2000 Annual Report

Adoption Program
Before a child can be placed, a willing family must step forward to adopt. Spaulding for Children actively recruits families through several activities, including: media relations, making presentations throughout the community to religious institutions, civic organizations and professional associations; staffing booths or tables at community festivals, fairs and other celebrations; posting recruitment information in grocery stores, malls and other highly trafficked, public areas; hosting recruitment events open to the public such as picnics, indoor parties and luncheons; and participating in the cooperative promotion of adoption awareness and recruitment efforts with other partners in Adopt2000.

During 2000, Spaulding for Children’s Adoption Program set a new agency record by placing 116 abused and neglected, waiting children with new adoptive families, thanks to generous grants from Burlington Resources, Harry S. and Isabel C. Cameron Foundation, Conoco San Juan–Lobo Philanthropy Committee, The Clayton Fund, Inc., ExxonMobil, Rhonda and L. Paul Gerson, Houston Adoption Initiative of the Greater Houston Community Foundation, The Hoglund Foundation, George and Mary Josephine Hamman Foundation, Houston Foundation, Lamar High School’s Community 101 class, LIATIS Foundation, Linda and Ken Lay Family, McGovern Fund, Memorial Drive Presbyterian Church, St. Luke’s United Methodist Church Outreach Committee, Vivian L. Smith Foundation, Strake Foundation and Swalm Foundation. Of the children placed, 37 are African-American, 19 are Hispanic and 60 are Anglo or other. The largest sibling group included 3 children. The oldest child placed was 17 years old. The program set another agency record by finalizing 102 adoptions in 2000.

Offered in both English and Spanish to provide greater access for the Hispanic community, PRIDE courses prepare foster and adoptive families for the challenges of parenting abused and neglected children. 126 prospective foster and adoptive parents received PRIDE training in 2000. We also partnered with Casey Family Programs to provide a teleconference model of PRIDE training. This made the course available to many who otherwise would have been unable to access the service due to distance from, or scheduling conflicts with, traditional PRIDE sessions.The agency also improved its adoptive placement success rate from an already-impressive 88% to a nearly-unheard-of 93%. At the same time, we also saved Texas taxpayers well over $100,000 in foster care fees for each child adopted, bringing Texas’ total savings to more than $90 million over the agency’s history.

Thanks to Spaulding for Children’s experience and highly efficient management, the average cost per adoption in 2000 was approximately $11,000. This is well under state and national averages, and allows each dollar invested by our contributors to reach more abused and neglected children.

Foster Care Program
Texas CAN!
Through Texas CAN! (Texas Cooperative Adoption Network) Spaulding for Children collaborates with foster care agencies across the state of Texas to share its expertise and experience in adoption. The aim of the project is to aid these agencies in adding adoption to their other programs. In addition, the project’s partners are working collaboratively toward the facilitation of intrastate, trans-regional adoptions and the development of a standard “home study” which will be implemented statewide.

Six agencies partnered with Spaulding for Children in 2000, enabling the organization to place 32 children through this program. This represents 20% growth over the number of partners involved in the project in 1999, and a 45% increase over 1999 in the number of children placed through the project.

Partnering agencies in 2000 included: The Arrow Project (statewide sites), The Bair Foundation (in both Dallas and Amarillo), Buckner Children and Family Services (Dallas), Casey Family Programs (Austin), Houston Achievement Place and Therapeutic Family Life (Houston).

The Texas CAN! project is made possible through generous grants from The Hogg Foundation for Mental Health and Rockwell Fund, Inc.

There are many children in foster care under the supervision of the Texas Department of Protective and Regulatory Services who still await adoption and many who are ineligible for adoption because they have not been freed by the courts. For these children, Spaulding for Children offers its Foster Care Program.

This program supports foster families by providing a broad spectrum of services delivered by a Spaulding caseworker who is assigned to each family. Caseworker support ranges from regular, monthly and bi-monthly home visits and weekly phone visits to ensure that the child’s safety and other needs are being met, to advocating on the child’s behalf in the courts, to serving as an information resource on necessary related topics, such as health, education or developmental issues to name a few. Additional support is provided through picnics and other events offered for foster families as well as seasonal parties and a toy drive at Holiday time.

The Foster Care Program served 80 children in 2000, providing 10,022 days of foster care services. Of the children served, 12 were moved into permanent placement with adoptive families. In addition, 21 other children either achieved permanency through alternative plans such as kinship care, or were reunited with their birth families.

Post Adoption Program
The Post Adoption Program supports the second half of our mission: “providing on-going support after placement.” The services it provides are as important as the adoption itself in helping children succeed.

Adopting an abused and neglected child is a courageous act, since parents know the child will need extraordinary amounts of love, nurturing and dependability to overcome the traumas experienced prior to adoption. For these children, healing can take years, making adoption a lifelong process.

In 2000, 26 new families joined the Post Adoption Program, which served 117 families and 274 adopted children in all. 1,119 hours of case management services were provided to families. Group therapy, designed specifically to deal with adoption issues, was accessed by 26 families (83 individuals) for a total of 1,520 hours of service. The program also provided adoptive families with an additional 481 hours of individual and family therapy delivered by community mental health professionals.

Post-adoptive families received 554 days of respite care. 11 children received five days of respite care at Camp Buckaroo, a day camp collaborative between Spaulding for Children and UCP of Greater Houston (formerly United Cerebral Palsy of Greater Houston).

Thanks to the generous support of the Tapeats Fund, Family Day Out provided service to 106 children and parents over eight months of sessions. Spring and Summer camps expanded from five in 1999 to six in 2000. These included four camps for pre-teens and two for teens, all designed exclusively for adopted children. 36 children participated in 2000. The year ended with a fun family weekend at Camp Gateway, where 10 families (49 individuals) participated.