JACKSON COUNTY, Miss– 12 kids found their forever with 7 families in a mass adoption on Monday. But there are still plenty of kids with no permanent place to call home.
Foster care. Opening your home for a child to treat as your own. It happens in Mississippi, and to adopt through the Department of Human Services in the Magnolia state, foster care is the first step.
“It’s not a difficult process, but an extensive one,” says Sherba Hinton with Adoption Services at DHS.
First there’s the home inspection, then the nine months of licensing to be a foster parent, then maintaining that license every year. In order to adopt from the foster care system in Mississippi, you must first be a foster parent. Sometimes the process takes over a year or more to get started.
“We always need more families,” says Hinton.
There are no private adoptions with DHS because these kids are wards of the state. The state must handle the adoption.
“We’re recruiting for sibling groups, teenagers and medically fragile kids,” says Hinton. Many of the kids that have medical problems have those issues due to previous abuse and neglect.
To learn more about adopting or becoming a foster parent in Mississippi, see the MDHS website.
