There are more than 400,000 children presently in out-of-home care in the United States. Almost half of these children are Black.
Many Black children remain in foster care or residential care facilities because there are not enough families seeking to adopt them. Black children are expected to remain in foster care 32 percent longer than white children. There remains a need to identify couples and singles to adopt infants at-risk for entering the foster care system.
Father George Clements, an African American priest, who is also an adoptive parent, had a simple concept called One Church, One Child. If every church would support the adoption of at least one child, then Black children would not spend one third of their formative years growing up in the Child Welfare system.
While raising a child within his race and culture is preferred, it is not always possible. Today many prospective adoptive couples and singles are considering transracial adoption. Certainly, no one should enter transracial adoption lightly or adopt transracially because they believe it will expedite an arrival of a baby, as the decision to adopt transracially is a very serious one.
Children should be raised in permanent loving families. If the prospective adoptive applicant indicates they are open to adopting a child outside of the applicant’s race and culture, Adoption STAR will consider the applicant for all children, not just for bi-racial children or children of mixed race. What does this mean? To illustrate the meaning: if a white couple is seeking to adopt transracially they should be open to adopting a child of all races, including a child with two black birth parents, not just an infant whose birth mother may be white and whose birth father may be black.
For more information on the adoption of Black infants or to consider learning more about transracial adoption, please contact Adoption STAR by or email.
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