MANATEE COUNTY (WSNN) – For children with emotional, mental, and physical health issues, one Manatee County mom opens her arms wide open. But, she needs your help.
“I’ve absolutely fallen in love with him; this is one of the situations where it was determined that it would not be the optimum solution for him to return home,” Medical Foster Mom, Virginia, or “Gini” White, said.
Gini is not your typical foster parent. She looks after foster care’s most vulnerable and fragile.
“Drugs, injury, syndromes, feeding pumps, oxygen, anything that would be beyond the scope of the ‘normal care’ of a child,” Gini said.
In her 38 Years of fostering, she’s helped more than 300 kids.
“I have literally gone my entire life with foster kids in her home,” Gini’s biological son, Mike White said. “I do not know her home without children all over it.”
Mike is one of her three biological kids. But, she’s also adopted three and is about to adopt another.
“He’s five years old; he cannot hold his head up. He can roll, but he can’t sit up,” Gini said. “He won’t purposefully move to reach a toy or to do anything, he just kind of rolls back and forth.”
Her future son has a severe genetic disorder that affects his entire body, from his brain to his G-I system. His brain has stopped developing, but he hasn’t stopped growing. He recently got a new wheelchair, but Jinny says her 25-year-old van won’t be enough.
“And it’s just past its prime,” Mike said. “It doesn’t work anymore, the lift has been broken, the van has all kinds of problems.”
She says the state won’t give her a new one.
She’s the type of person that just gives and gives and gives, but will not take anything in return,” Mike said.
“I’m a doer and a giver, not an asker (crying),” Gini said. “But I have to know, that if I move forward with this adoption, that I can meet his needs, that I can safely get his to his appointments.”
So, Mike and his wife created a GoFundMe page with a goal of $40,000, to buy a van, a ramp for the house, and a new bathroom.
Despite it all, Gini says she wouldn’t trade her special job for anything.
“Everybody has their own strength, this just happens to be mine,” Gini said. “I take children out of nursing homes, I don’t let them be put into nursing homes.”
Her son says he will match the first $5000. If you want to help this single mom, you can find the GoFundMe here.
