Word: fostered
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...wants to look her best. She's being filmed for a Wednesday's Childsegment on KTVB in Boise, Idaho, so she can find a family. A forever family that will do the ordinary things families do--go on picnics, eat out and see movies together. Amber has had four foster-care placements during the past two years. "I just want a mom and dad who will love me the way I am," she says with an intensity that betrays the depth of her yearning...
There are several reasons for the turnaround. A big one is the 1997 Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA), which offers financial rewards to states that increase the number of kids moved out of foster care and into adoptive homes. Under ASFA, state adoption divisions receive a $6,000 bonus for every child adopted above and beyond the mean number placed the previous three years. Another important funding source has been the Dave Thomas Foundation, created by the late founder of Wendy's, an adoptee himself, to encourage the adoption of foster kids. The foundation has funded three model programs...
Within the foster-care community, there is a growing awareness that teenagers need families too and that this need does not evaporate at 18, when kids "age out" of the foster-care system. "It's pretty sad," says Jackson, "when I get a call from a 24-year-old guy who's got no one to ask for help or advice except his former social worker, or from a young woman who is having her first baby and there are no grandparents in the picture...
...adopt a young child. Told he would be great with teens, Hancock, 42, an unmarried Tampa title examiner, said, "You're not going to pawn off one of your older kids on me." But when a persistent caseworker showed him a photo of Steven, 16, who had been in foster care since he was 6, Hancock and his sister-in-law, who provided moral support during the process, were charmed by a certain family resemblance. "He's one of us," they concluded. When Hancock and Steven met a week later, they developed an instant rapport. Driving home later, Hancock phoned...
Fresh methods of recruiting families are helping more teenage foster kids find loving homes...