Senator Kane Promotes Awareness Of National Adoption Month

November Adoption Awareness Month Is A Kane Family Celebration

Senator Rob Kane (R-32) will join thousands of individuals, government agencies and child advocacy organizations across the country in celebrating National Adoption Month in November, and National Adoption day on November 21st.

“National Adoption Month is special to my wife, Marcy, and I because we adopted both of our children. Becoming parents to our son Aidan, who is now five, and our daughter Deana, who is now three, was the greatest achievement and experience of our lives,” said Senator Kane.

National Adoption Month began in Massachusetts as National Adoption Week in 1976, and has been celebrated as National Adoption Month since 1990. The 10th annual National Adoption Day will be celebrated on November 21st. On November 20, Probate Courts in several parts of Connecticut will be working with the state Department of Children and Families to finalize adoptions in open court so that families can publically tell their stories and celebrate their children becoming legally permanent members of their families. Several other events will be held across Connecticut this month. Meanwhile, the main focus of National Adoption Month in Connecticut across the country continues to be foster care adoptions.

The focus of this year’s National Adoption Month is “Answering the Call: You Don’t Have to Be Perfect to Be a Perfect Parent”. The goal is to spread awareness and to recruit and retain foster and adoptive parents for our nation’s waiting children. Nationally, there are approximately 496,000 children currently in foster care, 130,000 of whom are waiting for permanent families. Of the children in need of adoption nationwide, 31 percent are African-American and 43 percent are older than eight.

“Marcy and I both know firsthand that your heart does not know the difference between becoming a parent through birth or adoption. We adopted our children, both of whom are from South Korea, when they were infants. However, we have spent time with a lot of other adoptive families, and their experience and ours tells us that love for one’s child does not depend on how old he or she is when joining your family, on who the birth parents are, or on where the child is from originally. If you think that adoption may be right for you, National Adoption Month is a wonderful time to look into it,” said Senator Kane.

More information about National Adoption Month and National Adoption Day is available at www.childwelfare.gov, www.nationaladoptionday.org, and at www.AdoptUsKids.org.

More information about adoption and foster care in Connecticut is available from the state Department of Children and Families at www.ct.gov/dcf, by calling 1-888-KID-HERO, or by sending an e-mail to [email protected].