The Moodys:
Chapter 2
From emails we exchanged with the Moodys, we learned a bit more about how Denise was handling Guatemala and about the Guatemalan adoption process in general. Sadly, we cannot say Denise had learned anything from her failures in Russia, Bulgaria and Haiti.
The Moodys began their Guatemalan adoption with BBAS on or around July 2002. They unwittingly agreed to use BBAS as their homestudy agency, unawares they could have had it done by a less costly, qualified homestudy agency in Ohio. A homestudy agency where some of the social workers credentials were more than “Adoptive Mom.”
Carla Everstijn, MSW, LISW, contacted Kimberly and Jonathan to schedule their first homestudy appointment at the beginning of August 2002. Ohio requires four visits.
This is the first account we have of Ms. Everstijn as a social worker. Under “Our Staff” on BBAS website in April 2003, there was a photo of a smiling, pudgy blonde woman holding a baby accompanied by the following description:
Carla Everstijn, MSW, LISW is an adoption assessor and adoptive mother. She is licensed to provide homestudy and post-placement services, counseling, and education for adoptive families. Carla is dedicated to helping people build their families through adoption, and she strongly believes all children need and deserve loving people in their lives. Carla’s empathy and compassion for children extends to all areas of the globe. She has the professional and personal experience of traveling to Russia and East Europe, and her background includes many years of teaching international politics.
She may have been qualified in teaching international politics, but as it turns out, she was horribly unqualified as a social worker for the Moody family. After having one visit with the Moodys, Carla was “let go” by BBAS in Septmember 2002. She was formally replaced by Kim LePre and Johnna Myers in December 2002, according to BBAS “Board Minutes” for that month.
Carla Everstijn was the “the first fiasco” with BBAS, as Kimberly put it. She described her first visit as “a joke.” From one of her emails:
[Carla] asked a total of three questions and stayed for probably 45 minutes and gave us some material to read. Then she said that usually she has to come out 4 times but she would only come out 2 times. The next visit would have to wait until the end of October because she was going to go to Russia… it did not seem like she was all together there and I did not want to have anything go wrong later because of this homestudy.
One wonders why Carla was going to Russia and who was paying for this Russian trip. And why she was scheduling an important, expensive homestudy visit only to put the clients off for another two months.
Perturbed by this, Mrs. Moody contacted Denise to voice her concern. Denise told her
“Carla needed the time to be thorough and that was why there was so much time in between the two visits.”
Mrs. Moody explained to Denise that she wasn’t concerned about when the visit was scheduled, even though it was frustrating, but “with all the corners [Carla] seemed to be cutting in addition to her lack of actually doing anything at our visit.”
Two days later Denise re-assigned their case to the recently hired Kim LePre. Mrs. Moody said Kim LePre “turned out to be great.” Kim told them Carla had been risking her licensure by suggesting two visits to their home instead of the state requirement of four. Two visits may have jeopardized their case if it had been stated on the homestudy. Not only that, Carla hadn’t given them all of the required parental education materials they needed to read to complete the homestudy.
This tends to corroborate the concern expressed by Linda Saridakis during the otherwise routine 2004 recertification of BBAS that the agency’s homestudies seemed to be awfully short for all that they required to discuss with prospective parents