National Adoption Month is bringing a permanent home to approximately 3, 500 foster children in the U.S. this year. National Adoption Month awareness activities are credited with helping more than 20,000 children find homes in the past nine years.
President Bush has proclaimed November to be National Adoption Month. His proclamation urged Americans to celebrate adoptive families in general and in particular, to consider how to find homes for the country’s foster children. This year, adoption agencies have put a special emphasis on adopting older children and teens from foster care.
Some suggestions various parent groups and agencies have for celebrating National Adoption Month include: buying books about adoption and donating them to libraries; reading children’s books with adoption themes at your child’s school; volunteering to be on an adoptive parent panel at your adoption agency’s meetings for prospective adoptive parents; volunteering to help organize an adoption fair; inviting a speaker to talk to your faith community (or other club such as Kiwanis, PTA, etc.) about foster children in your area; supporting a charity that assists kids in foster care; volunteering as a mentor for a child in foster care; and educating yourself further about adoption issues today.
Within National Adoption Month, National Adoption Day is a day in which many counties around the nation hold finalization hearings for adoptions, often followed by a celebration for the families. Over 3,500 adoptions were scheduled to be finalized this past Saturday. Some communities and adoption agencies hold adoption information fairs, or picnics where potential adoptive parents can informally meet and mingle with foster children.
National Adoption Day is usually celebrated on the Saturday before Thanksgiving Day. For this year only, it was moved up one week so as not to fall on a day of remembrance that will be observed on November 22, the 45th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
National Adoption Day is observed in some form in each of the fifty U.S. states, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Some countries celebrate by having a luncheon or dinner for foster parents in appreciation of their role in preparing children for adoption, or in being willing to pursue foster-adoption.