Gov. Matt Blunt announced this week that he is forming a blue-ribbon statewide task force to examine an especially vulnerable group of Missourians: boys and girls who have bounced around the state foster care system, never having found an adoptive family, and who are on the verge of becoming ineligible for services. Of the 9,373 children in the state foster care system, he noted, 24 percent are 16 years old or older. When foster children turn 18, they are “emancipated.”

The state has very little data about how they fare when they leave the foster care system and start managing their own basic affairs: finding food and shelter, getting a job, receiving medical care. That is supposed to change by 2011, the year by which new federal rules require states to be able to track what happens to those kids when it comes to financial self-sufficiency, education and vocational training, housing and health care.

In the meantime, the Children’s Division of the Missouri Department of Social Services is working with the Adoption Exchange — a private non-profit group based in Aurora, Colo., with offices in Bridgeton in St. Louis County and several other cities across the nation — on a project built around photographs of children who are available for adoption. Their pictures are collected in a gallery and used as a way to help potential adoptive parents make connections to specific children as the adults begin the process of qualifying for a state adoption license.

The images of children available for adoption open a window, as the Adoption Exchange puts it, of “the children’s amazing spirits and individuality.”
The program, which is in its third year, featured 240 children and produced 3,005 inquiries and 79 potential adoption placements last year.

This year’s gallery contains portraits of 238 children; the pictures, in the form of a traveling exhibit, will hit the St. Louis region in the first week of September and are scheduled to stop at nine locations through the end of October. These include the Carousel Gallery at Faust Park, the Kirkwood YMCA, Harris-Stowe State University and St. Louis Children’s Hospital. An online version of the gallery also is available. .

In a meeting with Post-Dispatch editorial writers, program administrators explained that the goal is to move people past the idea of adoption as a bureaucratic “case” and help them start thinking about it in terms of the “faces” of children in search of a family.
The mission statement of the Adoption Exchange underscores the importance of its work: “The children are survivors of traumatic abuse, neglect and abandonment. Many face barriers because they are school-aged, members of sibling groups who don’t want to be separated, are coping with physical disabilities and struggling with emotional challenges as the result of their painful pasts. They are our nation’s waiting children. . . .”

Seeing the gallery pictures of Haley, Warren and Faith (two sisters and a brother; 8, 7 and 4 years old, respectively) or Gabrielle, Anyaii, Serenity and Shamar (four sisters; ages 7, 5, 4 and 1), it is impossible to not be moved. The purpose is simple and worthy: to get people to explore the possibility of sharing their lives with these children.

(Pictured: Christine W., 12, and her brother Antwan, 11, are among many sibiling groups awaiting adoption and featured in the 2008 Missouri Heart Gallery. Photo by Jennifer Morrison.)