Children Awaiting Parents (CAP) is a national not-for-profit charitable organization that recruits foster

Foster care

Foster care is the term used for a system in which a minor who has been made a ward is placed in the private home of a state certified caregiver referred to as a "foster parent"....

 and adoptive

Adoption

Adoption is a process whereby a person assumes the parenting for another and, in so doing, permanently transfers all rights and responsibilities from the original parent or parents...

 families for special needs

Special needs

In the USA, special needs is a term used in clinical diagnostic and functional development to describe individuals who require assistance for disabilities that may be medical, mental, or psychological. For instance, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and the International...

 children who have been waiting the longest for a "forever" family. CAP has been in existence since 1972.

Mission

CAP's mission is to recruit foster and adoptive families across the United States for children who have been waiting the longest for a family. Our waiting children are often older, minorities, sibling groups who wish to be placed together, or children with emotional, mental and/or physical disabilities - children who are typically categorized as "special needs" or "hardest to place".

Programs

A Right to be Heard is a CAP initiative that empowers waiting children to speak in their own words about their interests, challenges and hopes. Through creative video portraits children speak about things that are important to them. The goal is to break barriers that prevent potential adoptive parents from seeing waiting children as unique individuals. These beautiful videos can be seen on our website or in DVD

DVD

A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....

 format.

One Child at a Time, a new initiative in New York State, provides intensive child specific recruitment in collaboration with the local agency to find homes for the longest waiting children.

The Heart Gallery is a national movement that showcases artistic portraits of children currently in foster care and available for adoption. CAP's first Heart Gallery was held in December, 2005. Nearly 25% of the featured in the first exhibit have joined their forever families! CAP's second Heart Gallery exhibit was held during November 2007 at the Strong Museum of Play in Rochester, New York

Rochester, New York

Rochester is a city in Monroe County, New York, south of Lake Ontario in the United States. Known as The World's Image Centre, it was also once known as The Flour City, and more recently as The Flower City...

. It will be on display at various local venues throughout the Western New York area during 2008.

Friday's Child, a weekly television segment hosted by WHAM TV 13

WHAM-TV

WHAM-TV is the ABC-affiliated television station for Rochester, New York. It broadcasts a high definition digital signal on VHF channel 13 from a transmitter on Pinnacle Hill on the border between Rochester and Brighton. The station can also be seen on Time Warner channel 13 and in high definition...

 Associate News Director, Don Alhart

Don Alhart

Don Alhart is the main news anchor and Associate News Director for WHAM-TV News in Rochester, New York. Alhart began his professional television career at WOKR-TV in 1966 after graduating from Ithaca College. He has reported the evening news every night at 6pm and 11pm for 43 years.He has won...

, in Rochester, New York, features a local waiting child in an effort to recruit forever families.

Faith in Children, is a special adoption

Adoption

Adoption is a process whereby a person assumes the parenting for another and, in so doing, permanently transfers all rights and responsibilities from the original parent or parents...

 recruitment campaign initiated by CAP to reach out to the community through faith-based organizations to identify and recruit permanent families for America's waiting children.

Wendy’s Wonderful Kids In 2007, CAP received a grant from the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption

Dave Thomas (American businessman)

David "Dave" Thomas was an American fast-food entrepreneur and philanthropist. Thomas was the founder and chief executive officer of Wendy's, a fast-food restaurant chain specializing in hamburgers...

 to implement a Wendy’s Wonderful Kids project. Wendy's Wonderful Kids is the direct-service signature program of the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption that combines the fundraising of Wendy's, Wendy’s customers and the aggressive grants management of the Foundation. The Foundation has awarded grants to local adoption organizations in every state to execute aggressive child-focused recruitment programs targeted exclusively on placing foster care children with adoptive families.

Media

CAP provides media outreach in regional and national publications throughout the United States. Children are featured weekly in newspapers, and are also featured in magazines and parent group newsletters. We have recently had children featured on the cover of Fostering Families Today, and in national magazines including Latina and Brain Child. Additional media outreach projects have included the production of regional and national posters for National Adoption Month, as well as advertisements which promote adoption.