believed
that she was that.
[00:10:14] Tina Fumo: Yeah. I guess that's a good way of putting it. I've never heard that before, but confirmation bias is probably what they were trying to do and also something that happened in, so this happened in 2017. I explained the timeline a little bit more in my book because of the detailed.
What happened in 2017? My grandbaby was born in February. she was taken two weeks later in March, but then we finally didn't get this judge, a judge who was able to end it until September. So the book kind of goes through this timeline of what we went through in that time. Yes, we were broken, but we healed from it.
And you know, we were talking, I think before we started recording about how I have my ritual morning coffee and like how important that is for me. But one of the things that happened was we had to serve out. These court orders. So I took temporary custody of my granddaughter, which was fine, and also signed a supervision order over my daughter, which meant I couldn't leave her alone with her baby.
So it was extremely humiliating for my daughter. It was very expensive because we had to find another place to live. The place that my husband and I live in it doesn't allow children. And these court orders had to be served out for three months. And when we found this other place to live, my daughter and I were human, we gone on each other's nerves, but one saving grace was that we have different schedules.
So my daughter tends to be a bit of a night owl. Like she'd be piddling around cleaning the kitchen, sorority mall laundry till midnight, one in the morning. And then she'd go to sleep and me I was crushed by nine because I was emotionally exhausted, financially stressed. We were just going through this whole ordeal that I, just did not understand what the heck they were doing.
And so I would get up very early in the morning, because I had gone to sleep at eight or nine at night. And I would get up before the sun so I'd be in the kitchen back to my coffee. So it'd be in the kitchen, get my coffee on. Then I'd creep into my daughter's bedroom. Pick up the bassinet with my grandbaby, bring it out to the living room.
And we had no furniture too. Cause we had to like get this place ready on the fly. So. I, sat in the one little chair, sipping my coffee, watching the sun come up and watching my granddaughter sleep. She was just 2, 3, 4 months old, during that time. And it, to me, if there's a definition of heaven on earth, that would be it.
Now those moments will never happen again. But that experience not having on earth for me was something that was facilitated. It was something good that came out of the routine that we had to, establish for ourselves to endure this, process. Yeah. If that makes any sense at all yeah.
[00:13:02] Damaged Parents: Right. I think what I'm hearing you say is that even , during this trauma, you were able to find joy and you were able to have that heaven on earth. I'm thinking also because of what you said, you know, my daughter and I, we get on each others, nerves, that's normal. Then also, maybe there was some fear about even getting on each other's nerves.
Like, Oh my gosh, if we get on each others nerves, then there might be another problem. And another, you know, like, if we show that to, or they see it.
[00:13:31] Tina Fumo: Yeah. I think that we had to be very careful not to show that, so getting on each other's nerves that I think I came later when we were serving out the court orders when we were in front of the social workers. And again, they'd be there with their Clippy boards and analyzing us with basically, flashlights up our arses kind of thing.
We, we held it together. I'm very, very proud of my daughter. And in that moment when they took the baby and I described that it's chapter one, so I got right to it.
the fact that my daughter did not bolt from that room with her baby is just the best thing that she could have done because I think that's what they were expecting her to do.
And then they go, so as soon as you make that mistake, they facilitated us trying to make that mistake. We unfortunately, we didn't do it, but then when you make the mistake, they go, oh, whoa. you're not stable when it's ridiculous. It's actually kind of a normal reaction to be confused, to be traumatized, to, grab your baby and run kind of thing.
Right.
[00:14:34] Damaged Parents: Well, yeah, you're terrified and
[00:14:37] Tina Fumo: it is.
[00:14:37] Damaged Parents: supposed to be protecting this child. It's not like you wanted, you know, and there was nothing to say that she was behaving in the way that they alleged she had been behaving. So
[00:14:49] Tina Fumo: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
[00:14:51] Damaged Parents: and the judgment, I would think just even sitting in a place where I'm purposeful, I don't like that when I know I'm purposefully being judged.
I don't like being judged anyway, who does?
Right.
[00:15:01] Tina Fumo: Yeah, well Don't get caught in child protection because that seemed to be, and it was just, they were judging me too, like trying to make me feel like it was my fault when it's like, ah, no, it's not my fault. My daughter made mistakes. So what, , you know, and it's just do you expect people to be perfect parents from day one?
I think it's, you're taking the baby when she's two weeks old, you haven't even given my daughter a chance. And your, the social workers, your supposed to be working in. So in BC, it's MCFD. So Ministry of Child and Family Development, hello development, Like, this is a skill that can be learned. Parenting is a skill that can be learned.
It doesn't happen overnight. It happens over time. And the skills that you learn to parent one child are slightly different than, how you have to adjust the skills to parent for another child. I only had the one child, but.
, even now my granddaughter. We, get to visit her quite regularly and I have to use different skills with her.
Then when I, parenting my daughter growing up, because she's a different person,
[00:15:59] Damaged Parents: Yeah. And like you were saying, it sounds like those skills are learned over time.
And
[00:16:05] Tina Fumo: Yeah. the key word there is that they're learned. Okay. You don't inherently know how to be a parent and over time when you learn these skills. I mean, even as a parent, you're sort of second guessing, oh, am I doing the right thing or whatever? But I think as long as you try and the next best step that you make is always in the best interest of the child.
Always what's the next right thing to do your children see you just keep going and keep trying your best. And that's how they learn coping skills. And I think in this day and age, Oh, I don't know if I should make a blanket statement, but I don't know are a lot of kids missing coping skills these days.
Is that why so many of them are reaching for drugs? I don't know., I don't have the answers. I just hope with my book and criticizing the system to the extent that I did. We need to start asking questions. I mean, this is just ridiculous, the way what we had to go through.
[00:16:58] Damaged Parents: Well, yeah. And how do we teach The coping skills. , , I mean, let's think about it this way. If we've got parents outside of both parents, outside of the household working 40 hours a week, , then the children are being raised by like daycares or, other people or schools and where in that curriculum is their emotional intelligence.
[00:17:19] Tina Fumo: Yeah, I don't know. I don't quite know the context of that's sort of a whole societal thing. I think, you know, obviously lots of parents need and rely on that. So I'm not gonna say it's a bad thing because I don't want any of your listeners to feel like, oh my goodness. You know, But I think that I know one of the happiest times in my life was when I was on maternity leave and not having to juggle a baby and work full time kind of thing I know in my life, well, after my baby was born and I had to go back to work, that was the busiest time of my life, sort of juggling that day job and then coming home.
And then oh nightshift, you know, taking care of, so people rely on. Daycare and afterschool care and stuff, as long as their children are safe, but yes, there's definitely a lot that a family needs to fulfill for a child emotionally.
[00:18:09] Damaged Parents: Yeah. And so just back to uh, your case that we're talking about when , the protective services came out and took the baby and then you found yourself in court for many months. I mean, it sounds like it was a very slow process and it was just kept getting dragged out more and more.
[00:18:26] Tina Fumo: Yes.
[00:18:27] Damaged Parents: And in any way, did that feel like I, cause I hear you say it felt like molasses or I think that was the word you used and then in any way, Did you see it as them really trying to get to the bottom of it? Or was it not at all?
[00:18:43] Tina Fumo: No, not at all. No, The first of all, there was nothing. There was nothing to get to the bottom of, I think and I'm going to rephrase what you just said. The only thing that happened fast was how quickly they pass judgment on my daughter, investigated the case with no objectivity at all and took the baby.
That's the only thing that happened as far as. It did after that, once you get holed into court, that's when they basically coast. And that's when things go as slow as molasses. In our case, because I was there and Forced the issue with the social workers. It's like, no, I'm not going anywhere. And I demanded to see my granddaughter.
So what happened was every single day we were, we would be there for visits. I remember the second that there was any kind of miscommunication or confusion. I would park my butt in their office with a book and start reading. And I was not going anywhere until someone came out and acknowledged me And, spoke to me. So, because I think that they just rely so much on confusion and that's how they're able to perpetuate this nightmare for, you know, months that turn into years. And again, a lot of cases get dragged out for months that turned into years and the parents just don't get their children back.
[00:20:02] Damaged Parents: Well, and it sounds like you had to invest a tremendous amount of time and energy
[00:20:06] Tina Fumo: And money. Yeah. Well, At one point, I think I was paying for three residences. I was still contributing to the mortgage here with my husband. Eventually he had to, just carry that by himself because I just couldn't do everything. Oh, and
then I was paying for hotels in this town and we had to set up the third residents to serve out , the TCO, the temporary custody order and the supervision order, which which ran concurrently.
Yeah. Yeah. it was a very costly, yeah.
[00:20:33] Damaged Parents: You spoke earlier to the heaven on earth with your granddaughter. , what were some other ways that you maintained your hope during this process?
[00:20:41] Tina Fumo: We attended church regularly. And. , it was very proud every Sunday morning. And like I said, my daughter, she's a night owl, so some Sunday mornings it's like, come on, come on. Let's go. Let's go. Don't be late for church often. We were, but, oh, well, people are pretty forgiving when you're holding this beautiful little baby.
But so yeah, that definitely was a routine that was important to me. And I still seek spiritual guidance and, just that routine of going to church. And eventually the congregation, of course they prayed for us which, you know, may or may not have had something to do with the fact that in the end we got the judge that we wanted.
So, yeah. Thank you. Thank you everyone. But you know, we have family, my mom, my mom would be like, yeah, I pray when, cause she's older now. She doesn't really get out very much, but I pray when I'm ironing you know That's all you need.
[00:21:34] Damaged Parents: That's awesome. Now, what were some things you did on a day-to-day basis to keep that hope? Because you're going to church once a week. I mean, I would think it'd be really easy to just really feel well. I mean, you guys were victims of the situation,
[00:21:49] Tina Fumo: Well, there were certainly days where it was just, because I wasn't able to work. There were certainly days where I'm like, what is it like? And I would just be sitting there unable to do anything. And it was pretty frustrating for me. Writing helped too. So I would read a lot, which was fine. Cause I'm a big reader.
But then writing out a lot of my frustration and it was raw. Like I, there was a letter that I wrote to MCFD, basically calling BS. And it was a lot my book, when it did come out this year, there was a lot more polished. I mean, if you want raw emotion and go back and read that letter, I think I've got it posted on
One of my websites but writing definitely helped sort of get that emotion out and onto paper and other, but yeah, I think for the most part, there was just more because we had her with us. There was just more good than bad. There was just more joy day-to-day and as each day went on by, we just got stronger and stronger and stronger.
We'd have peaks of stress in there any time winky face Kathy would call us or an impending court date was coming up, then we'd have points of high stress. but.
for the most part, it was, we were able to maintain that balance, keep it even keel, and build up our strength so that when one of these high stressful points came, that we were able to deal with it a little bit better.
Yeah.
[00:23:11] Damaged Parents: So now that you've been able to write a book and when that was published, how did that make you feel about. I can affect this change or where did you find that courage? Actually, that was probably a better question. Where did you find the courage to stand up and say, Hey, there is definitely a problem in the system and we need to find a way to fix it.
[00:23:30] Tina Fumo: Well, the courage was always there. I think just not listening to what the social workers were trying to feed me about my daughter. Like she's my kid. Okay. I think I know my kid a little bit better than you've been involved in her life. What six weeks I've taken care of her since she was the minute she was born, I carried her.
So that courage was always there. And I think it, it comes inherently and every single parent, every single day, has a little bit of courage, you know, when you're raising children in this world, the book came about. I think what happened was I want to publishing prize. so the book probably was always in my head and, in little bits and pieces of writing here and there, but when I won that publishing prize, I think that kind of went okay.
Wow. So. This is what I've got this already. Now this is the goal now, and that was last year. So it took about a year, To write the book and give me like a sense of closure. Like for example, verbally, if I would say to people. Oh, my daughter dealt with this system, blah, blah, blah.
People's eyes would just glaze over. And they wouldn't listen because ohh, well, they must've had their reasons, but I don't do that anymore. It's like, Nope, , because people just judge by their assumptions and no, I put it all out in my book. My daughter's not perfect. I even put in there, like there, she made mistakes.
But this is what happened to us. So I stuck to facts. I stuck to the truth. I let the reader come to their own conclusion. It's not a book written to trust this social worker /that social worker, cause there's lots of great social workers who do different areas of how community work and helping homeless with young families.
In our particular situation with the child welfare system. I have a lot of criticism with the four social workers that we were dealing with because they were only hearing what they wanted to hear and they just weren't listening To us and particularly me, because one of their policies is that they're supposed to automatically automatically children go to next of kin.
I was right there. I have no criminal record, no drugs, no alcohol, nothing. Absolutely. No reason that my granddaughter shouldn't have gone to me instead of with strangers in foster care, they just chose to ignore. They chose not to follow their own policies. Plus they're investigating me. It's like You're investigating me because I'm a grandma.
Like I haven't done anything wrong here and don't, you need a reason to investigate someone like it's just, so I think that people need to pay attention to this because it can happen to anyone if they have no, if they can go and investigate somewhere for, with absolutely no reason at all, like this hell can happen to anybody.
It's not fair.
[00:26:14] Damaged Parents: Yeah. I mean, so what are some things that people can do if they not just in your situation, but maybe they hear your story and they want to help, or do they need, I don't know what to do in British Columbia. Right? I know here it would be write your legislature or do this, or what can people do to say, we might want to look at this.
I mean, do they have advisory boards people can apply to, to, help make those changes?
[00:26:39] Tina Fumo: Yeah, that's a really good question. I don't know if I can answer it. I think that it would have to be a multi-pronged approach. A couple of weeks ago, I had a very heated conversation with a coworker and she worked in the government system. And so she saw a lot of these families and some of their faults and so our heated conversation was around the fact that she felt that the changes
have to come within the system. And I disagreed with her. I said, no, I think change has to come from the outside, putting pressure on government, putting pressure on these bodies to make the changes that are necessary. But it's a very complicated situation with child protective services.
And I think any solutions are going to be complicated. I think right now we need to ask questions and start asking the right questions and not. accept lip service for answers. no, I'm sorry. You didn't answer the question. No. What about this? And this doesn't make any sense and hold them accountable.
I mean, there are certain examples I use in my book where there's just no accountability at all. And I think, and I highly speculate in our case that. If you went and asked those social workers now, if they would still do what they did knowing now what they didn't know then, cause they didn't know. I would stay with my daughter every step of the way.
They didn't know. I had some resources, not a lot, but fortunately it was enough to finally get them out of our lives. And unfortunately get a judge who ruled in our favor. my train of thought anyway,
[00:28:24] Damaged Parents: I think your answer is , I'm not sure. And we have to ask a lot of questions
[00:28:28] Tina Fumo: Yes and have pushed through some uncomfortable conversations, because these are not conversations. People like to have about children dying in foster care. I mean, actually in my book, I don't know if you can, see the cover of my book here is there's a little baby on the cover.
Well,
I did not find out about this story until.
A couple of years after our ordeal. So the Tina I am now is not the same Tina back in 2017. This is now the new Tina who asked his questions, who doesn't take what the government says. I take it with a grain of salt. Now I don't always trust what they're doing or what they're saying. So this baby, it's a long story and , I, get into it more in my book.
I dedicate a chapter to her. But if I start getting into now, I will start crying. But basically she was taken from her mom. Her mom was a single mom and put into foster care with a stranger and six days in foster care, she died. She was dead. She went from being a healthy 19 pound baby. And a week later when she died, they did the autopsy.
She was weighed 13 pounds. So I asked questions in my book because this is, every parent's nightmare. Like nightmare. How can this happen? That the social workers came into her home, took her baby a week later, the child was dead.
is this even Canada, like seriously?
[00:29:56] Damaged Parents: Yeah. So it sounds like, I mean, if you're going to get. You know, Three tips and tools for parents in this situation. It sounds like the first one is
[00:30:04] Tina Fumo: Shut up. Yeah, if they're in this situation, what if you mean if a social workers knocking on your door? Yeah, shut up. Shut up. Don't talk. Okay. because. They operate so much in the gray areas that parents are not actually afforded their rights or any, right to a lawyer.
So in your head, say to yourself, you have the right to remain silent and you have the right to a lawyer. So try not to speak because they're going to take your words. I found they would take my words. And then lo and behold, they ended up on these documents in court, out of context. And that's not at all what I meant when I said it.
And it's not true, but you know, it gets in front of a judge. So yeah. Be quiet, get a lawyer. And this is the hardest thing to do. And it's something I wish I could have done more, but just be calm, just be calm because I think when they come in and they're throwing around their power and their intimidation and whatever, they're expecting a reaction from you and
your reaction is under a microscope there, oh, wait. Grammy was unstable. Cause she did this. And so you know, if I would go back and, talk to the Tina before it would be like, my husband's very calm. So it's like, be more like your husband Earl, just be more calm. I'm saying his benefit cause he can hear me too.
[00:31:22] Damaged Parents: That's awesome. That's awesome. So where can people find you your book is where? I mean, it's on Amazon I'm sure.
[00:31:29] Tina Fumo: Yeah, it is. Yeah. The ebook came out in September and since it's been released, it's pretty much stayed in the top 10 for grandparenting. So grandparents seem to really like reading the book. And the, so I just actually received the paper back a couple of weeks ago, so, in mid November. And so, yeah, it's available on ebook available on paperback.
The best way to get any information about me is just Google Fancy Prison by Tina Fumo. And you have to be specific and put my name in there because if you Google fancy prison. You're going to end up with like country club people, you know, serving out white collar crimes or whatever. That's not what my book is about.
My book is about the child welfare industry. So Fancy Prison by Tina Fumo and it will have the links on Amazon there. It will have LinkedIn, like how you can contact me if you have questions about the book And. then it will come back. And to podcasts like this one here, when you get it edited and aired.
So yeah googling, Fancy Prison by Tina Fumo was probably the best way to get ahold of me.
[00:32:36] Damaged Parents: Awesome. Well, I feel like I know a little bit more about the child welfare system in Canada now and have some tools that if anything were to happen, that I could be aware of. And I'm so grateful that you came on the show and just hope that I know listeners will have this struggle and I'm so grateful that you have the courage to step up and talk about it.
[00:32:59] Tina Fumo: Yeah, it's my book I think is probably a snowflake on the tip of the iceberg, but I had to start somewhere.
[00:33:05] Damaged Parents: Yeah. And now are you also looking for help in this work, to make those changes? If people were interested in, helping I'm assuming they would just need to find you and, let you
know.
[00:33:17] Tina Fumo: well, right now really what I'm trying to do to help the situation is raise awareness through my book. The way I wrote my book, it's probably not, it's not a lot of policies and procedures. and I think that actually would be a little bit hard for people to read. The book is a journey.
And from the very opening sort of scene in my book is I drive through this blizzard and I'm motivated by the fact that at the end of the day, I wouldn't be holding my, 10 day old or 12 day old, grandbaby. So that's, what's in my heart is as I'm driving through this horrible blizzard.
But I want to see my grandbaby so that's what motivates me. It starts a journey of where I've been in the last few years and the stories I've heard about. And then at one point when I've mentioned now the baby on the cover, Delona when I first heard about that story. I actually, I couldn't listen to it.
I, I was burst into tears in my left of the room and I just went to, it was at a hotel and I went to the woman's bathroom and I just sat in a stall. And in the book I write the old Tina would have had a hard time believing the story that I just heard, but the new Tina didn't. And so I think if people read the book and listen and stop judging and just maybe get to that point where I was and do your own homework, I mean, it doesn't take long to dig around a little bit and find out that children are suffering in this system.
And to get to that point, where your old self might not have believed it, but if you keep an open mind and listen and don't judge, and then maybe just, maybe we can start coming up with solution and asking questions and pushing through some uncomfortable conversations that we need to have about this, because if we can't even admit there's a problem, how can we even, start to come up with a solution?
[00:35:16] Damaged Parents: Yeah. Thank you so much. And everybody, if you know how to help, or you want to step in, just step in and help and, keep on fighting because , this is an important issue
[00:35:29] Tina Fumo: I think so.
[00:35:30] Damaged Parents: You know, children, our future. So thank you so much, Tina, for being on the show.
[00:35:35] Tina Fumo: Well, thanks for having me, Angela. It's been a pleasure.
[00:35:38] Damaged Parents: Definitely
Thank you for listening to this week's episode of relatively damaged by damaged parents. We really enjoyed talking to Tina about how she supported her daughter and granddaughter through a harrowing journey. We especially liked when she spoke with an abundance of love for her daughter and granddaughter.
To unite with other damaged people, connect with us on Instagram. Look for damaged parents. We'll be here next week still relatively damaged see you then
