… and this year, National Adoption Day is being celebrated today, November 15th. This is a day when, across the nation, more than 300 events throughout the nation are held to finalize adoptions made through foster care.
Foster Care Adoption: Facts & Figures
Every year, more than 100,000 children in foster care are available for adoption. Many spend more than five years waiting for permanent, loving homes. Between 2000 and 2007, more than 20,000 children were joined together with their forever families as part of National Adoption Day activities.
Who are these waiting children?
• There are an estimated 510,000 children in foster care in the United States, and more than 129,000 of them are waiting to be adopted.
• Through no fault of their own, these children enter foster care as a result of abuse, neglect and/or abandonment.
• The average child waits for an adoptive family for more than two years.
• 19 percent spend 5 years or more waiting for a family (24,300 children).
• The average age of children waiting for an adoptive family is 8.
[personal note: Sadly, I think the reason so many children are left in foster care without being adopted is because people (like me) desire an infant and are scared to take on an older child with so much “baggage”.]
What happens to them?
• 51,000 children are adopted from foster care.
• More than 26,000 children reach the age of 18 without ever finding a forever family.
Who adopts from foster care?
• Children in foster care are adopted by three types of families: former foster parents (59 percent), relatives (26 percent) and non-relatives (15 percent). [personal note: Gil and I fall into the very small, non-relative percentage.]
• Of the families who adopt children from foster care, 69 percent are married couples, 26 percent are single females, 3 percent are single males, and 2 percent are unmarried couples.
• A national survey in 2007 revealed that 48 million Americans have considered adoption from foster care – more so than any other form of adoption, including private adoption of an infant or international adoption.
To find out more about adopting a child in the United States, please visit www.nationaladoptionday.org or call 1-800-ASK-DTFA.
(National Foster Care Adoption Attitudes Survey, November 2007. Commissioned by the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption and conducted by Harris Interactive.)
(Unless otherwise indicated, statistics are provided by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families Administration on Children; Interim Estimates for FY 2006.)
source: Foster Care Adoption: Facts and Figures
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