Church Drive Seeks to Find Homes for Black Children

Seven years ago, members of the Ward African Methodist Episcopal Church near the USC campus decided to do something about the growing number of black children abandoned by their parents to foster homes and group care agencies.

They created “Room for One More,” a program designed to encourage black couples and individuals to adopt black children and give them a loving home.

So far, Ward A.M.E. parishioners have adopted five children, church officials said. The program has also helped 26 other children in Los Angeles County to find homes.

Fifty Still Waiting

Although the program has helped reduce the number of black homeless children in the county and has helped draw attention to the problem, there are still about 50 youngsters in Los Angeles County awaiting adoption and 300 more will be ready for homes in the near future.

On Friday, church officials and representatives of the state Department of Social Services gathered at the church on 25th Street to kick off a campaign aimed at encouraging the other predominantly black congregations in the county to help find homes for the children.

“If we can find 54 churches and one family (that wants to adopt a child) in each church, those children could be adopted and have families in three to six months,” the Rev. Frank M. Reid III, pastor of Ward A.M.E. Church, said. “We’re trying to spread the word to all the churches in the city to let them know that this is a mechanism that can help them in the process of adopting children.”

Reid said it is essential that churches spread the word about homeless children, as black families are apprehensive about dealing directly with government agencies.

The Church Is Easier

“Most (prospective adoptive parents) are put off when you tell them about facing state or county mechanisms,” he said. “But (the church) makes it easier.”

Father George Clements, pastor of Holy Angels Catholic Church in Chicago and founder of an Illinois adoption program for black children, addressed the audience at Friday’s event.

“It is not the responsibility of Ronald Reagan to take in homeless black children,” he said. “It is the responsibility of the black community to take in homeless black children. This thing is ours. We created, we spawned those little black babies. Now it is up to us to do something.”

Clements agreed with Reid that the church must serve as a conduit between state adoption agencies and blacks interested in adopting.

Whereas white homeless children are in great demand by white couples, young blacks are not so lucky.

Dependent on Family

That is because blacks have traditionally depended on the extended family to take care of their young, Clements said. But with urbanization and the gradual destruction of the extended family, more and more black children are abandoned by their parents and have nowhere else to go other than foster homes and group care programs.

The Ward A.M.E. Church program is one of six community organizations contracted by the state to help recruit minority families to adopt homeless children. Individuals interested in adopting are referred to the county Department of Adoptions, which reviews all adoption requests.