Honoring National Adoption Month
Raising awareness to support children in foster care and families brought together through adoption
November is National Adoption Month, and here at Sellers Dorsey we are celebrating adoptive parents and recognizing families brought together through adoption from foster care. We are grateful to have leaders at the Firm who have experienced the unique journey of adoption from foster care first-hand, as well as leaders who are adoptees themselves. This November, Sellers Dorsey joins with national leaders, state agencies, child welfare providers, and courts around the country, to acknowledge the unique gifts and challenges of adoption from foster care.
Every day, dedicated kinship families, foster parents, and community members step forward as supports to children that they know and love, or that they haven’t met yet, to offer lifelong family commitments to children in foster care. Children who are awaiting adoption have often faced traumatic experiences including abuse and neglect. When life’s challenges prove to be impossible to overcome for their biological parents, legal connections are severed, and children must often navigate uncertainty, grief, and loss. When extended family, foster parents, and community members step forward to love children through the foster care system, they are committing not only to begin a new, loving, permanent family – they are also committing to walking alongside children through long-term physical and mental health challenges along with challenges to form an identity with new families. These families rely on strong healthcare safety net services to enable healing and ensure children adopted from foster care receive trauma-informed solutions and compassionate mental health supports along the way.
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, about 50% of children in foster care have chronic physical problems such as asthma, anemia, visual loss, hearing loss, and neurological disorders. Additionally, about 10% are considered medically fragile or complex, and many have histories of prenatal substance exposure and premature birth. As of 2019, up to 80% of children and youth in foster care experience significant mental health issues compared to 18-22% of the general population. Fortunately, children adopted out of foster care may continue to receive Medicaid-covered healthcare. At Sellers Dorsey, we focus on improving quality, equity, and access by strengthening Medicaid services to ensure children currently in or adopted out of foster care, and their adoptive parents, receive the healthcare services to help them thrive.
Ready to make an impact?
National Adoption Month serves as an important reminder that adoption is a profound journey that extends far beyond the moment of legal finalization. It’s about fostering lifelong relationships that provide security, belonging, and unconditional support for children who have faced significant hardships. As we recognize the challenges that children and youth in foster care experience, from physical and mental health issues to racial disparities within the system, it is crucial to support them throughout the adoption process and beyond. Sellers Dorsey helps bridge the gap between healthcare and child welfare. Whether it’s through training, technical assistance, consultation assessments, solution development, implementation, and more, our subject matter experts have decades of experience across the full continuum of child and family well-being services.
By raising awareness, advocating for improved practices, and providing resources to both children and adoptive families, we can help pave the way for healing, stability, and brighter futures for children in foster care, and their families brought together through adoption.
Connect with our Child and Family Well-Being Team:
Senior Director, Katie Renner Olse
Email: kolse@sellersdorsey.com
Associate Director, Rachel Marsh
Email: rmarsh@sellersdorsey.com
Learn more about our innovative solutions in child welfare.
