12 October 2017
Fostering & Adoption Jersey is due to launch its annual recruitment and awareness campaign which starts on Saturday 14 October. The campaign coincides with National Adoption Week in the UK, which runs from 16- 22 October.
This year the campaign will run over three weeks instead of one week as in previous years. The decision to make it a longer campaign and name it ‘Fostering & Adoption Month’ is due to there being a larger local demand for foster families, compared to the need to find adoptive parents.
The campaign aims to highlight the need for Islanders to consider fostering and urges anyone who feels they may have the right skills to visit one of their pop-up information sites over the month.
Sarah Michael, Senior Adoption Social Worker, added “Part of National Adoption Week is to celebrate adopters and acknowledge the successes of adoption over recent years. We will always need adopters to be ready for different types of children, especially older children and siblings; however we will be focusing on fostering during this month’s campaign.”
Sharing individual stories
As in previous years, the campaign aims to find families for the most vulnerable local children while providing an opportunity to encompass all aspects of adoption, to clarify the adoption process, reflect the challenges of adoptive parenting and share individual stories.
Emmy Lindsey, Manager of Fostering & Adoption Jersey, said “We are very fortunate in Jersey to have many wonderful foster and adoptive parents, but there is still a real need for more people to come forward. We want to be able to offer the right family placement for the children who come into our care.”
The team will be setting up a series of pop-up sites across the Island, as follows
- Saturday 14 October: St Martin’s Parish Hall
- Friday 20 & Saturday 21 October: St Helier Town Library
- Saturday 28 October: Communicare, Les Quennevais, St Brelade
Each of the sessions will run from 10am to 4pm and will provide an open and friendly location for the public to pop along for an informal chat and ask any questions they may have on either fostering or adoption.
gov.je