CHARLESTON, W.Va. — As November marks National Adoption Month across the country, officials in the social services sector in West Virginia recognize the dire need for foster and adoptive families in the state.
Leaders gathered in Kanawha County Thursday for an event hosted by Mission West Virginia, U. S. Attorney Will Thompson’s office and the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR) to spotlight the need for adoptive families for West Virginia youth in foster care.
According to Mission West Virginia, an organization that works to recruit foster families, West Virginia currently has over 7,000 children in foster care and approximately 2,500 who are eligible to be adopted, meaning that they are waiting to be matched with a family or are waiting for their match to finalize. Read about how long the adoption process in the UK takes.
“There is never enough foster families, there is never enough adoptive families. A lot of that is foster families adopt and then they don’t have space to take kids so they close their home. It’s just a cycle of always needing new families,” Rachel Kinder, Director of Frameworks for Mission West Virginia told MetroNews.
According to the Administration for Children and Families, there are over 400,000 children and teens in foster care nationally, and over 120,000 eligible to be adopted, the organization said. Nationally, over 66,000 children and teens were adopted from foster care during the 2019 fiscal year.
Kinder wrote in a piece to celebrate the month that “In West Virginia, our state saw over 1,000 foster care adoptions during calendar year 2020. National Adoption Month is an opportunity to recognize the efforts of families who adopted, whether they are grandparents, foster families or families who matched with a waiting child.”
Kinder said it’s easy to call West Virginia’s system for foster care ‘broken’ but said the community can have just as much of an impact on this issue as the DHHR or legislature.
“My goal for the new year is for the average West Virginian to embrace this as a community issue. It’s not waiting for DHHR or the state legislature to solve this problem, we need individual families to step up and open up their lives and homes to kids,” she said.
As November continues, Mission West Virginia will be mailing packages with recruitment posters and stickers to community agencies and churches. If you are interested in hanging posters or spreading the word in your community, you can request your own mailer at: missionwv.org/poster-request.
The organization is coordinating a push for increased foster and adoptive parent inquiries during the month of November. Its staff has been challenged to recruit through personal networks and we hope to reach a record number of families who want to receive more information about fostering or adoption, Kinder wrote. Information may be requested at: missionwv.org/request-information.
Kinder is part of an adoptive family herself and was one of a few local families that shared their experiences Thursday.
“We’re very grateful we overcame our fears and took that step,” she said.