This November, Adopt Kansas Kids will join thousands of individuals, government agencies and child advocacy organizations across the nation in promoting the National Adoption Month 2009 campaign. The goal of the campaign “Answering the Call: You Don’t Have to Be Perfect to Be a Perfect Parent” is to spread awareness to recruit and retain foster and adoptive parents for our nation’s waiting children.
Since 1990, the nation has proclaimed November as National Adoption Month to focus attention on the children in the child welfare system waiting for placement with families. Nationwide, there are approximately 496,000 children currently in foster care, 130,000 of whom are waiting for permanent families. In Kansas there are currently more than 5,000 children in foster care with 885 needing adoption. In state fiscal year 2009, there were 816 finalized adoptions; so far for SFY 2010, 195 children have found their forever families. (http://www.srskansas.org/CFS/datareports2010.htm)
To help raise awareness of the need for adoptive parents, this year during National Adoption Month, a public service advertising campaign from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Ad Council, and AdoptUsKids is running on television, in print outlets, and on radio stations around the country. The PSAs address prospective adoptive parents’ fears and reassures them that they have the ability to be adoptive parents.
Throughout the month of November, Adopt Kansas Kids is encouraging families to become foster or adoptive parents by visiting the statewide photolisting website www.adoptkskids.org or by calling 1-877-457-5430. The project’s Klicks for Kids photo gallery will be featured in four communities during the month (Liberal, Topeka, Pittsburg, and Wichita).
“Some 850 Kansas children are in need of adoption,” said Tina Long, director of the Adopt Kansas Kids project. “They want a place to call home and a loving family to call their own. This November, remember that you don’t have to be perfect to be a really terrific parent to a child. Consider adoption and give a child something that every child deserves: a home.”
