Helping All Children in Need

Here at the National Adoption Center, we’ve been following closely the recent events in Haiti. While we are encouraged by the seemingly limitless number of people who want to adopt these “earthquake orphans”, we are equally aware that there are nearly one-half million children and youth in our own nation’s foster care system that also want and deserve a family. Many of these children have been in care, waiting two years or more years for a permanate home. We hope this tragedy will encourage more people to open their homes to children in need. And we hope many prospective parents will look within our own borders to create their forever families.

Haiti Update

Americans frustrated by the usual lengthy wait of at least 18 months to bring their adopted children home from Haiti have been given a helping hand by the United States government.

On January 18, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and the U.S. Department of State announced a humanitarian parole policy allowing orphaned Haitian children to enter the U.S. temporarily on an case-by-case basis, to ensure that they receive the care they need. The policy applies to children who have been adopted by U.S. citizens or who have been matched to prospective adoptive parents who are U.S. citizens.

Tens of thousands of Haitian children have been orphaned by the devastation. Even before the quake, there were 380,000 orphaned children in Haiti, according the United Nations Children’s Fund.

Stirred by the plight of these children, Americans throughout the country have responded with an outpouring of offers to take them into their homes. In Pennsylvania alone, in the two days after Governor Ed Rendall brought 53 orphans from Port-au-Prince to Pittsburgh, the Allegheny Department of Human Services received 430 phone calls from people wanting to become adoptive or foster parents for them. In Philadelphia, over 300 such calls have come in to the National Adoption Center since the airlift from Haiti.

The National Adoption Center applauds those who want to open their homes and hearts to these deserving youngsters. However, we hope families keep in mind that there are other children who are also deserving of a loving family—the 130,000 children across the country in foster care waiting for permanent homes. Sixteen hundred of them are in the Delaware Valley.

For a free information packet regarding adopting children from the foster care system, call 215-735-9988, or visit the website at www.adopt.org.

Haitian Orphan Update

This is the most recent information we have on the children in Haiti whose lives have been upended by the devastating earthquake that hit that country. For some children—several hundred—adoptions were in the works at the time of the earthquake. The safety of those children is in question, and efforts are being made to locate the paperwork associated with their adoptions.

A group of 53 children was brought to Pittsburgh, PA. by Pennsylvania Governor Edward Rendell. They had been living in a Haitian orphanage run by two sisters, formerly from Pittsburgh. The children are now in custody of the Allegheny County Children and Youth Services and will be placed in foster homes after they leave Pittsburgh Children’s Hospital where they were taken from the airport.

Most of those children already have adoption plans in place. For the others, it will take considerable time to learn whether or not they have family alive in Haiti and whether they will eventually be available to be adopted. If they are to be adopted, prospective adoptive parents will need home studies which can be conducted by a licensed adoption agency.

Contact us for additional information or you may contact the Allegheny County Children and Youth Services—412-473-2000 or Three Rivers Adoption Council—412-471-8722 or jwilson@3riversadopt.org. Media may contact Gloria Hochman at 215-588-0506.