Local events scheduled for National Adoption Month

As part of National Adoption Month, the Children's Coalition will host Orphan Sunday Candlelight Vigil from 6 to 8 p.m. Sunday at the Common Pleas Courthouse gazebo to raise awareness of children who need homes.

Evelyn Martin, regional director of Lutheran Family and Children's Services, said the event is meant to celebrate adoptive and foster families and raise awareness and provide education about adoption and foster care.

Several adoptive families have been invited to tell their stories. The Missouri Heart Gallery, a photographic display of children available for adoption through the state foster care system, will be displayed.

The Children's Coalition includes Lutheran Family and Children's Services, the Missouri Children's Division, CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates), Room For One More, Missouri Baptist Children's Home Children and Family Ministries, EPIC (Early Prevention Impacts Communities) and Hope Children's Home. Attendees can talk to people from those organizations, and informational handouts will be available as well.

More events are planned for Nov. 8 at St. Andrew Lutheran Church, 804 N. Cape Rock Drive.

The annual Room For One More 5K Run/Walk and 10K run starts at 8 a.m. Saturday, with registration at 7 a.m. More than 200 participants are expected. The goal is to raise money for adoption grants, Martin said.

Part of the festivities will include a children's fair from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at St. Andrew Lutheran. From 1 to 2 p.m., a panel discussion on adoption will be conducted.

Carlotta Warmack, adoption specialist at the Missouri Children's Division office in Cape Girardeau, said its circuit, which includes Cape Girardeau, Bollinger and Perry counties, includes:

• 43 foster homes; one group home -- Hope House in Jackson; 56 relative or kinship homes -- children placed with relatives or someone who has a relationship with the child; and 216 in state custody.
• Of those in state custody, 20 have a goal of adoption and seven are not in preadoptive homes.
• State custody is when children have been removed from their biological families and placed in foster care.

"We try and place them with other relatives first, and if no relatives are available, they have to go to a foster home," Warmack said.

For more information, call Warmack at 290-5609.

rcampbell@semissourian.com

388-3639