The DadTalk blog features insights from dads and Responsible Fatherhood practitioners from around the country. Its goal is to start conversations about important issues surrounding fatherhood and programs for fathers today.
Ed. Note: This highlight is a repost from a series entitled Highlights from the Field: Office of Family Assistance Programs at Work for American Families from the Office of Family Assistance Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood Technical…
The 2016 theme for the Children’s Bureau’s National Foster Care Month is “Honoring, Uniting, and Celebrating Families.” This year's theme highlights the important benefits to children and youth when they're connected and reunited with family and, in particular, their fathers. Many fathers want to do more than pay child support,1 they want to have healthy connections with their children and be an equal parent. Youth, especially those who have been placed in out-of-home care, truly benefit from a consistent and healthy relationship…
Ed. Note: This is a repost from the ACF Family Room Blog on November 18, 2015. View the original post.
Early in their relationship, Robin and Kelly Smith knew that they wanted to adopt kids. “We wanted to give back,” Kelly explains. After the couple married, they considered an international adoption, but soon realized that many kids in the US needed permanent, loving homes.
Robin and Kelly were originally interested in adopting younger school-age kids, and began to do research, including…
Ed. Note: This story previous appeared on the ACF FamilyRoom Blog and on the AdoptUsKids website.
Mark and Nicole Hayward had been married for 15 years when they became parents for the first time through adoption from foster care.
As part of their search for their “…
There is tremendous diversity in foster care. From single-parent foster families; children who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ); multiracial families; and grandparents and other extended relatives, it takes a variety of people to support children, youth, and families in foster care. The Children's Bureau's 2015 National Foster Care Month theme, "Get to Know the Many Faces of Foster Care," draws attention to the different roles we can play in the lives of those involved with foster care. And…
Ed. Note: This story originally appeared on AdoptUSKids and on the ACF Family Room Blog.
Marc, 13, of New Jersey (top right) is an honor student in middle school. He’s a typical teenager who likes video games, loves his two family dogs Buddy and Molly and sometimes gets annoyed by his older 15-year-old brother Matthew (top left).
However, Marc’s life wasn’t always so typical.…
Ed. Note: This post first appeared on AdoptUSKids, and the ACF Family Room Blog.
Being a single father of five with a family that’s still growing, Dwayne Herbert relies on his agency’s post-adoption services to balance responsibilities between being a father and his fulltime job.
He has two biological daughters, three sons adopted from foster care, and a fourth adoption underway.
…
Ed. Note: This story previously appeared on the AdoptUsKids and ACF websites. View the posting on the ACF Family Room Blog.
Barry Farmer's family is unusual, but not just because he is black and his son is white.
Although, he admits, that is pretty unusual.
“I would have never thought in a million years that I would adopt a white child,” he said with a laugh. He tells his son, Darrell, 10, that their family is unique. “You probably won't see anybody like us in your lifetime. It's rare.”
“I have no…
The thought of adopting entered my mind one night when I was heading home from my office in DC. I was riding the bus and saw an ad with a father and three children across the aisle from where I was sitting. As soon as I saw that ad, something hit my heart and I said to myself, "I want that." Soon-after, I began the adoption process.
My first introduction to Marcel was at the foster care agency I was working with at the time. I was there with another child that I had at the time and I remember fussing at Marcel along with the other child I had for getting into something they had no…
Ed. Note: This post first appeared in the ACF Family Room Blog. Read the original post here.
The growing importance of keeping children in foster care connected with their siblings, extended families and communities. An increased understanding of the need for permanency for older youth in foster care. More awareness of…