Even When National Adoption Month Ends, The Work Continues Year-Round
A friend of mine, working to equip Arizona leaders in the faith-based community to engage in foster care and adoption, recounts the story of visiting a residential facility, or “group home,” and meeting with one of the residents, a boy in foster care who had a received some basic necessities that can easily be overlooked when a child enters the foster care system.
The boy stated bluntly: “Thanks for the backpack, but what I really need is a family.”
His words pierced me when I heard them.
It’s so easy to take the institution of family for granted. But even as we gathered with our families to celebrate Thanksgiving last week, more than 400,000 children in America spent the holiday without a permanent family to call their own. Over 18,000 of those children are in foster care in my own state of Arizona, which has seen a 48% increase in its foster care population. Arizona’s entry rate is more than twice the national average and it’s the third highest in the country.
I was privileged to hear many of those stories on Saturday, November 21st, when I attended the annual Maricopa County National Adoption Day event in Arizona. My own children accompanied me to the event, and they interacted with many of the adoptive children we met as only children can. It was a joy to witness many of the nearly 300 adoptions being finalized, a step in what can be the years-long legal journey, and to realize that those children would never again spend Thanksgiving apart from their forever families.
Amidst the piercing stories of loss, there are also these stories of hope — and both remind me, repeatedly, why I remain committed to engaging in these issues in Congress, where I co-chair the Congressional Coalition on Adoption and the Congressional Caucus on Foster Youth.
Again and again, I am struck as I hear the stories.
Children who have significant special needs finding parents who will work, sacrifice, and pour into them their entire lives to ensure they experience life to its very fullest.
Sibling groups who are adopted together in one family, instead of being separated forever.
Older youth adopted at the age of 16, 17, or even 18 — who had all but given up hope of ever finding a family of their own.
Again and again, I am reminded that it only takes one person to change a child’s life forever.
Sometimes, it is a social worker who works evenings and weekends to ensure they have explored every possible option, tracked down every relative, provided every resource, to the children with whose futures they are entrusted.
Sometimes it is a volunteer, a CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate) who helps a child navigate through the legal process, or a respite family, who becomes a refuge for children from hard places.
Sometimes it is an aunt, uncle, or relative, who takes a child in and raises him or her as their own.
And sometimes it is a family who chooses to stretch themselves through an unfamiliar process of background checks, interviews, and training, in order to make a child a permanent part of their family.
Nationally, over the last decade, positive progress has been made to safely reduce the number of children living in foster care by 20 percent. The use of foster care has decreased, and children are moving into permanent families more quickly through reunification, kinship care, and adoption. By using research in new ways, we have deepened our understanding of how to keep children safe and families strong.
But tragedy still exists, and it reminds us that much work remains to be done. Some children never find that “one person,” and this is evidenced by the more than 20,000 who will age out of foster care this year without a permanent family of their own.
This is a tragedy that can be ended on our watch.
Yesterday brought the end of November and the end of National Adoption Month, an important opportunity to raise awareness about the needs of hundreds of thousands of children currently in foster care in the United States, and the many more who are at risk of entering the system. But the month is merely a reminder of the work we must continue to do today and every day to ensure that every child knows the love, safety, and security that can only come from a family — — the irreplaceable support system that loves you, believes in you, cheers you on, provides for your needs, and supports you no matter what.
For readers wondering how they can engage in helping to turn stories of pain into stories of hope, I would offer you two ways you can do so this week.
First, make sure your representatives in Congress are Members of the Adoption Coalition and Foster Youth Caucus. If not, give their offices a quick call and request that they join.
Second, consider how your own family might be a part of making the difference in the lives of vulnerable children, or even just one — whether that is through mentoring, being a certified respite home for foster families, or even fostering or adopting yourself.
Together, let’s strive this year to improve child welfare systems and policy, raise awareness, engage our communities, and do everything in our power to ensure that the dream of a family becomes reality for every child.
