National Adoption Month’s theme is “Every Conversation Matters”
October 29, 2021
Photo courtesy of Child Welfare Information Gateway
MANSFIELD — November is National Adoption Month, and this year the focus is on the teenagers in foster care who need unconditional commitment, love, and support from a family long-term.
In Richland County, there are currently 15 teens in foster care who face a future without stable, permanent, and caring families to guide them into adulthood. Studies have shown that having a close relationship with a caring adult is key to improving a child’s opportunities for success, but older youth are much less likely to be adopted than younger children.
Richland County Children Services (RCCS) finalized 24 adoptions in 2020, and the overwhelming majority of those were children under the age of 10.
At any given time, over 16,000 children in Ohio are being cared for away from their parents, and more than 9,000 are living with foster parents. While most of these children will be eventually reunited with biological family members, over 2,600 are currently waiting to be adopted. More than 1,000 of them are teenagers.
This year's National Adoption Month campaign focuses on finding the right adoptive family for each teen who is waiting for a forever home.
The U.S. Children’s Bureau urges communities to remain steadfast in their commitment to achieving permanency for all children, regardless of age. While their circumstances may often be more difficult, teenagers deserve to have a loving and safe family just as much as younger kids do.
All children need support and guidance, and so every positive conversation adults have with youth in foster care can make a huge impact in their lives.
Richland County Children Services believes every child deserves a safe and loving home. When a child cannot remain with their birth family, adoption provides that permanent family. Through our adoption services we create families by placing children in their forever homes.
RCCS adoption services are provided in conjunction with our foster care program. Any family wishing to adopt a child must first become a foster family. Through this system, we are able to screen, train and support prospective adoptive parents and ultimately match them with a child in need of a safe and nurturing home. Many of our foster families adopt their foster children.
Other families become foster parents solely in anticipation of adopting a child. Whichever path you take, adoption is a joyous way to create a permanent parent/child relationship.
If you are ready to provide a child with a forever home, please contact Richland County Children Services today about our foster/adoptive parent program.
Please call 419-774-4100 for more information or visit www.richlandcountychildrenservices.org/foster-adoption.
