By Rosemary Miller

The holiday season brings gatherings with family and friends sharing warm thoughts, each other’s company and special Christmas Masses.

When I was in college, I always looked forward to going home for the holidays, a time of year when being away from family is especially difficult. The holiday season is particularly hard for children in foster care. They miss their families and wish that circumstances were different. Some have been in foster care for years, and await the day when they can have a family to go home to every Christmas.

For many months, you have seen in The Montana Catholic children who are in Wendy’s Wonderful Kids, a signature program of the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption. The program provides grants for public and private agencies to focus on moving children out of foster care and into adoptive families. The emphasis is on children who have been waiting a long time.

Since the program’s inception five years ago, the Thomas foundation has been collecting data to determine the best methods for helping older children in foster care find adoptive or permanent homes. Research measured the adoption or other permanent placement of children in Wendy’s Wonderful Kids—with its child-focused recruitment of families—compared to the standard model by which kids in foster care await placement.

The research found that children in Wendy’s Wonderful Kids had a 170 percent better chance of being adopted than did those not in the program. The research results were particularly encouraging for children who were older and had mental-health disorders. If they were in Wendy’s Wonderful Kids, the likelihood of adoption was 300 percent greater than if they were not in the program. Through Wendy’s Wonderful Kids, social workers can carry limited caseloads. This allows them time to develop relationships with children who need placement, and to focus on the types of permanent families needed for the children to succeed.

Each December, the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption sponsors a one-hour TV special titled “A Home for the Holidays.” The program, which CBS will broadcast on Dec. 21 at 6 p.m., will feature interesting stories about adoption of children who were in foster care. Be sure to tune in.

For more information about adopting a child through Wendy’s Wonderful Kids, contact social worker Leslie Martin at Catholic Social Services of Montana, 406- 442-4130.

We ask that you give thanks to God for your ability to be home for the holidays, with your family and friends.


Rosemary Miller is executive director of Catholic Social Services of Montana.


Published in The Montana Catholic Online, Volume 27, No. 12, December 16, 2011.