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(Paramus, NJ) January 17, 2007 - The Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption has awarded a grant to Children's Aid and Family Services to support a Wendy's Wonderful Kids adoption recruiter, helping the program expand into all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Canada this month.
As an adopted child and an American success story, Wendy's founder Dave Thomas believed it was unacceptable for any child not to have a safe, loving and permanent home. That is why he created the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption - to focus on the thousands of waiting children in foster care who want to be adopted. Wendy's Wonderful Kids is the signature, direct-service program of the Foundation that dedicates funds raised by Wendy's restaurants directly to finding adoptive homes for children in foster care.
Today, 2,150 children are in New Jersey's foster care system, waiting to be adopted.
"Wendy's Wonderful Kids gives hope to New Jersey's children in foster care, who are just waiting for the right family to find them," says Bob Jones, Ph.D., president & CEO of Children's Aid and Family Services. "We are thrilled that the Foundation is helping children in New Jersey and nationwide."
In only two years, Wendy's Wonderful Kids recruiters have helped more than 1,000 children in foster care be matched with or adopted by their permanent families.
The Wendy's Wonderful Kids model is simple and effective: New Jersey's Wendy's restaurants and their customers raise funds for the Foundation, which used those funds to issue a grant to Children's Aid and Family Services. The agency hired a Wendy's Wonderful Kids recruiter, who focuses 100 percent of the time on finding permanent, loving families for New Jersey's children in foster care.
Now that Wendy's Wonderful Kids is in all 50 states, the program's goal to match 8,000 - 10,000 children with adoptive families by 2010 is within reach.
"Children deserve loving, permanent families, and we need people working diligently to find those families for them," said Rita Soronen, executive director of the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption. "Wendy's Wonderful Kids is a deliberate, aggressive, accountable program, and it is working."
According to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, more than half a million children are in the U.S. foster care system, and 114,000 of them are just waiting to be adopted. They need someone who can devote the time and rigorous child-focused strategies to finding them permanent, loving adoptive families. The job of Wendy's Wonderful Kids recruiters is to spend that time and apply their expertise on behalf of each child in their caseload.
For more information about adopting a waiting child, please call 201-226-0300.
Statistics are provided by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families Administration on Children, Youth and Families, Children's Bureau's Preliminary FY 2004 Estimates as of June 2006: www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb.
The Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption is a non-profit 501(c)3 public charity dedicated to dramatically increasing the adoptions of the more than 140,000 children in North America's foster care systems ready and waiting to be adopted. Created by Wendy's founder Dave Thomas, who was adopted as a child, the Foundation spearheads programs such as Wendy's Wonderful Kids, which puts adoption recruiters in all 50 states and Canada to find permanent, loving families for children in the foster care system, and Adoption-Friendly Workplace, which encourages employers to offer adoption benefits to their employees. The Foundation also works with adoption advocates and officials to streamline the adoption process and make adoption more affordable for families. As the only foundation dedicated exclusively to foster care adoption, we are driven by Dave's simple value: Do what's best for the child. To learn more about the Foundation's work, please visit www.DaveThomasFoundationforAdoption.org.
Children's Aid and Family Services is one of the largest regional, nonprofit human services organizations serving northern New Jersey. The agency is fully accredited and has more than 100 years of experience in building futures for children, families, and communities. Its mission is to help children, families, and communities to heal, to learn, and to grow.
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