For over two decades, the United States has celebrated the month of November as National Adoption Month. State and local agencies, along with foster care and adoptive family groups all over the nation come together during the month of November to educate, promote, and bring awareness to adoption, particularly adoption of children in foster care.
More than 425,000 children in the U.S. are currently in foster care. Of these, 110,000 are available to be adopted, which means that all parental rights have been terminated. Each year, about 50,000 children are adopted from foster care, but about 20,000 children age out of care with no permanent home or family.
In 2000 a coalition of adoption advocacy groups founded National Adoption Day. National Adoption Day is celebrated at different times in different areas, but this year’s Adoption Day in Bowie County was celebrated on November 28, 2018 at the Bowie County Courthouse, where five different families legally adopted a total of eight children from foster care. The children ranged in age from just over a year old to 17 years of age. Some were adopted by relatives, while others were merely caring families. However, there was one common denominator among all of the parents, siblings, relatives, friends, and adoptees who participated in this monumental day: they were all eager to make legal the decisions they had already made in their hearts.
