Nov. 4 – National Adoption Awareness Month

GOOD MORNING DELMARVA - All children deserve loving, permanent homes. That is the motivation behind the lower shore departments of social services joining the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption to celebrate National Adoption Awareness Month in a local campaign to encourage families throughout the tri-county area to open their hearts and homes to children in foster care who are waiting to be adopted.

Today, more than 100,000 children in the U.S. foster care system are available for adoption. That figure includes children in Maryland who are growing up without permanent families of their own. They entered foster care through no fault of their own, as victims of child abuse, neglect or abandonment, and their parents' legal rights have been terminated.

Each year, tens of thousands of children turn 18 or 21 and leave the system without families. The typical child who has been freed for adoption is 8 years old, moves three or more times in foster care, may have been separated from siblings, and will wait five years or more to be adopted.

National Adoption Awareness Month, celebrated annually since 1990, works to increase the number of families willing to consider foster care adoption and celebrates the unique joys of creating families through foster care adoption.

“We believe every child deserves a permanent home and that is why we are actively encouraging people in this community to consider foster care adoption.”

For more information about foster care and adoption in our community, call Jami Truitt at 410-677-6849, or order Finding Forever Families: A Step-by-Step Guide to Adoption free at davethomasfoundation.org