The nonprofit Children’s Bureau will host an information meeting about fostering and adopting children and youth at the Bureau’s new office in Valencia on Saturday, Nov. 17, from 10 a.m. to noon.

November is National Adoption Month, a celebration to bring awareness and attention to the need for permanent families for children and youth in the U.S. foster care system.

Since 2000, Children’s Bureau has finalized more than 2,116 adoptions of vulnerable children in Southern California and continues to promote the need for resource parents through its “Be the Reason” recruitment campaign seen on outdoor ad space and online.

In Los Angeles County, the foster care population exceeds 21,000 children with 500 of those foster children, mainly siblings and older children, waiting for an adoptive family.

While Children’s Bureau places more than 300 at-risk children in loving foster homes and finalizes 100 adoptions annually, the need continues for more individuals and families to become resource parents.

Resource parents (foster and adoptive) are people who are concerned about the well-being of children and their families. Resource parents protect and nurture children, meet children’s developmental needs, support children’s relationships with their birth families and do all of this as a member of a professional team.

“Children’s Bureau turns away at least 50 calls a day because we don’t have enough resource families to meet the demanding need,” said Amy Heilman, Children’s Bureau’s director of Foster Care and Adoption.

Children’s Bureau now also offers a fee-for-service Domestic/Independent Adoption Home Study Program for families seeking the adoption of an infant whose birth mother is making an adoption plan for her newborn child.

In addition to adoption home studies, Children’s Bureau provides approval of Interstate Compact packets, post-placement supervision visits and reports, and finalization services when the birth mother delivers her baby in another state and the family/ birth mother is working with an adoption agency.

Children’s Bureau welcomes every individual regardless of race, age, religion, disability, marital status, ethnic background, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression to become a resource for children. Qualifying families receive training and support throughout their journey.

The Children’s Bureau’s Valencia office is located at 27200 Tourney Road, Suite 175, Valencia 91355.

To RSVP or get more information, call 661-208-4212 or 661-272-9996, email RFrecruitment@all4kids.org or visit https://www.all4kids.org/program/foster-care/.

About Children’s Bureau
Since 1904, Children’s Bureau (www.all4kids.org) has been a nonprofit leader in protecting vulnerable children through prevention, treatment and advocacy. The agency is unique in that it focuses on three key areas for creating impact: strengthening families and communities, building peer capacity and transforming systems and communities.

Children’s Bureau helps 40,000 children and parents each year throughout Southern California with services that include school readiness, parenting classes, family resource centers, support groups, mental health counseling, foster care and foster-adoption and more.

Children’s Bureau is one of the largest investors in child abuse prevention in the country and is developing a national model to transform an entire at-risk community through its Magnolia Community Initiative.