Posts tagged children

The Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption is an official partner for the first-ever national day of giving, Giving Tuesday.

On Tuesday, Nov. 27, the collective power of charities, families, businesses and individuals will transform how people think about, talk about and participate in the giving season. Giving Tuesday will create a national moment around the holidays dedicated to giving, similar to how Black Friday and Cyber Monday are synonymous with holiday shopping.

Our goal, and the goal of many others, is to push Giving Tuesday to the forefront of the holiday season in November, rather than making it an afterthought in December or the New Year.

Please join us Nov. 27 to help make this the biggest season of giving yet. By giving to the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption this year we can help make the lives of children in foster care so much better by giving them the greatest gift of all — a family to call their own, forever.

By Rita Soronen | CEO and President

Every day for the past 20 years we have celebrated, communicated, provided free materials and toolkits, and used this time to try to increase public and media attention, for all the right reasons – to elevate the awareness of the children we serve and to drive Americans to take responsibility for the children in their communities. In November, adoption gets the spotlight across the United States during National Adoption Month.

And as we have in years past, we will join in to shine a light on the importance of adoption. So please call us, like us, tweet us, pin us and post. But as we go about business as usual, it is dangerous to let this important month become wallpaper or Hallmark-ish, or worse – lost in the shuffle of political rhetoric, weather and global news. This month literally represents the lives of hundreds of thousands of children. Children who don’t have parents to explain the difference in political parties, parents to hold them tightly when they’re scared after watching tragedies on the news, parents to teach them about the world in which they live.

Read more …

By Rita Soronen | CEO and President

We are in the thick of political debates, fiscal cliffs and sequestration. Meanwhile, children who have no voice in any of these discussions continue to linger in foster care, age out, and wonder when we adults will get a grip and work harder and smarter on their behalf.

There are some significant policy efforts circling now that can positively impact children and families in the child welfare system, for example:

Adoption Tax Credit / Making Adoption Affordable Act (H.R. 4373) and Senate Adoption Tax Credit Bill (S. 3616)

In 1997, Dave Thomas advocated for the original adoption tax credit legislation, to help offset the expenses related to adoption and to support families who stepped forward to adopt from foster care.  Since the original legislation, adoption tax credit efforts have been a non-partisan issue, widely supported by Congress, but subject to extensions, changes and rotating authority – from the Small Business Act of 1996 to the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001, to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in 2010 and currently the Tax Relief Act at the end of 2010. During this time, tax credits have ranged from $5,000 to $13,170. It has applied to special needs and non-special needs adoptions, has been indexed for inflation, has allowed “carry-forward” credits, and for a period was fully refundable.

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In its blog, Fostering Media Connections shares six powerful stories of adults who lived their young lives in foster care. In their own words, hearing the varied experiences of former foster youth shows what its really like for children in foster care. These stories are all the more reason why we all need to help the more than 100,000 children in foster care find loving, supportive, and permanent families.

http://fosteringmediaconnections.org/2012/10/10/in-my-own-words/

We need your help. The U.S. Senate has introduced a bill (S. 3231) - the Families for Foster Youth Stamp Act. The bill would create a semipostal stamp to raise funds for effective programs to improve outcomes for youth in foster care. 

Half of the funds would go towards finding permanent homes through adoption, kinship care or guardianship. The other half would go to the State Court Improvement Program to improve the ability of courts to aid children in the child welfare system.