How To Celebrate National Adoption Month

Written by FrameWorks Program Director, Rachel Kinder

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

FrameWorks Program Director, Rachel Kinder

Annually in November there is an increase in media coverage and social media discussion of adoption. This is because the month of November is officially recognized as National Adoption Month.

Celebrated in various forms since 1976, when Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis declared Adoption Week for his state, the month is now observed nationally as “a month set aside to raise awareness about the urgent need for adoptive families for children and youth in foster care.”

Various cities, states and counties use this designated time to issue proclamations, hold public observations and, in some jurisdictions, set aside specific days to move backlogged adoption cases through the court system and to finalization. While the primary goal of foster care is to reunify families, permanency and adoption is almost always the secondary goal for children and teens who cannot safely return to their families.

The observation of National Adoption month often has multiple purposes: to bring understanding and focus to the topic of adoption through the foster care system, to honor adoptive families and workers and to find families for waiting children.

Public awareness of adoption

In order to understand why we observe National Adoption Month, we first need the public to know what adoption from foster care means.

In West Virginia families are dually certified for adoption when they become foster parents. However, children are not adoption eligible when they first enter foster care. They are with a relative or foster parent while the parents receive services to address the reasons the child(ren) were brought into care. If the issues are unable to be resolved, then parental rights are relinquished or terminated, and the child becomes adoption eligible.

Ideally, children are adopted by the family that they lived with during the case. Sometimes a child will become adoption eligible without an identified adoptive family. This can be because the child is living in a non-family setting, like a shelter or treatment facility. It can also be because the family that the child is living with is not a good adoptive match. In these cases, other adoptive families will need to be explored as potential matches and the children are “adoption eligible.”

Waiting Children

According to the Administration for Children and Families, there are over 400,000 children and teens in foster care nationally, and over 120,000 eligible to be adopted. West Virginia currently has over 7,000 children in foster care and approximately 2,500 who are eligible to be adopted, meaning that they are waiting to be matched with a family or are waiting for their match to finalize.

Recognizing adoptive families and workers

Nationally, over 66,000 children and teens were adopted from foster care during the 2019 fiscal year. In West Virginia, our state saw over 1,000 foster care adoptions during calendar year 2020. National Adoption Month is an opportunity to recognize the efforts of families who adopted, whether they are grandparents, foster families or families who matched with a waiting child.

Additionally, we want to recognize the workers who strive for every child to be matched with a family that can meet their needs and provide love, stability, and guidance until adulthood and beyond.

How you can help

Traditionally, foster care and adoption agencies observe Adoption Month through in-person celebrations. Taking the pandemic into consideration, we are observing virtually this year but with optimism for community messaging. One of the best ways to recruit foster and adoptive families is through word of mouth and public messaging.

Mission West Virginia will be mailing packages with recruitment posters and stickers to community agencies and churches. If you are interested in hanging posters or spreading the word in your community, you can request your own mailer at: missionwv.org/poster-request.

We are also coordinating a push for increased foster and adoptive parent inquiries during the month of November. Our own staff have been challenged to recruit through personal networks and we hope to reach a record number of families who want to receive more information about fostering or adoption. Information may be requested at: missionwv.org/request-information.

Appropriately, National Adoption Month falls in November, the beginning of the holiday season when families make plans to gather for holiday celebrations and family traditions. We hope that families will recognize their own blessings and consider sharing their family with a child who is without.