For more than 600 foster children in Clark County, finding a place to call home and people to call family can be a complex process.
Clark County residents can celebrate and learn about finding homes for foster children this afternoon in Vancouver at Clark County?s National Adoption Day event.
It takes a unique and amazing person to be a good foster parent, said Chris Case, assistant director of public affairs for the Washington Department of Social and Health Services. Many children come out of broken homes with emotional or physical damage.
?If you?re a foster parent, you?re not necessarily taking home that blond, blue-eyed Gerber baby,? Case said. ?You?re taking home a child who has probably been through hell a couple of times and maybe doesn?t trust you. So these foster parents are really remarkable people.?
National Adoption Day is a country-wide effort to celebrate and educate about foster care and adoption. It involves local adoption organizations, courts and policymakers along with families and advocacy organizations. The official event this year is on Saturday and Washington?s courts celebrate on Friday.
Clark County will be hosting its own event today at the Vancouver First United Methodist Church at 4 p.m.
Foster care and adoption in Washington
More than 7,800 children are living in foster care in Washington state, according to the DSHS. About 1,600 of them are up for adoption.
In Clark County, foster care numbers have varied by about a hundred from one year to the next.
Case said foster care numbers can change daily. More than 600 children were in out-of-home care on Jan. 1 of this year and nearly 470 were in care on the same date last year. Out-of-home care includes placement with other relatives, foster care and group care.
About 34 children have been adopted this year to date in Clark County and the DSHS expects that number to reach 50 before the end of the year. That doesn?t hit last year?s total of 66 adoptions completed at the Vancouver office.
This year marks the eighth annual Adoption Day celebration by Washington?s courts. More than 120 Washington children will be adopted as part of the celebrations.
?Everybody comes and celebrates and takes pictures and it?s great,? Case said.
At least a dozen National Adoption Day events are planned and registered across Washington state, including Clark County?s celebration in Vancouver.
Washington offers a snapshot of foster care nationwide.
More than 100,000 children in the United States are in foster care waiting to find what National Adoption Day organizers call a ?forever family.?
The organization expects about 4,500 foster children nationwide to be officially adopted on Saturday.
National Adoption Day started in 2000 and has since helped about 40,000 foster children gain permanent homes. Last year, there were about 400 events across the country, including every state, Puerto Rico and Guam.
A changing approach to adoption
Education and celebration are particularly important because foster care and adoptions are not the same processes they were five years ago, Case said. Washington, along with other states around the country, is pushing forward with a relatively new approach that emphasizes repairing families.
?For years and years and years, everybody said we have so many kids in foster care who need to be adopted,? she said.
However, during the last five years, Washington has increasingly focused on keeping families together rather than moving children. For example, in a family where parental drug or alcohol abuse is a problem, the state will temporarily relocate a child until the parents ?get their act together,? Case said.
When parents fail to get their act together, long-term foster care is not the first option for Washington courts. Instead, officials try to find a home with other relatives.
?It?s kind of a complex process. It?s not black and white like everybody thinks,? Case said. ?It?s really challenging to know what?s the right thing to do for a child.?
Case said she used to see social workers as ?the real body snatchers? who would come take children away from home if they weren?t behaving. However, she said the reality is that less than half of the cases reported to DSHS result in action from the state.
When someone reports a problem ? whether that person is a mandated reporter such as a teacher or simply a concerned neighbor ? the department determines whether the complaint is founded or unfounded. If there is a concern that a child may be in danger, further investigation is required. Not many cases lead to immediate removal of a child from his or her home, Case said.
However, the cases that do require immediate removal can be ugly.
?We walk into some places that you wouldn?t let your cat or dog live in,? she said.
Anyone interested in getting involved with foster care can call 1-888-KIDS-414 to reach someone who has personal background with being a foster parent.
--Kari Bray
Source: http://www.oregonlive.com/clark-county/index.ssf/2012/11/clark_county_to_celebrate_nati.html
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