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Washington, D.C. - National Adoption Day began in 2000 as a "collective national effort to raise awareness of the 114,000 children in foster care waiting to find permanent, loving families," according to nationaladoptionday.org. Since its inception, nearly 17,000 foster children have been placed with families and more than 3,300 foster children were adopted on National Adoption Day last year.
The need to find families for the 114,000 foster children whose parents’ parental rights have been terminated is acute. It is estimated that the average foster child waits more than 3 years to be adopted and, 21% of foster children waiting to be adopted will wait 5 years or more. Each year, 25,000 foster children "age out" of the system without ever having lived in a real family environment. Statistics indicate that the future for these children is bleak.
According to the Adopt America Network, 56% of youths who age out of the foster care system become poverty stricken and unemployed within 2 to 4 years; they make up 70% of all homeless youth; 40% never graduate from high school; 40% will be on welfare within two to four years of aging out of the system; and, 60% of teenage girls will have a child of their own within two years of leaving foster care.
Conclusions about foster care adoptions from a recent survey conducted by Harris Interactive and commissioned by the Dave Thomas Foundation on Adoption were a mix of both good and bad news for the 114,000 foster children waiting to be adopted. The good news is that the vast majority of Americans (77%) know that children in the U.S. foster care system are available to be legally adopted. Of those who are familiar with foster care adoption, 88% favorably view the practice. And, finally, 48 million Americans have considered or are actively considering adopting a child from the foster care system.
The bad news is that those foster children waiting to be adopted are at a disadvantage because many Americans have inaccurate perceptions of foster children, the adoption process and the costs associated with adopting a foster child. The Dave Thomas Foundation’s survey found that 45% of Americans believe that children are placed in foster care due to juvenile delinquency. 67% of potential adoptive parents are worried that an adoptive foster child’s birthparents will take the child back. And, 46% of all Americans believe that adopting a foster child is cost prohibitive.
In the case of foster care adoption, perception is far from reality. The fact is that most children are placed in the foster care system because they are victims of neglect or abuse – many are even abandoned. While there are approximately 514,000 children in the foster care system, only the children whose birthparents’ parental rights have been terminated are legally eligible for adoption. Once parental rights are terminated, the birthparents are not able to reclaim the child. And, finally, adopting a foster child does not entail substantial costs and financial and other support is available for adoptive parents once the process is finalized.
If you are one of the millions of families considering adoption, I hope you will look into bringing a foster child into your home. To learn more about it, visit the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Children’s Services website at http://www.acf.hhs.gov/opa/index.html.
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