Kids In Care: Consider Welcoming A Teen In Your Home

Written by FrameWorks Program Director, Rachel Kinder

Originally posted in Charleston Gazette. To view that article, click here.

For the past 20 years, AdoptUSKids has partnered with the Ad Council and the Children’s Bureau to develop and promote the National Adoption Recruitment Campaign.  You may remember the previous campaigns featuring the tagline “You don’t have to be perfect to be the perfect parent.”  This month they have released their newest campaign in honor of National Adoption Month which is observed every November. 

While the goals continue to be promoting adoption from the foster care system and awareness of waiting children, the new campaign focuses on the theme “You can’t imagine the reward of adopting a teen.”  In the world of foster and adoptive parent recruitment, teens are often the hardest to find families for.  Our society focuses on an image of teens as limit-testers and rule breakers, hormonal and full of attitude, difficult to manage and generally uninterested in participating in family life.  Parents who focus on adopting younger children often fixate on the “firsts” experienced with babies and young children and forget to acknowledge that those babies grow up to be the same teenagers they are reluctant to adopt. 

These reasons are why the new campaign is so effective, touching and persuasive. It focuses on two core concepts:  1) parenting teens is rewarding and 2) you should hope to be lucky enough for a teen to choose you. 

The main video of the campaign opens on a dad, sitting on his couch in his home, with the voiceover
“My name’s Stacey, I’m 57 and I was adopted in 2020.”  This is followed by the introduction of several more families, sharing the year they too were “adopted” by their teens.  This is such a refreshing approach to the more common narrative of teens waiting for and hoping to be chosen by a family.  In these families, the teens made the choice, with one mom stating “they chose to love us, they didn’t have to, they chose us.”

The campaign highlights the rewards of adopting teens, with each family sharing the joy that their teens brought to their homes and lives.  Each family featured is unique in their family composition, their race and ethnicity and the living room couches they were filmed on.  Parents each share pieces of their stories and the surprises they encountered after adopting (or being adopted by) teens:

The whole cliché of, they’re so lucky to have you guys and it’s the other way around.

The energy you give Todd, you get it back from Todd.  Todd’s a joy. 

I missed the first words, but we got a lot of other firsts. 

What I thought was a complete life was nowhere near complete.  But it is now. 

According to the Children’s Bureau, in West Virginia in 2021, 211 children between the ages of 13-17 were adopted and 561 in the same age group were still waiting to find families.  The outcomes for the children who age out of foster care without being adopted are bleak: 

For those who age out of foster care at 18, 20% will instantly become homeless.

20% will be incarcerated.

25% will be a parent by age 21.

Less than 3% will obtain a college degree during their lifetime.

Those most likely to age out of the foster care system are children with a diagnosed disability and those who enter the system after the age of 12. 

It’s important to remember that these poor outcomes have little to with the efforts or characteristics of these young adults and almost everything to do with the circumstances of aging out without adequate resources or support systems.  These bleak outcomes don’t have to become a reality for West Virginia’s teens.

It is fitting that Adoption Month is observed in November at the beginning of the holiday season, when we can be grateful for the families formed through adoption.  The data shows us that these children and teens will have significantly better chances of success in life. As we all know, families don’t stop at age 18 and those who celebrate that birthday with a family in place are more likely to be happy, productive citizens and to hopefully break the cycle when it comes to their own children.  Our teens need parents who can celebrate the joys of their successes with them.  As the parents in the campaign will attest, the rewards are experienced by the parents too. 

To view the AdoptUSKids PSA campaign visit https://www.adoptuskids.org/about-us/national-ad-campaign

For information on becoming a foster or adoptive parent, visit www.missionwv.org/request-information, email fosteradopt@missionwv.org or call 1-866-CALL-MWV (225-5698).