Facebook | Safe Children Coalition

Caseworker Adopts 19-Year-Old Girl Who Aged Out Of Foster Care System

The foster care system is something that is immensely complicated for children placed in it and case workers who manage it. For some children, foster care is all that they know. And, eventually, when they "age out," they fear being on their own with virtually no support at all.

Monyay Paskalides was one of those kids.

Monyay spent the majority of her life in the foster care system until, at 19-years-old, she was aging out. Fearful of a life on her own with no parents, she was worried.

The teen claimed it was "worrying."

"It was really hard going from being in a group home with an adult to help you to immediately being by yourself without an adult to help," she told Good Morning America.

However, one woman changed that all.

Leah Paskalides, a 32-year-old case worker who worked with Monyay via Safe Children Coalition, a Florida nonprofit that works with state's foster care system, decided to adopt her.

Leah was inspired by a documentary she saw on an adult who also got adopted.

"I told her that I saw it and asked if it was something she would want, and she said yes.

I wanted to make sure she knew that she had somebody who loved her and who would have done this years ago and still would as an adult," the case worker said.

What a happy ending!