November Is National Adoption Month

National Adoption Month (November) and National Adoption Day (Nov. 20) are meant to raise awareness about the adoption of children and youth from foster care. President Obama's proclamation for this year's observance is here.


Prof. Lisa Kelly is coauthor of Adoption Law: Theory, Policy and Practice (2006), KF545.A7 .M33 2006 at Classified Stacks. A new edition of this important casebook is due out soon. (I have only found one other adoption casebook, a much shorter work that also covers assisted reproduction.)

On National Adoption Day (Nov. 20), courts in 19 Washington counties will "host adopting families as they welcome new members and remove more children from the foster care rolls." The Washington State Courts and the Department of Social and Health Services report in a joint press release:

As of Aug. 1, 2010, there were 9,114 children living in foster care in Washington, with 1,323 of those available for adoption — meaning the courts had permanently terminated their biological parents’ rights to raise them. By comparison, when Washington state courts first began celebrating National Adoption Day in 2005, more than 9,500 children lived in foster care and far fewer (about 1,080) were available for adoption.

DSHS has a page with information about adoption in Washington here.