WHAT: OCFS will host a National Adoption Awareness Month celebration to raise awareness about the need for more adoptive parents and ways to increase the number of youth placed in permanent homes. The event will also celebrate individuals who are helping transform child welfare services by providing secure, temporary environments for children through foster care, kinship and fictive kin care and informal guardianships that allow children to be reunited with their families when it is safe to do so. It will also serve as a call-to-action for prospective parents to open their hearts by opening their homes to youth who are historically harder to place, including older youth or those facing unique challenges.

WHEN:
Tuesday, November 14, 2023, at noon

WHERE:
Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies (FPWA) Headquarters
40 Broad Street, 5th Floor, NYC

WHO:             
Ta’Nika Gibson, a Broadway and television star who grew up in foster care and was adopted at age 22

State leaders

OCFS Acting Commissioner Suzanne Miles-Gustave

Gail Geohagen-Pratt, OCFS Deputy Commissioner, Child Welfare and Community Services

Jennifer Pinder, You Gotta Believe Executive Director

DETAILS:
Keynote speaker Ta’Nika Gibson will discuss her experience of growing up in foster care and later being adopted. She will also perform “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” with musical accompaniment by her adoptive father, David Gibson.

RSVP:         
Media interested in attending should RSVP to press@ocfs.ny.gov
When you arrive, please enter through the far-right door at 40 Broad St. and check in with security.

About the New York State Office of Children and Family Services:

The Office of Children and Family Services serves New York's public by promoting the safety, permanency and well-being of children, families and communities. The agency provides a system of family support, juvenile justice, youth development, child care and child welfare services and is responsible for programs and services involving foster care, adoption and adoption assistance, child protective services, preventive services for children and families, and protective programs for vulnerable adults.