Understanding Older Child Adoption

My name is Jelani Freeman and I am in the board of trustees for The Barker Foundation. I am also the Program Director at the Congressional Coalition and Adoption Institute where I work directly with Former Foster Youth. I have spent the last few years working with young people and working with foster Care And Adoption Policy, in the office of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and in the Mayor s office in Washington Dc. I began this career path through my personal experience of being raised in the foster care system; I was placed in the foster care system at the age of nine in Rochester, New York, where I experienced six different homes. At age of 18, I left the foster care system without a permanent loving family to rely on or any permanent connection. Through that, this is why I support older child adoption which seeks to place young people from the ages of 6 to 17 who are in the foster care system into loving families. In this segment, I want to talk about the importance of permanency and why kids of foster care need that permanency also.


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