November 2010Vol. 11, No. 9Honoring National Adoption Month All Year
November is National Adoption Month, but this year's campaign reminds us to celebrate adoption and adoptive families all year long. Aimed at adoption professionals, the National Adoption Month initiative focuses on five themes that can help adoption professionals recruit, retain, and support adoptive families for the 115,000 children in foster care awaiting adoption:
- Supporting Families recognizes the importance of preplacement and postplacement services to help children and families make adoption work.
- Diligent Recruitment focuses on recruiting prospective parents who reflect the race and ethnicity of children in foster care.
- Diverse Populations expands this mandate, encouraging adoption workers to reach out to communities and organizations—including single parents and the gay and lesbian community—that bring diversity to the pool of available families.
- Proactive Family Finding refers to the steps that adoption professionals can take to locate all possible family members, including paternal relatives, and other connections who might offer permanency to a child or youth.
- Interjurisdictional Placements points to the potential of out-of-State placements for children, whether with relatives, friends, or unrelated families who have been matched with children from online photolistings.
The National Adoption Month website promotes these five themes and offers related tools, resources, and examples to help adoption workers in their recruitment and retention of families. The website also provides a variety of other resources for celebrating National Adoption Month, including the following:
- A poster, "Honor National Adoption Month All Year: Raise Awareness – Make Lasting Change," that offers ways to implement the five themes today, this week, and this month (www.childwelfare.gov/adoption/nam/nam_poster_english.pdf) (3.48 MB)
- The Presidential Proclamation establishing November 2010 as National Adoption Month (and links to available State proclamations) (www.childwelfare.gov/adoption/nam/namproclamations.cfm)
- Ways that the Children's Bureau supports adoption (www.childwelfare.gov/adoption/nam/cbsupport.cfm)
- Spanish-language adoption resources (www.childwelfare.gov/adoption/nam/enespanol.cfm)
National Adoption Month is a coordinated effort by the Children's Bureau, Child Welfare Information Gateway, and AdoptUsKids. Visit the website to learn more:
www.childwelfare.gov/adoption/nam/index.cfm