Florida children were adopted all over the state on Wednesday, as local communities celebrated National Adoption Day. There were ceremonies in many courtrooms, including in Tallahassee, where four kids found permanent homes before all parties headed across the street for a reception at the Capitol.
Mike Watkins is the CEO of Big Bend Community Based Care, the agency that oversees adoptions in the capital region. He says the goal is to find a family for all children in state custody, and that foster parents tend to make the best adoptive parents, since they already have a bond of trust with the child."Foster care is a temporary solution, and it’s only intended to be days, weeks or months", Watkins said. "So, we really want to move them back in with their moms and dads, and if it’s not their biological mom or dad, if we can’t correct those issues, we want to get them as quickly as we can to an adoptive family."
Watkins says there is no perfect adoptive parent; you just have to have a calling for it. More than 700 children are available for adoption from the state.