118,000 and I learned about 140 who stil wait this Month alone

There are over 118,000 children in this country whose parental rights have been terminated, whose foster parents are not interested in adopting them, and who are considered "waiting children" looking for families.

Every day social workers send me information about children who need homes. This month we started to use a new format for our matching bash, so for the first time I actually have a count of how many children I heard about this month.

The number is 140 of those who I heard about in October who are still not matched and whose deadlines have not passed for homestudies to be sent in. Some of them are kids I heard about a while back but wasn't able to find anyone interested.

Of the 140 kids, many of them are considered hard to place kids. They are kids with medical issues, or kids in large sibling groups, or kids who are "too old."

Every time I finish preparing for the bash, I am reminded of how we need more families. I need to recruit more people to do it. And if you read my blog you may ask me why I would conclude that I wanted to invite someone to do something so hard. And not only do I think about recruiting, but I think about each kid and if we could parent them ... and then conclude that this is not the right time to add to our family. And so I conclude that for now, recruiting others and matching them with kids is my way to help.

The bottom line is this: Kids need parents. Even "bad" kids -- kids who are labled bad because people don't understand their mental illnesses or their diagnosis or their attachment issues or their organic brain damage or their sensory integration issues. These kids, especially, need to have a solid home to support them when they make mistakes (not if, but when). They need parents for life who will stick with them, constantly model a better way of life, and give them unconditional love, even if they can't live in their home for safety reasons.

It is kids like these, who, if WE don't find ONE person willing to make a lifelong commitment to them, will drain society of it's resources and head into a life of criminality, addiction, homelessness, poverty.

It looks like a couple of our kids might head there anyway, or are well on their way. But when it all comes down to it, when they are adults out there somewhere, feeling lost and alone, they will know they have people who love them and a home they can turn to.

So we need to recruit, but we need to do so differently. We need to stop talking about how good it will make people feel, or how nice it will be for them to have kids, and start talking about how these kids HAVE to have families. They need people strong enough, determined enough, faithful enough to step up to the plate and take that chance, knowing it will be the hardest thing they ever do.

Email me and I'll tell you how. Yeah, I'm talkin to you! :-)