family life | F E AT U R E
The Way Home Adoption A New Approach to Family interview by Kimberly Davis Guerra
This topic is very near to my heart. My son was adopted at birth from a local, private adoption agency. We went through three birthmothers before we were successfully matched. It was extremely stressful and at times we weren’t sure if we would have the strength to push through. We are very glad we did.
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doption is a heartbreaking/ lifechanging experience for everyone involved. Especially for those kids who aren’t adopted at birth or at a young age. Often times, they are stuck in the foster care system for most of their childhood. If this happens, the odds are stacked against them that they will move on to live happy, healthy and productive lives. For this reason, A Way Home Adoption was born. The company was formed by two local moms, Ashley Fields and Kendall Monroe. It is their mission to try to combat these staggering statistics and find these foster kids A Way Home.
HOW/WHY/WHEN DID YOU DECIDE TO START THE WAY HOME ADOPTION? If every child aging out of foster care THIS year had a home, we’d have a societal saving of $6.5 billion in the United States! For every youth that ages out of foster care and enters a world of homelessness, poverty, unemployment or the criminal justice system, the houston family magazine
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November 2020
community loses an engaged and contributing member to society. Instead, society gains a lonely adult often in need of continued, expensive public support. Studies show there’s an estimated savings of $235,000 in total public benefits, including child welfare and human services costs, per child for every child that is adopted before aging out of foster care. If adopted before emancipated, children are: • 21% less likely to be suspended or expelled from school, and about half as likely to be delinquent or arrested • 32% less likely to be incarcerated • 34% less likely to have poor interpersonal relationship skills and are 60% less likely to be socially disconnected as young adults • 22% more likely to be in the labor force as young adults However, only 9% of the adoptions will be of children ages 11-17, although the age group makes up one third of those who are waiting. Most of
these older youth will spend an average of 55 months in foster care and have lived in more than 6 homes prior to leaving foster care on their 18th birthday. These children fare much worse than their same age peers. These are just a few statistics describing the outcomes of growing up in foster care: • 25% of emancipated foster youth are incarcerated by age 20 • 68% of emancipated foster youth will receive public welfare benefits within the first four years of aging-out of care • Only 45% of foster youth completed high school • By age 19, nearly half of young women who have aged out of foster care have become pregnant. And by age 20, nearly half of that group has experienced a second pregnancy. This is why we developed and founded The Way Home Adoption, an agency that partners with our local foster care system to find permanent homes for teenagers who have been lingering in long-term foster care, those for whom
traditional adoption efforts have failed. Prior to developing The Way Home Adoption, in both of our careers, we saw over and over again how teenagers in foster care fared worse than their peers. They are moved more often, adopted less, and on their 18th birthday face a life on the streets. It was always clear there was a problem. We decided it was our responsibility to find a solution. We studied the best way to do older youth adoption, and then formed our organization, The Way Home Adoption, based on those findings.
IN LOOKING OVER YOUR STATS, YOU HAVE IMPRESSIVE PLACEMENT RATES. WHY DO YOU FEEL YOU ARE SO SUCCESSFUL? We were strategic about not re-creating the wheel. We leaned on evidence-based approaches that we know increase the likelihood of success for both the youth and the family. We also made sure the stakeholders in our local child welfare system thought our services would fill a niche.
