Immediate Release
November 3, 2008
Batavia, Ohio. November is National Adoption Awareness Month, designed to increase awareness about adoption and to celebrate adoption as a positive way to build families. Across the country there are over 510,000 children in the foster care system, including 350 in Clermont County. “Locally, many of the children will ultimately be reunified with a family member, but 70 are in our permanent custody and in need of finding a forever family,” said Clermont Department of Job and Family Services Adoption Supervisor Julie Jordan.
Many of the children that need a permanent home are teenagers. “Recently I read an alarming statistic that it is not uncommon for teens in foster care to attend five different high schools because of placement changes,” said Jordan. “We all know how difficult that would be to get moved around that much. Foster care is meant to be a temporary not a permanent solution.”
In Clermont County, there is a continuing need for foster and adoptive families; some children have to be placed with families outside the county, away from their families and friends. “Many of our foster families have adopted the children they took in,” said Jordan. To learn more about becoming a foster or an adoptive parent in Clermont County, visit the Web site www.ClermontForKids.org or call (513) 732-7173.
The Clermont Department of Job and Family Services has a free video available that features local adoptive and foster care families. It is called Somebody Knocks and is available online at www.ClermontCountyOhio.gov, then click on Video Library. You can also obtain a copy by calling (513) 732-7173.
Pictured above: Bill and Mary Stearns of Clermont County and their former foster, now adopted, children
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For additional information about this or other county news, contact Clermont County Communications Director Kathy Lehr at (513) 732-7597 or by e-mail, klehr@co.clermont.oh.us.