By Kathy Millar

Thousands of American couples travel oversees every year to adopt children abandoned in foreign countries. China, Russia, Romania, Bosnia, Central and South America -- all have become routine destinations for parents "with loving homes and lives to share with a new daughter or son." We are a nation of big heartedness, a country vast enough to take in countless numbers of unwanted children and transform them into new generations of Americans.

But what about America’s unwanted children, thousands relegated to institutions or foster homes by overburdened court systems? "In Dallas, Texas alone," says Beverly Levy, "there are more than 1,700 foster kids, over 500,000 across the country, many of whom are available for adoption."

For Levy, Co-chair of Target: Kids in Court, and U.S. Attorney Paul Coggins, who chairs the project, moving American children out of foster homes and institutions and into "homes of their own" has become a crusade, a collaborative campaign whose goals are quickly outpacing the group’s original vision.

Partnering to Reinvent the System

Coggins and Levy, who is also the Executive Director of the Dallas CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) agency in Dallas, have been eyewitnesses to the plight of abused and neglected children and juvenile offenders caught in the court system and warehoused inside state and county institutions. They were determined to "reinvent" the system and so when an opportunity to convene leaders from all the agencies involved with children in the court system materialized, Paul Coggins and Beverly Levy went for it.

They brought together all the key players in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area, representatives from the courts, juvenile departments, law enforcement and local, state and federal government. The leads of legal and social service agencies and state bar associations were there as well.

"First," said Coggins and Levy, "convening all the key agency heads meant if we could not fix the systemic problems, we had no one to blame but ourselves. We saw that the surest way of ending the ‘blame game’ was to leave no empty chairs around the table."

Target: Kids in Court

The result -- Target: Kids in Court -- was an unprecedented collaboration, a one of a kind partnership between local, state and federal agencies. Red tape, turf- battles and agency overlap are rapidly disappearing, and today, Target: Kids in Court is not only changing the lives of thousands of at-risk children but also providing a model for similar efforts around the nation.

The secret of TKIC’s success? Collaborators in Dallas-Ft. Worth quickly identified a shared vision -- to move children out of the system quickly and successfully by addressing all their needs, legal and otherwise, as soon as possible. Each participant in that inaugural meeting pledged to serve on the TKIC Steering Committee and each organization head promised to devote one or more of their top people to participate in the Sub-Committees called "Working Groups." The real key to the success of our collaborative effort," Levy said, "was the strong leadership of an extraordinary facilitator, Evy Kay Ritzen. Her collaborative process was our roadmap to success. She showed us the way.

Technology Is Put to Work

It was the efforts of the Steering Committee and the Placement Working Group that yielded one of the most innovative developments to come out of the initiative -- the creation of "electronic adoption kiosks" that were later placed in the lobbies of two federal buildings in the Dallas-Ft.Worth community.

The kiosks link to an adoption website with photographs of Texas children waiting for homes and biographical information about them, thus putting a "human face on adoption." A companion site features many children waiting across America. These websites remind the same Americans who might travel thousands of miles to help a needy child abroad that this particular journey of the heart might also be completed by reaching out no more than a few city miles or across a few state lines.

Chris and Ken Freshour found children available in Texas via the Internet from their home in Blue Ridge, Georgia. The faces that suddenly appeared on the screen changed the Freshour’s lives, and it was only a matter of months before a sibling group of seven children were calling the Blue Ridge couple "Mom" and "Dad." Ken Freshour, who is a Methodist minister, says he and his wife had always wanted a "big family." Courtesy of modern technology, they now have one -- the seven children from Texas first discovered on the electronic site has brought the total to twelve, yes, an even dozen, Freshour youngsters.

This year, with help from Freddie Mac Homesteps, Heritage Exhibits and affiliated Computer Services, a second generation of kiosks is being designed for placement in Northpark Center in Dallas and other shopping centers, malls, government buildings and stores. President Clinton is so impressed that he has asked Health and Human Services to duplicate the "adoption through technology" initiative nationwide, through a federally-supported national adoption website.

"A national website that could include all youngsters available in public adoptions will give these kids a much greater pool of families to draw from," says Joe Kroll of the North American council on Adoptable Children.

And that’s better than good news -- not only for the 8,000 U.S. children waiting for homes right now -- but for the thousands expected to become legally adoptable over the next few years, when a 1997 law that shortens the time children can live in foster homes begins to take effect.

Phone Calls About Adoption Increased

In Texas, the demand for electronic adoption kiosks is increasing, telephone calls to public adoption agencies have increased from 20 a month to more than a hundred an hour, and the initiative that began with surplus government computers is now the beneficiary of professional design services and technological assistance from private sector supporters like Freddie Mac Homesteps. Beverly Levy and Paul Coggins may have galvanized a movement whose time had come, but like all great ideas, using technology to encourage the adoption of U.S. kids is a notion supported by a growing circle of people, especially those dedicated to making the government work better for its citizens.

Henry Cisneros, President of the Latino network, Univision, wants to go nationwide with the project, as does CASA and the American Bar Association. The Dave Thomas Foundation and the Freddie Mac Foundation are gearing up with ingenious, supportive marketing campaigns and growing technical assistance. Vice-President’s Partnership for Reinventing Government has lauded the effort for its compatibility with NPR’s Hassle-Free Community program in Dallas-Ft. Worth and for its success in delivering better service to the American people. But the people who probably appreciate the initiative most are the ones we have to wait a few years to hear from -- kids like 5-year old Nolan or 12-year-old Jeremy, children in Texas and across the nation, who may grow up, happily, as the embodiments of a system that decided the best use of technology was to better the human condition.

For More Information

For more information on how to adopt or become a CASA volunteer advocate for a child in court, visit the CASA site.

For more information about the Dallas-Forth Worth effort, contact Beverly Levy at BLEVY@dallascasa.org.

About the Author

Kathleen Millar is a speechwriter at the National Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPR), representing the U.S. Customs Service, Department of the Treasury. You may contact her at (202) 694-0105 or kathleen.millar@npr.gov. You may also reach her at the telecenter near her home at (304) 728-3051, ext. 255 or k.millar@jctc.org.

Related Resource

National Adoption Information Clearinghouse website