Permanence

Despite being in 10 different foster homes in five years, how did I manage to not let instability take over my life?

The stereotype of foster children is that they will age out of care and enter a life filled with poverty, unstable relationships, and overall instability. I did not - well poverty maybe - but what student who supports herself doesn’t carry the label “starving student?”

Anne Melcombe and Kirsty Stormer are adoption recruitment workers for Wendy’s Wonderful Kids.A North America-wide program, WWK was started by the Dave Thomas Foundation to find homes for waiting children and is administered in BC by AFABC. Anne and Kirsty do child-specific adoption recruitment; they match families to the needs of specific waiting children.

A primer for parents and parents-to-be

I’ve read about using lifebooks to help adopted children make sense of their lives. Why use lifebooks with children before they’re adopted?

Adoptive mom Carol Bolton describes how she struggled but succeeded in developing an attachment relationship with one of her newly-adopted sons.

Last year, we adopted our two sons. Though siblings, the boys had been placed in different foster homes and barely knew each other.

David, aged two, was placed five days after birth with foster parents who were very experienced and knew how to transition a child to a new family. David moved in with us first and the process went very smoothly.

Two innovative AFABC programs prove that, in many cases, there are people in a child’s existing network who are willing to adopt the child. Social worker Anne Melcombe, of Wendy’s Wonderful Kids, and Kirsty Stormer of Fraser Kids, explain how their programs work.

“You mean I have 50 people who are actually related to me! All these people are my family!” -- Eight-year-old foster child who is shown his family tree after extensive research was done to uncover it.

We must never forget that moving a child into a new family is a life-altering event for the child. Focus on Adoption magazine asked social worker Judy Archer for her top three recommendations for transitioning children into a new family.

It is almost impossible to narrow down my recommendations to just three.

When we say that children waiting to be adopted have "no family" it's rarely true. Most have family--we just haven't looked hard enough.

In the adoption world, we often state that children waiting to be adopted have “no family” and, therefore, need a new one.

Adopted at 16, April O'Neil explains that accepting the love and involvement of a new mom isn't an automatic or smooth process.

Because of the support of my mom, and our choice to go forward with adoption, my life has changed in ways I never would have imagined.

In the last few years, I have graduated from high school, got through my first year at Simon Fraser University and, somehow, managed to convince ICBC to give me a driver’s license.

A youth speaks his mind about aging out of care without an adoptive family

We spoke with Chris Tait, a young man who recently aged out of care, about his thoughts on permanency for waiting children and teen adoption.

How do you feel about aging out of care without having found a forever family?

"Imagine being married to someone for eight years, and then being told that you have to get a divorce and some stranger will choose your new spouse. Then imagine moving in with that person after only knowing them for a little while. What if they don’t like you, or you don’t like them — what next?"