November is National Adoption Month in the United States. It is an initiative of the Children’s Bureau. The goal of National Adoption Month is to encourage families to adopt teens in foster care who are at risk for never having a stable permanent family home. The theme for this year is “Empowering Youth: Finding Points of Connection."
The National Adoption Recruitment Campaign promotes adoption from foster care and seeks to raise awareness about the 122,000 children and teens who are waiting to be adopted.
When most people think of adoption, they think of beautiful newborns handed to their anxiously waiting adoptive parents at the hospital. This may be true of expensive private adoptions. While infants are in high demand, the realities of adoption can be quite different.
In September 2021, there were 114,000 children and youth in the United States waiting to be adopted who were in danger of aging out of the system without establishing permanent family connections.
· More than one in five children waiting to be adopted are between the ages of 13 and 17.
· The average age of all children waiting to be adopted is 7.5 years old.
· The average time in care for children waiting to be adopted is 33.7 months. That’s almost three years!
· The average time in care for children waiting to be adopted after termination of parental rights is 19 months.
In the United States, the three major ethnicities of children waiting to be adopted are:
· White children – they make up 43% of all children waiting to be adopted.
· Hispanic children – they make up 23% of all children waiting to be adopted
· Black or African American children – they make up 21% of all children waiting to be adopted.
Black or African American children, children of mixed race, Indigenous American and Alaska Native children were all disproportionately overrepresented for all children waiting to be adopted. They also spend more time waiting to be adopted.
Before a child can be adopted, the birth parents must relinquish their parental rights, or these rights must be terminated by the legal system. If parental rights are not terminated, birth parents could decide to come back in their children’s lives at any time and try to regain custody.
Many children are waiting in limbo while paternity issues and paternal rights are being addressed.
Homelessness among children is on the rise. According to the National Coalition on Homelessness, there are as many as 1.2 million homeless children on any given night in the United States. Many of these children are part of homeless families. Some of these children will be removed from the care of their parents and placed in foster care.
More than half of all homeless children are under the age of six and have not yet started school. The National Center on Family Homelessness estimates that the numbers of homeless families and homeless children will rise if conservatives are successful in reducing or eliminating important social programs such as Welfare, ADC, and SNAP.
Homeless children are more likely to become ill because of food scarcity and lack of shelter. They are more likely to be injured because of living in unsafe environments. They are likely to witness acts of violence and suffer anxiety about their future. Even if these children are taken into the foster care system they may constantly worry about the fate of their parents and siblings.
Children with special needs may find it especially hard to find adoptive families who will love and care for them, and advocate for them to make sure reasonable adaptations are made in the school environment and society in general. Many families may lack the financial resources to secure medical treatments and therapies.
The question of who should be allowed to adopt children has become highly politicized. Many conservative do not support adoption by single parents or same-sex parents. LGBTQIA+ parents are more than seven times as likely to foster or adopt as non-LGBTQIA+ parents.
One in three children in foster care identify as LGBTQIA+. Many times this is because these children have been rejected by their biological families. These children often experience higher incidences of abuse in traditional foster care families. Finding a stable home without being judged or condemned is important for all children. Finding more homes willing to foster or adopt is the only way we will ever find loving families for the thousands of children in foster care.
https://www.childwelfare.gov/topics/adoption/nam/
https://www.nn4youth.org/wp-content/uploads/A2HomelessChildren.pdf