Children Awaiting Parents

Children Awaiting Parents (CAP) is a national not-for-profit charitable organization that recruits foster and adoptive families for special needs children who have been waiting the longest for a "forever" family. CAP has been in existence since 1972^[1].

Mission

CAP's mission is to recruit foster and adoptive families across the United States for children who have been waiting the longest for a family. Our waiting children are often older, minorities, sibling groups who wish to be placed together, or children with emotional, mental and/or physical disabilities - children who are typically categorized as "special needs" or "hardest to place".

Programs

A Right to be Heard is a CAP initiative that empowers waiting children to speak in their own words about their interests, challenges and hopes. Through creative video portraits children speak about things that are important to them. The goal is to break barriers that prevent potential adoptive parents from seeing waiting children as unique individuals. These beautiful videos can be seen on our website or in DVD format.

One Child at a Time, a new initiative in New York State, provides intensive child specific recruitment in collaboration with the local agency to find homes for the longest waiting children.

The Heart Gallery is a national movement that showcases artistic portraits of children currently in foster care and available for adoption. CAP's first Heart Gallery was held in December, 2005. Nearly 25% of the featured in the first exhibit have joined their forever families! CAP's second Heart Gallery exhibit was held during November 2007 at the Strong Museum of Play in Rochester, New York. It will be on display at various local venues throughout the Western New York area during 2008.

Friday's Child, a weekly television segment hosted by WHAM TV 13 Associate News Director, Don Alhart, in Rochester, New York, features a local waiting child in an effort to recruit forever families.

Faith in Children, is a special adoption recruitment campaign initiated by CAP to reach out to the community through faith-based organizations to identify and recruit permanent families for America's waiting children.

Wendy’s Wonderful Kids In 2007, CAP received a grant from the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption to implement a Wendy’s Wonderful Kids project. Wendy's Wonderful Kids is the direct-service signature program of the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption that combines the fundraising of Wendy's, Wendy’s customers and the aggressive grants management of the Foundation. The Foundation has awarded grants to local adoption organizations in every state to execute aggressive child-focused recruitment programs targeted exclusively on placing foster care children with adoptive families.

Media

CAP provides media outreach in regional and national publications throughout the United States. Children are featured weekly in newspapers, and are also featured in magazines and parent group newsletters. We have recently had children featured on the cover of Fostering Families Today, and in national magazines including Latina and Brain Child. Additional media outreach projects have included the production of regional and national posters for National Adoption Month, as well as advertisements which promote adoption.

References

1. ^ "childrenawaitingparents.org". Childrenawaitingparents.org. http://www.childrenawaitingparents.org/history.html. Retrieved 2008-11-06. ^{[dead link]}

External links

• CAP Home Page