Adoptions

Bill Cotterell • News Journal capital bureau • August 1, 2008

TALLAHASSEE — The Department of Children and Families celebrated a record year for public adoptions Thursday. DCF Secretary Bob Butterworth said the state is running a massive advertising and public-outreach campaign to find “safe and loving homes for all of Florida’s forgotten children.” The Explore Adoption effort will focus on children who wait the longest in foster care — teenagers, sibling groups and children with disabilities — as well as appealing to older couples, minority parents and others who might not have thought about having a child.

Butterworth and Jim Kallinger, the governor’s chief child advocate, said 3,674 adoptions were completed July 1, 2007, through June 30, an increase of 595 from the previous year. The previous adoption record was 3,389 in fiscal 2003-04.

Gov. Charlie Crist has made it a top priority to reduce the number of children in foster care, and Butterworth said courts and more than 20 community organizations are helping to speed adoptions.

“More children in foster care are finding families than any other time in our state’s history,” Butterworth said at a news conference. “It means more than 3,600 children who were in fear of facing this world alone can lay those fears to rest; they have a forever family.”

One of those children is Kevin Polston, 15, who had been in foster care since he was a baby. He and his five siblings were adopted by a Tallahassee couple who already had four children.

“It was just like one day you come home and they’re like. ‘Okay you’re going to the next one,’ and you’re unprepared or anything,” he said. “Like you come home from school and they’re saying, ‘You gotta go to a new one,’ so that’s what you would do.”

The Explore Adoption program, begun two months ago, has a phone line — (800) 96-ADOPT — and features radio and television advertisements in English and Spanish. Kallinger also said the department is planning a 30-minute television program featuring stories of three families.

“The campaign focuses on the children who wait the longest for homes,” said Kallinger. “Our hope is that the list of children waiting to get adopted will decrease each and every day and we will measure future success in terms of shortening the wait for older children, sibling groups and children with disabilities.”

DCF said about 3,000 children become available for adoption every year, when courts sever ties to their birth parents due to abuse, neglect or abandonment. Only about 40 percent of them land with relatives and another 40 percent get adopted by foster parents, the department said.

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