National Adoption Day helps 16 Amarillo area children join families for the holidays

Thanks to 12 loving families, 16 children were officially added to their existing families last Thursday as the Amarillo area celebrated its annual National Adoption Day at the Randall County Courthouse.

November is National Adoption Month, a celebration of adoption that started in 1984 under President Ronald Reagan when he declared a national adoption week. It later expanded in 1995 under President Bill Clinton to the entire month of November.

The theme for this year's celebration was "Adopted: Wanted, Chosen, Loved." A puzzle and heart icon for the event served as a symbol of families coming together through adoption and "finding their missing piece."

More: Amarillo area businesses see a rise in guests for this Thanksgiving holiday

On this morning, a room full of families and their new members sat anxiously amid colorful decorations and refreshments, waiting for their names to be called to make their adoptions official by a judge.

Judge Tatiana Frausto was one of two judges who had the honor of presiding over adoptions throughout the morning at the courthouse. Frausto spoke glowingly of her role in the family event.

"What an amazing way to start my day by uniting these wonderful families," Frausto stated.

Executive Director of Amarillo Angels Gwen Hicks talked about her group's mission and the importance of foster families. The Amarillo Angels is a local nonprofit that provides support and encouragement to assist foster care families in building relationships.

"This is a really special fun day, and we are just happy that Amarillo Angels is a part of it," Hicks said. "The number one thing that families of fosters say that they need is support, and that's why we are here."

Getting children adopted in the area, like every other part of the country, is a collaborative effort involving different agencies and organizations to unite families. A key component in facilitating getting kids to loving families for foster care is Child Protective Services (CPS).

Rebecca Robinson, a kinship supervisor with CPS, was at the event to support many of the children she had placed with family members who were being adopted.

Kinship supervisors supervise families that take children from family members due to various circumstances that have them removed from their primary home. Robinson stressed that siblings are more likely able to stay together if taken in by a family member.

"We try our very best to keep them with families so that siblings can be together," Robinson said. "A sibling relationship is the longest one that most of us will ever have."

Robinson said that there are 483 kids at this time awaiting adoption in the Amarillo region. She also stated that the older a child gets statistically speaking, the harder it is to place them for adoption.

More: Potter County Commissioners' Court extends county burn ban through February