Kids Find Permanent Home in Brooklyn Park During National Adoption Month
The lives of nearly two dozen children in Hennepin County will be forever changed this month thanks to the actions of 13 loving families.
“The adoptive parents are the ones who are making a permanent, lifelong connection, legal connection to these kids,” said Melissa Sherlock, Hennepin County’s program manager for foster care and adoption. “Saying that they’re going to be their families forever, which is amazing. And I can’t say it enough, how grateful we are to those folks and how much they’re needed in our community.”
Sherlock says that 21 children will find a loving home during National Adoption Month in November, including two kids who were adopted by their grandmother, Brooklyn Park resident Shirece Turner.
Shirece Turner of Brooklyn Park finalized the adoption of her two grandchildren this month.
County officials say 68.6 percent of adoptions in 2020 have involved family members, friends or others whom the children already know.
“Kids who have to be removed from their homes, their parents, that’s a traumatizing experience for them,” Sherlock said. “They end up losing their parents, and their house, sometimes their pets and their siblings, their belongings, their school, their friends. And so we really find that if they go to a place where they’re familiar with that person, that reduced their trauma through that move. It doesn’t eliminate it, but it reduces it. And so we’ve really been working on our efforts to get relatives involved and to get kids with relatives whenever we can.”
Through October, there have been 146 completed adoptions in Hennepin County, compared to 172 during the same time period last year.
To find out more about foster care and adoption, you can go to the Hennepin County website.
