by Ashika Sethi
Forty-four children were adopted into thirty families Thursday morning. Though their journeys in the foster care system have finally come to an end, their pathways to permanency were surely overwhelming.
Just like Dorothy and her motley crew, these children’s yellow brick roads were filled with twists, turns, and unexpected deterrents. These children likely bounced from foster home to foster home, school to school, and across a spectrum of different therapies on their long journeys.
The average time a child is involved in the foster care system is two years.That’s two painstakingly long years in a child’s life that they’ll never get back.
There are nearly 4,000 children in the state of Texas that are waiting for adoptive placements and are navigating their own yellow brick roads on the path to permanency. There are 119 children waiting for adoptive placements in Travis County alone.
It’s on us to make sure these children don’t get lost in the process. We can provide a helping hand to these children in our community and help guide them down the long and winding road. As The Honorable Darlene Byrne said at Adoption Day - we need families waiting for children, not children waiting for families.
And just like Dorothy would say, there’s no place like home. The 44 children that were adopted on Adoption Day can attest to that. Let’s help the other 119 children find homes as well.
Holidays Advocacy November 2017
