Adoption provides options for families
One local family’s story of love becomes a symbol for thousands who open their homes to youth in DFCS care.
Kim and Martin West are much like any other married couple who are in love. They look at each other with a twinkle in their eye, sharing unspoken secrets with just an expression.
They finish each others thoughts. They hold hands.
The West family even has their collection of family portraits, featuring the husband and wife and their children in shorts and sandals, and their Christmas card that features Martin and Kim’s son Josh in red flannel suits.
However their dream of having a family of their own was close to not coming true, until they decided that if they wanted to share their love they should try a different route: adoption through the foster care system.
They are one of thousands of couples who in the past years have opened their homes and hearts to children who need the love and care the Wests and others like them can provide, which is how they came to be the parents of Simon, of Betenia Faith and of Ollie.
The couple were initially wary of trying to have children, since Martin was coming into their marriage without any previous experience of raising a son or daughter.
Kim had her 13-year-old son Josh when they first met from a previous marriage.
However as time went on, Martin changed his mind.
“So we tried for about two years, and that didn’t work out and other adoption things didn’t work out, we went the foster care route,” West said.
They first tried doctors to have their own child together, but that process wasn’t working out for them. They looked into the idea of adopting a child from overseas as other friends had done before, but they were unsettled by shifting laws in Asian countries where adoptions have been easier in the past.
So the West family settled on becoming foster parents, and went through the two-year process of being certified to care for children who come into the care of the state via the Divsion of Family and Children’s Services, or DFCS. Simon was six months old when the West’s first brought him home in February 2007. He is a special needs child who suffers from a deleted chromosome, thus stunting his development overall. The couple decided that after meeting him and getting to see him start to grow that he should join the family.
“We kind of thought that he was going to be the only one, and that was it,” Kim West said.
Then an unexpected surprise, which Kim West explained was centered around their deeply held beliefs in the power of Christ to make things happen in their lives brought another unexpected addition into their home.
“And then we got phone calls, once we were in foster classes and approved, we got a lot of phone calls,” Martin West added. “Nothing ever felt right, and then we got a call for a little girl named Faith, about a month later. And so we ended up taking her as well.”
Her full name is Betenia Faith, who in Spring 2007 was two years old at the time, joined the family. Kim West said that her husband had counseled her to have faith in the process and to be patient, and then when they got the call about the little girl that became their daughter she was speechless.
“I had to hand the phone over to Martin because I couldn’t believe it,” she said.
Now the West family had grown in the span of a few months from Martin and Kim and son Josh, to add an infant and a soon-to-be toddler into the mix.
“And we were really done then,” Martin West said.
A year later, Simon’s mother had another child, Ollie, who joined the family in 2008.
“A lot of people say that they’re blessed, and these children are blessed,” Kim West said. “They are blessed, but these They’re the biggest blessing to us. And though I’ll say I didn’t have labor pains, there were a different type of pain.”
It wasn’t easy for the couple. After they got Simon and Faith they had to go through the legal procedures to have them officially adopted, which took another two years.
Via their role as foster parents they went through the roller coaster of biological parents working out plans with the DFCS to try and to get their children back, going back and forth in court before the adoption went through all the while watching their family grow and the personalities of Simon, Faith and Ollie develop.
The West’s said that experience of being unsure of whether they would be able to keep the children they loved in their home was the biggest pain they felt.
After all the legalities were settled — a much faster process with Ollie, the West’s said — they are just like any other American small town family. Everyone is involved in activities at the First Baptist Church of Cedartown, with Simon being an enthusiastic believer who Martin said inspires the congregation with his love of worship and music. They also spend a lot of time in appointments for therapy.
Faith is a member of the Cedartown Middle School competition cheer squad. Ollie spends a lot of time and gets out a lot of his boyish energy in recreation sports. And the West’s wouldn’t trade it for the world.
“We’re the ones who are so lucky, because if we had a child of our own we’d have one and been done for sure. So I’m just glad it didn’t work out that way,” Martin West said.
The family does get a lot of questions, since parents don’t resemble their children at all, with Simon and Ollie coming from the same mother with different fathers, and Faith completely unrelated.
“We get lots of questions, and lots of looks, and that kind of thing. But that’s OK,” Martin West said. “I know people are trying to figure us out because we’re a blended family. It’s a new normal, you could say.”
Their adoption story is one of thousands across the state and country that are being celebrated during National Adoption Month through November.
Children from across the state of Georgia are in need of caring families to adopt them.
Bobby Cagle is the former director of the DFCS and has firsthand knowledge about the power of adoption. Cagle’s personal story is inspirational. Years ago, the former director was one of those children. He was one of the fortunate ones.
He too was adopted and sur- rounded by loving, caring, nurturing individuals. While with children’s services in Georgia, Cagle brought that same kind of nurturing and compassionate care with him and under his watch case workers and staff followed his lead, demonstrating a kind and sensitive approach to working with families throughout our state. We have every reason to believe the interim director, Virginia Pryor, will lead with the same values.
DFCS describes adoption, unlike foster care, as a permanent, “social and legal process that creates a new family, giving adopted children the same rights and benefits as those who are born into a family. Adoption requires an unconditional commitment by parents to meet the physical, emotional, medical, psychological and social needs of their child.”
Most of the children in need of adoption are in the state’s foster care, or temporary family, program. Most of the children in foster care have endured some form of abuse or neglect and because of that some may have medical, emotional and/or behavioral needs, according to the department.
Just this year alone in Polk County, some 11 adoptions have been processed in court for children who need loving parents, another 13 in Haralson County according to local DFCS officials. But that’s only a small percentage of those dozens who are in foster care today, and need places to go. Especially since on average, between 25 and 30 children are adopted annually between the two counties. Right now, there are about 13,500 children in Georgia foster care and 350 children available for adoption. In 2016, we saw 1,034 children adopted from the State of Georgia — that’s 22.7 percent more adoptions than in 2015 — Let’s continue the trend through 2017 and into the new year, finding “forever families” for every child in need.