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History of National Adoption Month
For over two decades, National Adoption Month has been promoted and celebrated every November in communities across the country. Many national, State, and local agencies as well as foster, kinship care, and adoptive family groups help educate their communities through programs, events, and activities that aim to raise awareness about the thousands of children and youth currently in foster care who are waiting for their own permanent, loving families.
Read below to learn how National Adoption Month started and grew to what it is today.
- 1970
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1976
Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis announced an Adoption Week to promote awareness of the need for adoptive families for children in foster care.
- 1980
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1984
President Reagan proclaimed the first National Adoption Week.
- 1990
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1995
President Clinton expanded the awareness week to the entire month of November.
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1998
President Clinton directed the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to develop a plan to expand the use of the Internet to find homes for children waiting to be adopted from foster care.
- 2000
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2008
President Bush provides an explanation of National Adoption Month in Spanish.
- 2010
The Adoption History Project
University of Oregon
Adoption Excellence Awards
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Children's Bureau