Teens Wanted

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Amber is getting a makeover at the mall. Not that she needs one. She is picture pretty already, with blond hair and fetching green eyes. But this is a special occasion, and Amber, 16, wants to look her best. She's being filmed for a Wednesday's Childsegment on KTVB in Boise, Idaho, so she can find a family. A forever family that will do the ordinary things families do--go on picnics, eat out and see movies together. Amber has had four foster-care placements during the past two years. "I just want a mom and dad who will love me the way I am," she says with an intensity that betrays the depth of her yearning.

Ten years ago, you could have filed Amber's quest under impossible dreams. Teenagers were so hard to place with adoptive families that scarcely anyone tried. "If you talked about finding a home for an old er

child, that meant the kid was 7 or 8," says Chester Jackson, associate executive director of You Gotta Believe, a New York City adoption agency that specializes in placing teens. But today the odds are much improved for adolescents like Amber. Of the 119,000 children awaiting adoption in the U.S., roughly half are 9 or older and about 40,000 are 11 or older. In 2002--the last year for which there are federal statistics--about 10,000 such kids found adoptive families. That's up sharply from 1998, when 6,000 were adopted, and most experts believe that the annual figure has continued to rise. "The miracle is not that it's possible to place teens," says Jackson. "The miracle is that it's not so difficult."

There are several reasons for the turnaround. A big one is the 1997 Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA), which offers financial rewards to states that increase the number of kids moved out of foster care and into adoptive homes. Under ASFA, state adoption divisions receive a $6,000 bonus for every child adopted above and beyond the mean number placed the previous three years. Another important funding source has been the Dave Thomas Foundation, created by the late founder of Wendy's, an adoptee himself, to encourage the adoption of foster kids. The foundation has funded three model programs, including You Gotta Believe, that are specifically aimed at placing teenagers.

Within the foster-care community, there is a growing awareness that teenagers need families too and that this need does not evaporate at 18, when kids "age out" of the foster-care system. "It's pretty sad," says Jackson, "when I get a call from a 24-year-old guy who's got no one to ask for help or advice except his former social worker, or from a young woman who is having her first baby and there are no grandparents in the picture."