 For the last almost 14 years we at Addy’s Hope have been working to find permanent, loving homes for the children in the Texas foster care system who have no hope of returning to their biological family. We refer to these children as being “legally free” because their biological parents’ parental rights have been terminated by a court, and the children are now “legally free” to be adopted. Because we are an adoption-only agency, the process we use to place these children in the families we recruit, train and support as adoptive families is called “matched adoption.” Quite literally we are matching children who are in need of families with families who are committing to a lifetime of love, care, and nurture for these children they have never met - kind of like having biological children if you really think about it! We commit to biological children before meeting them also!
However, over these last 14 years, we saw so many children “grow up” on TARE - the photo listing of children who are available for adoption in Texas. You would see their pictures change every couple of years with the old ones at the bottom of their bio. Then you would notice that they would be gone. You would hope it was because they found a family, but in your gut you knew it was because they had turned 18, and we had failed them. We as an agency dedicated to finding homes for all the waiting children - those children who are legally free and waiting for a family - a loving and forever family had failed to find them a family. Therefore they had “aged out”. They had turned 18 with no family. They just hit a magic number that our world has decided means you are an adult and that meant they had to be able to function in life all on their own on that magical day of their 18th birthday. Even typing that puts a pit in my stomach as I think of my own kids as they turned 18. None of them were ready to take on the world successfully on their own the day they turned 18! They still needed the support and guidance of parents and even extended family at times to be successful! Our staff had many conversations about what we could do with the ones we failed to find families for who simply aged out. We felt there had to be more we could do, but we came up empty during those conversations other than to try to work more diligently to match families and recruit more! One day, during the COVID pandemic—a time when starting anything for any organization seemed nearly impossible—God spoke to me. He placed a vision on my heart: to open a facility for young men aging out of foster care. It was an unexpected calling, especially since I didn’t feel equipped to work with men between the ages of 18 and 22 because of some things happening in our own family. In fact, I felt like the least qualified person for the task. However, one day in the local Wal-Mart parking lot, as I sat arguing with God about why I should not be the one to open such a facility, God asked me a simple question. It went something like: If you don’t open this place, what will happen to the young men that I have already made this part of their future? That question hit me right in my soul! While I had no idea of the how or the timing, I immediately knew that I was going to be opening a facility for young men aging out of foster care! Now that we are so close to having young men actually moving into the apartments, that conversation sitting in my car in that Wal-Mart parking lot is even more meaningful! I can’t help but go back there and think that I am about to meet those exact young men that God was asking me about - those young men that he had already made Future Hope part of their future when he put this project on my heart! It is such a good reminder for all of us that God knows our needs and is often even working to meet it way before we even have the need! These young men were not thinking about what they were going to do when they aged out of foster care when they were 12 or 13 years old. But that is exactly how old they were when God told me to start building and already had it slated as part of their future - a solution to a problem they did not even know they would have! We covet your prayers over the next few days and weeks as we read over referrals and have to make decisions about accepting young men into our Future Hope program. We want to be obedient to God’s leading and walk in his discernment as we read the applications we receive. We know these young men are more than what is written on paper! We are so thankful to all of you who have given of your time, talents, and resources to get us to this place! All of you prayer warriors who have covered us in prayer and held our arms up during the times when we became weary are truly a treasure we value beyond words! Future Hope, like so much of Addy’s Hope’s story, is once again a testimony of how God equips those he calls and provides for our Yes! And I cannot wait to share with you the testimonies of those who are about to walk through the doors and how God is going to move in their lives….
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 Matched adoption is something that is not clearly defined in the Texas child welfare system. Matched adoption should be a process that places a child(ren) into a home with the sole purpose of adoption. What matched adoption is not is foster-to-adopt! Foster-to-adopt is where a child is placed in a home as a foster placement usually with the intention of the child returning home to the biological family. This means the objective is for that child to be loved and cared for very intentionally as a temporary placement. If the child(ren) is unable to return home to the biological family and no safe relatives or other known and safe adults are found, then the child would be available for adoption. That is a year to two year process depending on the details of the case. When you have an agency telling a family, "Here is a baby that you can take as a foster placement, and you will most likely be able to adopt him!", you can see where hearts are broken, and confusion ensues on what everyone's role is in the case! This is what happens way too often with foster-to-adopt homes in the Texas child welfare system.
Matched adoption is designed for permanency! It is a process that places children in the Texas child welfare system who are legally free for adoption (they have no chance of being returned to their biological family) into approved adoptive homes without any fostering. A true matched adoption program will not use fostering standards, but will have created an adoption program based on the adoption minimum standards and the adoption contract of DFPS or one of the SSCCs (if you can find an SSCC with an adopt-only contract) - not the rules and policies of fostering! Because the children have to be legally free to be placed in a matched adoption, most of the children are going to be older (at least for us as a non-fostering agency). We require families to be open to children who are 6-10 years of age or above. There are also large sibling groups (3 or more children) that are available and often have younger children as part of them. The decision of which family the child will be placed with is made by the child's team of case manager's, therapists, CASA, attorney ad-litem, and any other adults the team decides can give valuable input into the decision. The decision is not made by Addy's Hope - we simply represent our family and why we feel they would be a potential match. We at Addy's Hope recruit, train and support our families with the goal of permanency in mind! Families know from the beginning that we expect them to make a life-long commitment to the child that we place in their home. We have designed our They Wait program as a model that will bring the best possible match between child and family. What sets us apart from many organizations is our dedication to relationship through the process. We are committed to getting to know our families so that when the time comes to match our families with a child, we can do the best job possible at knowing the family's strengths and weaknesses to know if the family would be able to provide all that a child needs to be successful for a lifetime! Our case managers are assigned to our families from the beginning of the application process and are with them until the very end. We do not contract out any of our services. Our case manager will complete the application process, they will complete the training, and they will complete the home study approval process. Through all of these interactions, they are getting to know the family which allows them to make the best match possible between child and family! Another key benefit of our process is that families get to know their case manager! This bond is crucial for successful placements. Children in our They Wait program come from backgrounds of abuse or neglect, which can lead to challenging behaviors. Having a strong relationship with their case manager provides families with essential support, ensuring they have someone to turn to during difficult times. At Addy’s Hope, we are committed to helping families maintain placements so children can remain in their adoptive homes. Unlike foster-to-adopt placements, which allow families to discharge a child with just 30 days' notice--creating instability--matched adoptions provide permanency. Many older children and sibling groups face challenges that make them vulnerable to repeated disruptions, often leaving them to "bounce" through the system until they age out. Matched adoption is different. It means a family says, "You are mine as if I gave birth to you, and I will stand by you even on the hardest days." It’s like marriage—if we approach it with an easy way out, it’s more likely to fail. But if we commit to making it work, it has a much greater chance of lasting. We want our children to experience the security of a matched adoption, not the uncertainty of a 30-day notice. There are critics of matched adoption in the Texas child welfare system. They say that matched adoptions fail. My first response to that is, yes. They do sometimes. So do biological families. In fact, we would not have adoption to begin with if biological families did not fail children. So do we stop trying to place children back with biological families because they failed? Of course not! In fact, we place children with the same biological family multiple times before we will terminate their legal rights giving the children a chance at stability! Why then do we apply the logic of some matched adoptive families not doing what we hoped they would do to an entire process? At Addy's Hope, we have placed nearly 300 children from the Texas foster care system into permanent homes. Last year, 60% of the children we placed were 11 years or older, and 50% were part of sibling groups of three or more who remained together. Recently, I received a report from a private company involved in Texas' foster care redesign, stating that placements keeping siblings together in their area have dropped by 10.9%. This highlights why matched adoption must be a key solution for the Texas child welfare system. Over the past 13 years, we have proven that matched adoption provides stability and permanent families for older children and large sibling groups. Texas has incredible Heart Galleries showcasing children who have been waiting years for a family. However, these galleries are only effective if families are willing to adopt older children and if agencies are committed to supporting those families. Addy’s Hope is proud to be one of those agencies. We specialize in placing older children and sibling groups, and the demand is clear—we have a waitlist in North Texas and receive calls from families across the state looking for a program like ours. Our hope is that more agencies recognize the urgent need for matched adoption programs. Together, we can work toward the day when no child is left waiting in the system.  On August 31, 2023 in Texas alone, there were somewhere between 4,711 and 8,005 children in our foster care system who had their parental rights terminated by the courts - legal orphans - and were needing to be adopted! Why the discrepancy? Well that will have to be a conversation for another time! For now, you are welcome to explore the numbers in the DFPS Data Book here.
I would call either one of those numbers an orphan crisis in our own backyard! One half of those children stuck in our foster care system are between the ages of 9 and 17 years of age. I want you to think of the last few people you have heard talk about adoption. How many of them told you that they are dreaming of bringing home a sixteen year old to start their parenting journey just as the child is learning how to become an adult? Statistics would tell us not many of you would be able to say that your friend’s adoption story sounded like that! Most of the time when people begin an adoption journey, it is with the dream of bringing home the precious baby to raise from the beginning! Parents want to be there from the first possible moment and love, teach, protect, and empower their children as they grow into adulthood. So where does that leave our thousands of children 9 and above lingering in the Texas foster care system waiting for the adoptive family they are dreaming of? It leaves them waiting…. We at Addy’s Hope strongly believe that the Texas foster care system should be emptied of waiting children - children who are legally free for adoption but linger in the system simply because of their age, medical needs, or being part of a large sibling group. In fact, several years ago, we coined the phrase “Hoping for Zero” to remind those in our circles that emptying the Texas foster system of waiting children is completely possible! Dr. Karyn Purvis and her work at TCU these past 30 years has been instrumental in helping us understand the impact of trauma on the brain and behavior. One of our favorite Dr. Purvis quotes is, “I’ve never once met a child who can’t come to deep levels of healing if you understand what they need.” We at Addy’s Hope believe as Dr. Purvis does that every child in Texas has the ability to become all God created them to be no matter what their past has been! Unfortunately not all who work within our system feel this way. I will never forget one of the first trainings I went to after we opened our They Wait program. I sat there listening to the man who basically trained all adoption workers in the Texas system at that time make the statement that his organization did not encourage families to look at the photo listings because often the children on the photo listings had more severe “issues” and were too hard to support in adoption. So he just told his families not to look. There was another man in the training who was an executive for another large organization in Texas who jumped in and agreed saying his organization had the same philosophy. I sat there briefly in disbelief knowing full well that Addy’s Hope was going to not only allow our families to look at those photo listings, but would be encouraging our families to look and consider these older children! My shock wore off just enough for me to speak up in that room of workers being trained to share with those two men what a shame it was that they would dismiss any child as “unadoptable”! I assured those men that my organization would be working tirelessly to recruit, train, and support families for every one of those children on those photolistings because no matter what their circumstances or behaviors, they each deserved a family to call their own! I assured them that Addy’s Hope would happily support any family willing to step up and provide the healing home that any of those children needed! That fateful day of training was 13 years ago. We have placed over 200 children from DFPS into permanent, adoptive homes since that day! Seventy percent of those children have been 6 years of age and older with 23% being 10 years and older. We believe in keeping siblings together: 63% of our placements put siblings in the same home (often reuniting siblings who had been separated in their foster placements prior to being placed in our homes) and 49% of our sibling groups placed included 3, 4, or 5 children! With those numbers, we have earned the right to stand with Dr. Purvis and say that there is no child that cannot be brought to absolute and complete healing when given the right environment! If you are interested in learning if your home might be the right environment to bring healing to one (or two or five) of the thousands of children still waiting in Texas, let us know by reaching out here! Together, we really can empty the Texas system of waiting children! #HopingForZero  Welcome to National Adoption Awareness Month 2024! What better day to restart our Addy’s Hope blog than the first day of our favorite month of the year!
From our very inception 20 years ago, God has called us to a very unique niche of the adoption world. At Addy’s Hope we believe strongly in the power of adoption, but we believe equally as strongly in the power of children being raised by the parents with whom they share biology. As we share with you in our blog, I believe you will see those beliefs unfold in how we operate our programs and strive to serve those in our community. We believe strongly that adoption involves all three parts of the triad: child, biological family, and adoptive family. To try to remove any of the three from the story leaves a hole in the lives of the children affected by adoption. It is our goal and truly our heart to honor all three in the work that we do here at Addy’s Hope. As an introduction to us, since this is our first official blog post in awhile, I wanted to share with you our mission, vision, and values! I believe these best encompass who we are and how we serve those who entrust us with their adoption journey! Mission: We exist to be the hands and feet of Jesus by establishing programs that lead, quip, and advocate for youth, parents, children, and families. We provide hope and support to break generational curses as we work alongside those we serve with Kingdom purpose. Vision: We envision a world where youth, children, parents, and families have a voice and are equipped to navigate God’s plan and purpose for their lives. We desire for parents in crisis pregnancy to have a voice for their and their children’s future. We inspire to see a world where adoption is understood and valued by children, biological families, adoptive families, and those in decision making positions within the state of Texas. We envision a child welfare system where adoption is prioritized and the number of children in the Texas foster care system waiting for adoption and aging out of the system diminishes each year. Values: Faith is our foundation. We will be spirit led in cultivating the spiritual growth of staff and those we serve. Relationship is our driving force. We build relationships through connection, communication, listening, and being present. Integrity is our guidepost. We operate in integrity through honesty, transparency, and holding strong to our values and beliefs. Empowering is our goal. We empower each other and those we serve by equipping, educating, supporting and celebrating. Passion is our catalyst. We propel forward as world changers by using innovation and problem solving to impact those we serve and beyond. I hope you will come back each Friday over these next few weeks of November to celebrate adoption, learn what the landscape of adoption from foster care currently looks like in Texas, and find out how you can be part of the solution to the orphan crisis we have right in our own backyard! Welcome to our story and the story of those we serve! Thank you for going on the journey with us… HollyAnn Petree Mom of 9 (6 adopted and 3 biological), Lovey to 6 Founder and Executive Director of Addy’s Hope Child Advocate |
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