The Adoption.com Photolisting is excited to announce that the State of Oregon is now featuring it’s waiting children right here on Adoption.com. Now, the children in Oregon can be viewed by potential families from anywhere in the United States at any time of the day or night.

Families who are homestudy ready and certified to adopt in their state can submit inquiries via the Adoption.com Photolisting Inquiry Form. Those not currently homestudy ready can submit a Homestudy Assistance Form and get matched with a caseworker in their area who can help them get started on the journey to adopting from the U.S. foster care system.

National Adoption Month is a great time to get started on your journey to adopt from the U.S. foster care system, so find out how to get started by contacting your local Department of Children & Family Services (or whatever it might be called in your state).

This morning I had an appointment for a check up on my knee. Two weeks ago I had a big fluid filled lump on my knee cap. This is not terribly unusual since I have inherited bad joints from my Great-Grandmother. Fortunately, I inherited many of her wonderful traits as well.

I don’t remember how this discussion started, but Hannah said to me:

“Mama, you have to ‘dopt me yet.”

Hannah has been with us for ten months, but we have not started our home study yet. We attempted to on a couple of occasions, but we were hitting road blocks with our county social services office. The worker we had at the time had her obvious opinions of me and stated them to the agency who called to request our file. The county was stating that Sammy should be home and “stable” for six consecutive months before we add another child to our home. If you’ve followed my blog you know that the chances of that are pretty slim.

I proceeded to ask Hannah why I needed to ‘dopt her, and she said:

“‘Cuz that’s what mamas and daddys are s’posed to do.”

It was just a matter of fact and simple statement, but it said so much. She is ready to be adopted and be an “official” member of our family. Such a stark comparison to Sammy and his feelings about our family.

When I asked her what would happen if we didn’t ‘dopt her, she couldn’t answer my question, and simply reiterated that I needed to adopt her.

The doctor’s office I was in is in our small town. The nurses all people that I have known my entire life. They know my kids are adopted so they’re used to unusual things coming out of their mouths. We even talked about eating and nutrition which lead to a talk about Kory. The only things he didn’t like to eat were McDonald’s sausage (can you blame him) and grape jelly. They remember my kids, but don’t treat them differently in obvious manners. They do allow me to be present in all exams and hold a child if it is necessary to calm them.

I am thrilled that this little girl wants to be an official member of our family. My husband and I are ready as well. If we continue to get blocked by social services, we will go to court and fight it, but I’d rather not. I am hopeful that with Sammy’s continued ugly behavior and the fact that they realize it will be a long time, if ever, before he returns home, that they free us up to do what is best for Hannah.

I’ve appeared in front of every judge in our county courthouse on charges for Sammy. I’d like to make an appearance for something good for a change.

Photo credit – Hannah and her determined face

With National Adoption Awareness month coming up (more blogs on this coming in the near future), I decided to do some checking on foster care adoption statistics. It is still a fairly bleak picture. The latest statistics are from 2005.

114,000 children were waiting to be adopted on September 30, 2005. This only includes children under the age of sixteen and whose status is listed as available for adoption or whose parental rights had been terminated.

Here is where a great divide comes in. Only 51,000 children were adopted from foster care from January 1, 2005 until September 30, 2005. If the current rates stay the same, that means that there will be approximately 50,000 more children waiting for a family than are actually adopted. I know if I were a child, I wouldn’t want to be in the latter group.

The gender of the children is almost an equal split with the percentage of boys being only slightly higher.

The most disheartening statistic is that 42% of waiting children have been in foster care for thirty six months or longer. The laws are now supposed to have social services seeking a termination of parental rights if the child has been out of the home for fifteen of the last twenty-two months. This means that children should be freed and available for adoption sooner, which should be that they are being adopted sooner. This statistic shows that we are still behind in getting children placed into permanent homes

Let me clarify one thing on this statistic. Kids like Sammy do not fit into this category. His goal is not listed as adoption. He is in treatment foster care because of his own issues and not because he is being abused or neglected by us as his parents. Kids in his situation are not counted in this survey.

The racial divide in foster care has changed. Caucasian children now make up the highest percentage of children I care at 40%. African American children follow closely at 36%.

There is some disparity in the average age of a waiting child versus the average age of the adopted child. The average age of the waiting child is about eight years old, while the average age of the adopted child is about six years old. It shouldn’t come as a big surprise that younger children are adopted more often and the older a child is, the more likely they are to wait in care longer before being adopted.

On the bright side, 60% of children were adopted by their foster parents. This is good news for the child, because it means one less move in their lives and some consistency in their lives.

What does all of this mean? It means we need to promote and advocate for children to be adopted from foster care. Some people have asked me if I still believe in foster care adoption after everything that we have been through with Sammy. My answer is YES! BUT…. I believe in educating potential adoptive parents, offering more follow up services to the family, and access to GOOD mental health providers and therapists.

Data source

Photo credit

When we were going through our list of “criteria” for which children we could take into our home, and which we couldn’t one of the things at the top of our not list was medically fragile children. I would probably change that decision now. I know some parents who have medically fragile children, and still lead very busy and active lives.

My husband has a good basic medical knowledge. He has been a volunteer Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) for a little over ten years. He says the only thing he hasn’t done is deliver a baby, and unfortunately I can’t help him with that and none of our friends are willing to let him do the honors either.

So what would qualify a child to be medically fragile? Well, there are some obvious things, heart defects, brain abnormalities, feeding through tubes, oxygen requirements and other major illnesses.

Just because a child is classified as medically fragile, does not mean they can not live a full and wonderful life. My friend Suz has a beautiful little girl who has some heart defects. She is five years old, and is incredible in every sense of the word. Her parents have to make special accommodations in certain areas, but she attends school, travels, and plays with her big brothers. She knows there is something “wrong” with her, but she lives a full and wonderful life. You can read her story here.

Another friend has a foster baby that is on oxygen and a feeding tube. She thought long and hard before agreeing to take on this baby. One of the reasons she decided to take placement, was that she is being provided with a nurse to help her learn how to care for this baby.

Helping children heal without the proper training and supports in place would certainly lead to disaster.

We have been down the road of medical issues. When Mackenzie was born, she was little, even though she was a full term baby. Her birth weight was under seven pounds, and she spent the first month of her life in preemie clothes. When she was five months old she contracted Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) This caused her oxygen levels to drop into the 80s and her hospitalization for five days. When she was released, we did nebulizer treatments three times a day and had to watch any time her breathing changed.

While this was nearly as life threatening as the issues my friends are dealing with, it has caused me to look at things differently. Knowing these incredible women and children and how great everyone is doing makes adopting a medically fragile child much less scary.

I don’t know if we’re done with adoption yet. God hasn’t let me know what his decision is, but if we do I will be much more open to these special children.

AdoptUSKids waiting children

For information/instructions on how to subscribe FREE to your favorite AdoptionBlogs, please visit this link.

Photo credit

She was an incredible worker. Unfortunately, she’s retired now. Her comment to me was awesome. “I’ve been doing this for 35 years, and I get it as much as I can, but I don’t live it.” She was so on target. You don’t get it, unless you live it.

Nancy Spoolstra and I spent a good bit of time discussing the best way to approach this. She helped me put together what ended up being a 90 second video, but one of the best things we did to make them understand.

I started the presentation by showing the clip. It was 90 seconds of Sammy raging and kicking a hole through our plaster and lathe walls. He was 10 years old at the time, and it was the day he was admitted to the psychiatric hospital. You could hear the gasps in the room as his foot broke through the wall.

I then showed pictures of the kids smiling, happy and appearing emotionally healthy. Everyone smiled and laughed.

I spent the next hour explaining what a typical day was like for us. Some of it registered, some did not.

The most profound, and scary, thing came toward the end of my presentation. I had asked the parents on the ATN lists what they would want to convey to the workers. I incorporated all the answers into the presentation, but one brought an “AH-HA” moment for lots of us.

The statement was simple “Please be honest with parents about a child’s issues when you are placing him/her.” The comment that followed from a worker threw me for a minute. She said “But, if I tell them the truth, they won’t want to adopt the child.”

Whoa, is this the way workers operate? No wonder placements fail. It took me a second to recover before I responded. I simply said “If parents can’t handle HEARING about a child’s issues, they are not going to be able to handle LIVING with those issues.”

I pray this worker was the exception, but I’m not very hopeful. I hear from too many people that important things about a child were not disclosed to them prior to placement. This does a huge disservice to both the child and the family. What happened to the best interest of the child? The last thing our kids need is another disrupted placement.

You can find waiting children on the following websites.

Adoption photolisting

AdoptUSKids

National Adoption Center

The waiting children are shown state by state, (and also by country) and you can see if there are children in your state or close by.

You can search by boy or girl, sibling groups or a single child, age, or, if you know the child you are looking for, by ID and name.

There’s a search bar called ‘recently added’ children so you can look at the new children who’ve become available.

Once you’ve found a child you are interested in, be sure to write down the ID number and then call your local DHS office with as much information as possible about the child. Some of the listing have a specific number to call or a way to contact the agency who has the child listed.

You must have a home study already approved before following up on children, so if you are serious about adopting, start that process now.

If you are going through the fost-adopt route for your adoption, the home study should be at no cost to you, or almost no cost, (under $100.00)

Most of the children featured are considered special needs – they may be older or part of a sibling group, so a subsidy may be available for the adoption and continuing after adoption.

As part of your home study you must show you are financially able to care for children, so a financial subsidy will not be taken into account as part of your qualifying process.

Delilah, the celebrated radio DJ also features one child ready to be adopted each week on her website, radio show, and linked from adoption.com

This week she is featuring a fourteen year old boy from Indiana – who’s details can be found on the adoption.com photolisting.

Tyler has a very friendly, affectionate, outgoing personality. Tyler is doing well in school and has earned both “Mr. English” and “Mr. Math” titles for have the highest percentage in class. He responds very well to rewards, praise, and affection.

Check out the websites. They might have just the child you’ve been waiting for!

513,000

Continuing from my previous posts regarding the statistics of children in foster care I found these numbers(below) on The AFCARS Report.

(I’m not a statistical anyalist by any stretch. I just liked reading the numbers.)

Over 100,000 children in foster care are aged sixteen and above. Most children aged about 16 and above will age out of the foster system or move into adult care.

(Of course, there are exceptions, and many older teenagers will be adopted, but the odds are against them).

Another 290,000 will go back to live with bio-relatives.

According to this same report, only 100,000 of these 500,000 foster children have a goal of adoption. The rest of the children won’t ever be considered for adoption – they’ll return home, or go to relatives, or move out on their own.

Reunify with Parent(s) or
Principal Caretaker(s) 51% 262,706
Live with Other Relative(s) 4% 21,722
Adoption 20% 100,949
Long Term Foster Care 7% 37,628
Emancipation 6% 31,938
Guardianship 3% 15,653
Case Plan Goal Not Yet Established 8% 42,403

Then look at the ages: There were 29,000 infants in foster care in 2006 – and some of those were adopted. (like by me!) Another 60,000 children were pre-school age.

The ages of the children in foster care:

Less than 1 Year 6% 29,034
1 Year 6% 32,439
2 Years 6% 29,580
3 Years 5% 26,552
4 Years 5% 24,558
5 Years 4% 22,405
6 Years 4% 21,521
7 Years 4% 20,687
8 Years 4% 19,717
9 Years 4% 19,375
10 Years 4% 19,488
11 Years 4% 20,693
12 Years 5% 23,570
13 Years 5% 27,081
14 Years 6% 33,002
15 Years 8% 38,589
16 Years 8% 41,695
17 Years 8% 39,018
18 Years 3% 14,007
19 Years 1% 5,963
20 Years 1% 4,027

As expected, most are teenageers and I would guess the ones that stay in foster care the longest. Almost 40% of children leave foster care within a year. I wish it were a larger number – like 90%.

What were the lengths of stay in foster care?

Mean Months 28.6 Median Months
15.5

Less than 1 Month
5%
26,302

1 to 5 Months
20%
100,275

6 to 11 Months
17%
89,460

12 to 17 Months
12%
63,885

18 to 23 Months
9%
45,912

24 to 29 Months
7%
34,928

30 to 35 Months
5%
24,302

3 to 4 Years
11%
58,341

5 Years or More
14%
69,595

14% stay in foster care over 5 years. I hope they get to stay with the same family, but I’m afraid that isn’t always true.

There is a lot of info on this report, but here’s the part I find most interesting:

60% of adoptions out of foster care were by the foster parents.

Non-Relative 15% 7,502

Foster Parent 60% 30,683

Step-Parent 0% 56 (too small to count a percent?)

Other Relative 25% 12,759

Read the full report here.

I always get confused when I read the stats about waiting children. Everyone seems to agree that there are about 500,000 children in foster care right now, but the numbers differ when you look at how many of those children are eligible for adoption.

The numbers vary because of who is doing the counting and what year the stats are from, and where the children are.

Some agencies might include legal risk adoptions - those who haven’t actually had parental rights terminated yet, but probably will. Other agencies include children who will probably stay in long term foster care due to mental illness or disabilities that make it easiest and most benificial for the child to stay in foster care.

Some of the children may be in institutions. Then there are teenagers who eligible for adoption, but probably won’t ever be adopted due to their age – they maybe 17 1/2 years old and due to age out in a few months.

Whichever numbers you use, it is too many children waiting for forever homes.

Adoptive Families says there are about 126,000 waiting children right now.

Some of those are in residential treatment facilities, and many are in foster homes – waiting to be adopted.

DHS has these interesting stats from 2006 about where the children in foster care are. Adoptive homes? Foster Homes?…

The AFCARS Report

Pre-Adoptive Home 4% 18,691

Foster Family Home (Relative) 24% 124,153

Foster Family Home (Non-Relative) 46% 236,775

Group Home 8% 43,440

Institution 10% 51,210

Supervised Independent Living 1% 5,918

Runaway 2% 10,930

Trial Home Visit 4% 21,883

We have almost 11,000 runaway foster children living… where? On the streets right now?

That was K’s birth mom just a few years ago.

Sometimes the system just can’t help.

Some other details:

FOSTER CARE STATISTICS from Adoptive Families

Currently, there are approximately 534,000 children in foster care in the United States. It’s estimated that 126,000 are eligible for adoption.

In 2001, about 50,000 children were adopted from foster care.

66% of parents who adopt from foster care are married couples, 30% are single females, 2% are unmarried couples, 2% are single males.

Median age of child in foster care: 10.6 years.

38% African-American, 37% Caucasian, 17% Hispanic, 8% other.

The average child in foster care goes through three different placements and stays in the system for 33 months.

Each year, about 20,000 children age out of foster care.

Next post:

Looking at the ages of children in foster care. Stay tuned!

Make sure you get to see this great special coming up on CBS next Friday.

CBS in conjunction with the Dave Thomas Foundation for waiting children is putting on a terrific prime special.

How do I know it’ll be terrific? Look who’s in it:

• Singers that I love:

Rod Stewart, Five for Fighting, John Legend, Katharine McPhee and Mary Mary.

• Inspirational Adoptive Families:

The Arguilez Family
Nine-year-old Ricky and his six-year-old sister Isabella had lived in five different foster homes by the time they appeared on THE 7TH ANNUAL A HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS in 2005. “We had been waiting a long time… I worried we might get separated,” said Ricky. But the siblings’ long wait was finally over when Richard and Gloria Arguilez saw them on the special last year and immediately moved forward to adopt them.

The White Family
Victor and Dawn White adopted their first daughter, Jimisha, in 2004. “I don’t think I started living until I met my parents,” said Jimisha. With the success of their first adoption, the Whites turned to the Wendy’s Wonderful Kids program to find their second daughter, Myricle. “I knew I had met people that really loved me,” said Myricle. This holiday season, the Whites chose to complete their family by adopting their third daughter, two-year-old Jalaia.

The Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption and Children’s Action Network are pleased to present the eighth annual “A Home for the Holidays” television special on CBS December 22 at 8 p.m. EST / PST (7 p.m. MST / CST)!

Each December, the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption and the Children’s Action Network present “A Home for the Holidays,” a CBS network television special bringing together all-star talent to raise awareness for foster care adoption.

This year, the celebrity lineup includes Cedric the Entertainer, Miley Cyrus (”Hanna Montana”), Five for Fighting, Angie Harmon, Melina Kanakaredes, John Legend, Mary Mary, Katharine McPhee, René Russo, Jeri Ryan and Rod Stewart. In addition, several extraordinary families once again share the joys they found through foster care adoption.

Since 1999, this heartwarming holiday special has generated tens of thousands of calls from viewers moved to action after hearing true stories of families who adopted from foster care and of waiting children.

Tune in and watch “A Home for the Holidays” and share, through the eyes of a child, the joy of having a family – not just for the holidays, but forever.

Save the Date!
A Home for the Holidays
Friday, December 22, 2006
8:00 – 9:00 p.m. EST / PST
7:00 – 8:00 p.m. MST / CST

There are still 500,000 waiting children in foster care.

Won’t you watch?

Photo Credit to the Dave Thomas Foundation

Uck.

Better this week, than next week, I suppose, but I’ve still got presents to make, buy, wrap. Cookies to bake, turkey to buy. On and on it goes.

We are stressed because we have too much. What about those who have nothing?

I like to think about the various children we have had over the past years and what they may be doing for Christmas this year.

Are they warm?

Are they safe?

Will Santa visit them this year?

Will their mom tell them that they’ve moved too many times and Santa can’t find them?

Or will they be told they’ve been so bad that Santa won’t come.

I’m lucky to know that ‘our’ kids went back to loving moms. The moms may not have life skills, – They all pretty much live from week to week without money for food or the electric bill, but they do have love.

The kids all have a mom and love and that is the most important thing of all.

I think about the children who are living in orphanages all around the world. Those being used for unspeakable crimes. Children living on the streets. Children with AIDS or malaria or malnutrition.

I wonder about the waiting children who don’t have a family to call forever theirs and wonder if this will be the year they’ll get adopted.

All the agencies need presents for the foster children. The foster families do what they can, but another gift is always welcomed.

Some of the waiting children are in residential facilities and don’t have a family to give them presents. They need fun things to remind them someone cares.

Reach out this Christmas and give to a waiting child. Call your local DHS office and ask how you can help.

Be a Santa this year.

I am so grateful for our family. We may be sneezing and weezing, but we have it all.

We are together and have a warm place to snuggle together and be well – even as we are sick.