A long legal road leads to a permanent home: guardian ad litem lawyers work to assist a child with special needs.

Brittney Carroll, 11, smiles broadly and extends her hand in greeting to welcome a visitor to her family's Tallahassee farm, where she and her six siblings help care for a menagerie that includes dogs, cats, ponies, goats, chickens, a donkey, and a cow named Buttercream.

Born prematurely and with a panoply of medical disorders that could shorten her lifespan, Brittney spent years in and out of Orlando hospitals and medical foster homes until Brian and Shannon Carroll got a phone call asking if they would consider adopting her.

"We told her, 'Yes, we would absolutely be interested in taking this little girl,' because we believe that all life is valuable and that all children deserve a loving family, whether they are going to pass away, whether they have special needs, no matter what the issues are," Shannon Carroll said. "We made a commitment to God a long time ago that if we were ever called to take a child we would consider that a call from Him."

In spite of their faith and their willingness to open their home for the first time to a child with special needs, the Carrolls encountered roadblocks in their effort to adopt Brittney. But Brittney had a guardian ad litem attorney who went to bat for her, and he in turn had the support of a legal aid attorney funded in part by The Florida Bar Foundation.

"It was just a great tag team," Brian Carroll said.

Brittney's GAL attorney, Richard Dellinger of Lowndes, Drosdick, Doster, Kantor and Reed in Orlando, had been with her for eight years and worked with Ericka Garcia, then with the Legal Aid Society of the Orange County Bar Association, to provide Brittney with educational and developmental opportunities while in foster care and to make sure she would eventually find permanency.

Things were starting to look up for Brittney in foster care, thanks to Garcia and Dellinger's advocacy, but then she ended up being hospitalized for eight months. One day Dellinger was told that Brittney didn't have long to live, so he went to see her and was surprised to find that not only was she going to live, but she was asking to go home. Dellinger immediately called on the Florida Department of Children and Families to get Brittney out of the hospital, where he felt she was essentially being warehoused.

"The foster mom wouldn't take her back, so we got her out of the hospital and found another medical foster home that would take her," Dellinger said, "It was a good home, but still just a foster home."

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