A Home Is Where Their Hearts Are

Looking directly into the camera with chocolate-brown eyes framed by long black lashes, Pedro asks for something that most children his age take for granted: “I need love, I need a home, I need a family.”

The lines Pedro sings are part of a rap song he composed and videotaped in the hope that someday, someone looking to add to their family will hear his message and decide to take the 13-year-old home.

Pedro is the voluntary spokesman for a new program called Family Ties, which represents a partnership between a private adoption agency and the Orange County Social Services Agency and Canyon Acres Children’s Services. The goal is to aggressively seek out homes for about 30 of the county’s most difficult adoption cases.

Most adoptive parents are hoping for infants, but many of the children in the Family Ties program, like Pedro, are older. Other children in the program hope to be adopted along with their siblings, or suffer from psychological trauma or developmental disabilities--all factors that tend to scare off prospective parents. Many of the children have been abused, neglected, abandoned or exposed to drugs prenatally.

With Pedro’s help, child welfare workers and the Kinship Center adoption agency hope to bring attention to the desperate need to find long-term foster families and adoptive parents for children with special needs.

“The program is a good step,” said Mary Harris, deputy director of children and family services for the county’s Social Services Agency. “It’s really targeting some of the more challenging children. We are excited about those 30 kids and hope that the program will grow to serve more.”

The program is being closely monitored by the state department of social services as a possible model. Like Orange County’s, the state’s child welfare system is struggling to find a better way to care for children who have been abandoned, abused or neglected.

Thanks to new federal and state legislation making it easier for children to move quickly through the child welfare system, the three agencies have received funding and start-up grants to coordinate their efforts.

By uniting private adoption services with the two public agencies, workers can transfer cases more efficiently, supporters said. The coordination also seeks to limit the number of times that children are moved between foster care and group homes by finding foster families that will make a long-term commitment to the kids or, better yet, plan to eventually adopt the children in their care, advocates said.

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Social Services channels the most difficult adoption cases to the Family Ties program. From there, children are sent to Canyon Acres, a private, nonprofit agency in Anaheim Hills that offers intensive counseling programs. Canyon Acres officials then work with the adoption agency to find foster homes and adoptive parents.

“The program is in response to children being stuck in the system and being bounced back and forth,” said Sharon Roszia, program manager at Kinship Center. “By the time they get through the system they are older, and it’s harder.”

But the program is in its infancy and there are many challenges ahead.

Since its founding 18 years ago, Canyon Acres has placed only two of its foster children with adoptive parents, officials said. The rest have been returned to their birth families or remain in the foster care system.

“The kids need to be connected to a family,” said Daniel McQuaid, executive director of Canyon Acres. “This is what will make a difference in kids’ lives--the system needs to find them permanent families.”

One of the reasons for the low adoption rate is that prospective parents are unable to handle the emotional problems that burden these children. That’s why the Family Ties program offers all the parents--foster, adoptive and birth families--continued counseling.

“What we are saying is ‘We’re going to help you be successful,’ ” McQuaid said. “We have had the experience of having kids fail once they left Canyon Acres.”

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Social Services, which has more than 3,000 children in its child care system, has been struggling against overcrowding at its Orangewood emergency shelter. Officials there are hoping that a successful Family Ties program will ease that burden.

They also say the program will help give hope to children who are veterans of the foster care and group home system, becoming jaded and giving up on finding a family of their own.

“The other day a 10-year-old kid looked at me and with his hand on his hip said, ‘Lady, don’t promise me a home. I’ve been in the system for five years and nobody has found me a home,’ ” said Roszia, the adoption agency program manager. “I said, ‘I won’t make you a promise because I don’t have a crystal ball. But I will do my best and we will try in every way possible find you a family.’ ”

Pedro realizes the odds are not in his favor. But he said he is still eager to do what he can to help himself and others.

“It’s not just for me,” said Pedro, a shy youngster with a passion for writing and football. “It’s also going to help other kids. If [adoptive parents] don’t want someone my age, they could look for someone younger.”