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Here in Wisconsin we are rather sick of snow. We’ve had over five feet of snow and the bill for having my driveway plowed is only slightly more than the cost of the fuel oil to heat my house.
However, there is a wonderful story involving snow coming out of New York. The Children’s Aid Society of Algoma is building snowmen. What’s so special about that? They’re building over 200 snowmen; one for each child who needs a home. What a wonderful way to garner attention for children. Kids love snowmen and this makes the number of children much more understandable.
Using a similar idea a friend of mine worked in her area to get the attention of the legislators. She worked to gather up dolls and gave one to each legislator. They had to carry the doll around for a week and were given the story of a child in foster care to accompany the doll.
During National Adoption Awareness Month, I wrote a blog about the foster child quilt that my friend Becky made. Each square was decorated by a child in foster care, and a book was made that contained their stories.
Sometimes these more personal and tangible things are the way to get our message across, otherwise they are just statistics on paper.
When Kory was with us and the county had submitted the paperwork to go for the Termination of Parental Rights (TPR), the county worker advised me to write a letter to the administrator and talk about our family, how Kory was doing, and to include a picture of all of us. This made Kory’s case real.
Sometimes the statistics and files can be overwhelming. Can you imagine 500,000 children in foster care? How do you wrap your mind around that? What about 500,000 pennies? Would that help anyone understand?
Let’s do what we can to make the kids more real to the legislators who make the laws and the judges who grant TPRs and adoptions. If the kids are only numbers and statistics it will be a long time before anything changes.
