San Diego County is renewing its commitment to find loving, permanent homes for children now in temporary foster care. KPBS Morning Edition Anchor Deb Welsh spoke with County Supervisor Dave Roberts about the new "Exceptional Families Adoption Campaign."
It turns out Roberts practices what he preaches.
DAVE ROBERTS: We have a wonderful forever family with our five children and we have been really blessed by keeping three siblings together and adding them to our two boys, so we are really, really pleased with our forever family.
DEB WELSH: Is there a screening process or some kind of filtering that potential host families or foster families have to go through?
DR: The process the first time took us about eight months to go through the screening process. There are a bunch of things they have to do. They do home inspections and different activities, you take training classes. There are very few requirements. You don’t have to be married, you can be older, you can be younger, so very few requirements.
DW: Now are these with you forever per say?
DR: The children go from foster care to adoption, and then they are your children and it’s your “forever family.” That is a term that they use within the system to create permanent families and so we have legally, in our case, adopted the five children into our home. Many other couples that are in the system have adopted and created their own families.
DW: Many you could tell me a little about the special needs of some of these kids?
DR: So you know, kids are in the system for various needs. They could be medically fragile children, they could be sibling sets were many people just want to adopt young. They could be older children, they could have been exposed to drugs or other conditions through the mother. They have special needs, and really what I believe and Chairman Grey Cox believes is they just need to have loving parents.
