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Darius says he participated in the show this year mainly because he didn't want to let Ciceron down. "I knew she was expecting me to be here," he says. He knows that once his 18th birthday comes, the state will stop trying to find him parents. He will, in social services parlance, have "aged out" of the system. The focus will then shift to teaching Darius how to live as an adult. And that's another struggle.
Between 1999 and 2004 in Mecklenburg County, 72 percent of children who "aged out" have relied on public assistance at some point just to scrape by, says Frank Crawford, executive director of Youth Homes, Inc., a private nonprofit agency that provides foster care, family services and group-home care. Forty-three percent of the kids have been arrested as adults. Only 6 percent were steadily employed during a two-year period.
People often think only of the parental need foster children have when they're young, but that need doesn't end there, says Dannette Smith, director of the DSS Division of Youth and Family Services. "When they turn into adults, they need a place to turn to and say, 'I have a family,'" she says.
The number of foster children up for adoption has remained fairly stable in recent years, but the push to get them adopted is increasing. A landmark federal law, the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997, is geared to get children out of foster care and into permanent homes, whether through adoption or reunification with their original families. And it pushes agencies to act fast.
It's a momentous shift, Crawford says. "Back when I first started in this business in the 70s, an agency like mine was defined as successful based on how long we kept a kid in care," he says. "Now, that's a stigma."
Before 1997, there was no federal law mandating a specific length of time a kid could stay in foster care; kids could just languish indefinitely. Now, if a child is in foster care for 15 out of any 22-month period, states must take the parent to court and petition to terminate parental rights, according to the Child Welfare League of America. Still, courts have some flexibility, Crawford says.
"You know, these kids come to us from very broken families, from lots of problems -- substance abuse, domestic violence, poverty. And we don't have the luxury of taking two or three years to fix these problems with these families," Crawford says. "So the family's under a good bit of pressure to get their stuff together pretty quickly."
Common perceptions about adoption -- that it takes years, costs thousands and is so out of reach that families are forced to adopt overseas -- aren't entirely accurate. Allen of the National Council for Adoption says that in the US, 118,000 foster children are up for adoption. Says Crawford, "There have been times when I have sat and looked at the numbers around international adoptions and said, 'That's great, but we've got a lot of kids in our community, not just in our country, who are eligible for adoption and waiting."
Of course, most young American parents want emotional baggage-free babies or toddlers who are the same race as themselves. "There's this mindset out there that if I adopt a kid at 9 or 10 or 12 years old, that I'm missing their childhood," Crawford says. "We need parents for 12-year-olds and 15-year-olds, just like we do for infants and toddlers."
Potential parents are often frightened by the very real likelihood that older children come with problems. "If the kid comes into foster care from toddler age on up, you're probably looking at serious neglect and abuse issues that leave scars on kids," Crawford says. Lots of resources, including financial and psychological help, are available for families who adopt foster kids, he points out.
To adopt or become a guardian in Mecklenburg County, residents must be at least 21 years old, provide three references, undergo a physical exam, take 30 hours of training, get a criminal background check and provide documents such as marriage certificates and divorce decrees. Prospective parents are not required to be married or even to be straight, and they only need to have an income sufficient to pay their bills. They also are eligible for as much as $495 a month to help care for the child. What's more, the child can stay on Medicaid.
Jennifer Freeman of the Department of Social Services urges everyone present at Briar Creek Baptist Church to stand as the children file into the sanctuary one final time. Baskets have already been passed to collect forms signaling interest in a particular child, or adopting in general. (Ciceron would later say 35 families that day expressed interest in adopting.)
For more information about adoption, call 704-336-KIDS (5437) or look on the Web at www.adoptuskids.org/states/nc/.
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Calendar
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NEW WINDOW GALLERY-Pat Rhea-ACRYLIC PAINTINGS-April 05-30 2024 VALDESE, NC 28690 @ New Window Gallery/Play It Again Records
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TheDiscountCodes
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"Blood Residue Analysis of Paleoamerican Stone Tools in the Carolinas" @ Native American Studies Center
- Fri., April 26, 12-1 p.m.
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Brightfire Music and Arts Festival @ GreenLife Family Farms
- Fri., April 26, 4-11 p.m. and Sat., April 27, 10 a.m.-11 p.m.
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ARTS RENAISSANCE, a GALA supporting the ARTS in South Carolina @ the Columbia Museum of ART
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Let your Fingers do the Shopping
Weird, wonderful and just plain useless gifts
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WINE TO WATER: Keeping Up With The Global Water Crisis 1
NC Water Charity Saving Lives
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The 10 Scariest People In Charlotte 1
