Bethany’s NOW Program Expands
“In 2013 Bethany launched its NOW (No One Without) campaign to overcome the difficulties matching foster children available for adoption in one U.S. state with families ready to adopt in another state.
Each state has different regulations and restrictions, making interstate navigation, coordination, and supervision a challenge that can be a deterrent to finding children homes of their own.
Now we are pleased to launch phase 2 of the campaign, expanding NOW to further our efforts to place some of the 102,000 waiting children in foster care. Many children have been waiting for two years or more for a home of their own even though families across the country are ready to adopt. In addition, more than 23,000 kids age out of the foster care system without a family each year. Bethany wants to do everything possible to prevent that from continuing.
The initial 8 states involved were Georgia, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The 8 states being added are Colorado, Delaware, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia.
In phase 1 of the campaign, 80 children were featured and 20 were matched with adoptive parents. [1 out of 4!]Even one match would have been deemed a success, but Bethany is building on the great success of that initial effort as they continue to work with the national database they established to help match eligible children with prospective adoptive parents.
There is no time to waste to connect these children with the families who want to give them loving, nurturing homes. The number of vulnerable children is large, but so is the number of couples who want to adopt. Bethany’s NOW campaign is designed to connect these loving parents with the children who need them, and we are encouraged as we launch our expansion in phase 2.”
Bethany’s Successful NOW Campaign Expands[Christian Post 4/18/14 by Bill Blacquiere]
REFORM Puzzle Piece
So… a private adoption agency has found a way to profit off of waiting kids in state foster care programs?
Methinks this doesn’t bode well. How long will it be before the profits to be made lead local CPS workers to snatch even more kids from poor, unwed, unchurched, parents on trivial grounds to feed the unquenchable maw of the crowdfunded Adoption Gospel movement?
It reminds me of how the Catholic Church removed kids from their real parents to place them with more ideologically (and doctrinally) appropriate parents under Francisco Franco.
Bethany is FAR from the only private adoption agency to partner with public foster care. Lifeline also does it as well, for starters.
Like you, I see what having for-profit prisons do – a judge in PA was convicted of receiving bribes, kickbacks and finder’s fees.
As domestic and international adoption has all but dried up, I can see private adoption – foster care agencies getting their piece of the pie. To the best of my knowledge the private agencies do not remove children from homes – public social services do – but if there are a plethora of homes and federal incentives (and there are) what’s to stop this from being the next target of Big Adoption?
I think the “Foster/Adopt” program already IS leading to such abuses. CPS can snatch children at birth from new mothers who are in an abusive relationship. Then if she doesn’t break up with her abuser– which is hard without any supports or counseling– within a year, parental rights can be legally severed under ‘Children in Families’ state laws.
Or having children snatched from unwed mothers with what a CPS worker tells a judge is a “filthy” home, based purely on the social worker’s opinion, with no proof required. In Kathryn Joyce’s ‘The Child Catchers’ a young mother was induced to sign adoption papers under the threat that if she DIDN’T sign, CPS would take her baby anyway. That such a threat was used indicates a cozy relationship between the Crisis Pregnancy Center, the adoption agency, and local social workers.