Wendy's Wonderful Kids, a program of the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, uses a child-focused recruitment model to find appropriate adoptive families. Its goal is to reduce significantly the number of children in foster care awaiting adoption.
More than 100,000 children in foster care in the U.S. await adoption at any given time. Those who linger the longest suffer the worst outcomes and may never find a permanent home. The Wendy's Wonderful Kids model succeeds with many of the hardest-to-place, including older youth, who are up to three times more likely to be adopted than those receiving traditional services.
Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption’s vision over the next 12 years is to expand the Wendy’s Wonderful Kids model so that the vast majority of the hardest-to-place children in this country benefit from a much higher probability of finding a permanent family.
In 2016, Blue Meridian Partners approved an investment of $35 million over four years to support the first phase of the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption’s 12-year Scaling Plan. During the first four years, the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption aims to significantly expand the Wendy’s Wonderful Kids program in five additional states, serve over 15,000 youth, and lay the foundation for much broader scale in subsequent years.
When I First Met My Child
Adoptive parents describe the joy of welcoming a newcomer to their family.