Two children are pictured with their arms around a couple; bright eyes, beaming smiles.
The framed photo is worth more than a thousand words - it is one of the only mementos a Central Otago couple have of the children, who called them ''Mummy and Daddy'', after Child Youth and Family's Home for Life programme turned out for them to be anything but.
The couple, whom the Otago Daily Times cannot name, had the children removed from their care by CYF in February. They were returned to a previous foster care arrangement.
The couple, in their 40s, initially wanted to adopt a child. They almost did so several times before a social worker in Invercargill suggested the Home for Life programme.
''It's not an adoption, although it's sold to you in the way it would lead to adoption,'' the woman says.
A CYF brochure on Home for Life states the child will be ''in your care for life'' and in most cases the couple will ''become their legal guardian, often in addition to birth parents''.
Contact will ''usually'' continue with the child's birth family in a ''safe and planned way'', it says.
However, the woman says Home for Life is a ''deeply flawed'' system.
An instant bond was formed with the children, then aged 2 and 4, who had been in foster care with their maternal grandmother for eight months. Their mother, a survivor of domestic abuse with substance abuse issues, had left when the youngest was 12 months old.
Their father, a recidivist offender with an extensive criminal history including convictions for serious sexual offending against minors and Domestic Violence Act charges, was in prison.
''We've got little people that clearly have had a rough time, that need a safe and secure environment to grow up in,'' the woman said.
In June 2012, after several meetings with the children, their grandmother and mother, the couple took them to their new home.
CYF says it wants to make sure people are ''supported, given the right information and feel confident as you make this life-changing commitment''.
Yet, the woman says, she had no contact with the children's social worker and after three weeks of having the children she contacted CYF Alexandra - an agency unaware of the change in circumstances.
It was nearly four months before a social worker visited, she said.
''It was appalling, really. I remember being gobsmacked they didn't realise the [children] were with us.''
When the couple took custody of the children, their father - through the Family Court - gained access to them up to four times a year.
Within a few months, that was increased to every six weeks and not long after he was granted two-weekly access - a phone call every fortnight, alternating with a supervised two-hour visit.
While he was in prison, the couple had to accept phone calls every fortnight, described as ''hideous'' by the woman.
The children became increasingly unwilling to speak to him - prompting him to ''complain to CYF we were interfering''.
Progressively, the children's behaviour worsened around the phone calls, with bed-wetting, angry demeanours and bad language, the woman said.
So when their father sought and was granted access on alternate weekends, the couple remonstrated with CYF and said it was ''too much''.
The children were not coping with the contact at that point and to allow more would not be in their best interests, she said.
CYF's response was unexpected.
''They said, `Fine, we'll just pick [them] up on Friday ... If you're not going to do this ... we'll just pick them up.'''It was an email. Not even a phone call.''
Less than a week later, CYF removed the children and returned them to their previous foster care arrangement.
The couple thought there would be continued contact, but they were wrong.
''It's like we've died. It's just hideous.
''I just trust that the [almost] two years we had with [them], it counts for something and they hold on to that somehow.
''I would walk over broken glass for them any day of the week.
''If I'm crying ... at night, how are they [coping]?''
