[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 8]
[Senate]
[Pages 11540-11541]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       NATIONAL FOSTER CARE MONTH

  Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, today I rise to bring your attention to 
National Foster Care Month. As we celebrate this National Foster Care 
Month, we must remember how far we have come, we must also remember how 
far we still have to go. In my 27 years as a public servant, I have had 
the opportunity to meet thousands of children in foster care. I have 
personally witnessed the sheer joy they find in having a ``forever 
family,'' and the utter pain when they do not. I firmly believe that 
there is no such thing as an unwanted child, merely unfound families. 
Let me tell you a story about one of these extraordinary children. A 
few years ago, a young woman named Sarah, who spent 14 of her 19 years 
of life in foster care, was asked by a Member of Congress what the word 
``permanency'' meant to her. She said, ``many people in the system 
wrongly think that permanency means staying in one place for a long 
time, but to me, permanency means having someone to call when I am not 
sure if I should wash my new white skirt with a blue shirt, or to take 
me to Karate lessons, or to cry with me when I break up with my 
boyfriend.''
  For those of us who have had that kind of permanency in our lives, 
living without it seems unfathomable. But the fact remains that each 
year, over 100,000 children in the United States

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are dreaming of that kind of permanency, 25,000 children leave the 
foster care system without ever having found it, and almost 600,000 go 
to bed every night wondering if they ever will find it. Every child 
deserves the opportunity to be in a loving family where they are 
nurtured, comforted, and protected. Adoption gives children who have 
been abandoned, orphaned, or abused a second chance to find happiness 
in a secure and supportive family.
  Over the past decade, the number of children being adopted has risen 
dramatically, and according to the 2000 Census Special Report, over 2 
million children today live in adoptive homes. In the last year alone, 
over 6,500 children have been listed on the web page of Adopt US Kids 
and 1,500 of these children have found families through this process.
  In closing, I would like to share with you something said in the 
award winning book, There Are No Children Here, about foster care 
children. ``By the time they enter adolescence, they have contended 
with more terror than most of us confront in a lifetime. They have had 
to make choices that most experienced and educated adults would find 
difficult. They have lived with fear and witnessed death. Some of them 
have lashed out. They have joined gangs, sold drugs, and, in some 
cases, inflicted pain on others. But they have played baseball and gone 
on dates and shot marbles and kept diaries. For, despite all they have 
seen and done, they are--and we must constantly remind ourselves of 
this--still children.''
  During National Foster Care Month, I encourage you to log on to 
www.adoptuskids.org to learn more about the children who are waiting in 
our country and across the Nation for the safe, loving home they 
deserve. As Mistral said, ``Many things we need can wait, the child 
cannot. To him we cannot say tomorrow. His name is today.''

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