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| Help Me... | |
For a Glossary of Adoption terms click here. HELP INDEX
WHO ARE THE CHILDREN? There are more than 85,000 children in foster care in California; about 48% of whom are placed with relatives. The majority will return home to live with their family as soon as the problems that caused their entry in care are sufficiently resolved. About 6,000 children each year will not return home and will be adopted. Most of these children will be adopted by their foster parents, or by foster-adoptive parents with whom they have been placed. About 3,000 California children need an adoptive family every day. The children listed in the California Kids Connection database are often those who wait the longest for their adoptive family. They are either already legally free for adoption, or are expected to become free and the court has given approval for Internet photolisting. California needs adoptive families for the much larger number of children whose need for privacy prevents their images being made available in a public medium. If you are not the family selected for a child listed here, perhaps you may be appropriate for another child who cannot be listed. Nearly all of California's foster children are in the care of county Departments of Social Services and under the jurisdiction of the Juvenile Courts. Most live in foster family homes supported by each individual county, or by private, non-profit foster family agencies throughout the State. Some children live in shelters or group homes because there are not enough foster family vacancies for every child. Many of the children have brothers or sisters with whom they live, but often such sibling groups do not live together because of the shortage of families available. Some children live in group homes or residential treatment facilities because of needs and behaviors that require a more intensive level of care than a family can provide. The goal for these children is to return to family care, hopefully by adoption. Youth Talk is a new feature that lets teenagers participate in finding their adoptive family by posting letters, drawings, photos, audio and video. All Youth Talk items are pre-screened by our professional staff before being added to the youth's page. If you are interested in learning more about a child or children you find at California Kids Connection you should complete the "Match" interest form for that child. All the information you provide goes directly to the adoption worker who has responsibility for finding the child's adoptive family. A copy of your information also goes to California Kids Connection so that we can follow up with the adoption worker to see what happens. NOTE:All information you provide is kept confidential by law once it has been received by the adoption worker and California Kids Connection. However, you should note that the form you send to us is not a secure transmission and you may wish to limit your information disclosure accordingly. The Adoption Worker will review your information and should respond to you in a reasonable period of time. Many workers have numerous children for whom they are seeking homes and it may take a few weeks to receive a reply. Obviously, the more interested in the possibility the worker is the faster you are likely to receive a response. But please don't assume that because you have not heard within a week you are not being considered. Workloads can be high and workers may receive a lot of forms for any particular child. Priority will usually be given to individuals or couples who already are approved for adoption by a licensed adoption agency. The Discussion Forum is comprised of three discussion or message boards; one for you to tell California agencies about your family, one to publicize adoption-related events, and one to discuss the issues of adopting foster children. We will soon be adding chat rooms to this area. You can simply browse the messages on the boards. If you choose to become a member of a board you can add your own posts, and elect to receive copies of all the postings. Forum posts are monitored and moderated by California Kids Connection staff. The usual rules of internet board conduct apply. If you are experiencing any problems using California Kids Connection you should check to see if the following minimum requirements are in place: Settings: If, while searching on California Kids Connection, you get a "page not found" message, your security settings may be incorrect. Go to the top menu on your browser and click Tools and then Internet Options (Edit and Preferences for Netscape). Go to "Advanced" and make sure that "Accept Cookies" is checked, as well as TLS 1.0, PCT 1.0, SSL2 and SSL3 under the Security section. Click the Apply button and Close. If you still get "page not found" messages just click "Refresh" on your browser bar. HOW TO REACH California Kids Connection STAFF: California Kids Connection |
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