November is National Adoption Month, a time to celebrate families created through adoption and to remember the thousands of children in foster care still waiting. But adoption is not the final chapter. For children who come from foster care, the papers may change their address, but their past remains part of who they are. What they need most is a community that recognizes their story and helps them heal.
I often say I have the greatest title in the world: Dad. My husband Reece and I adopted five children from the foster care system, including our oldest son, who we adopted as an adult. And while love at home is powerful, we quickly learned it cannot stand alone. Our kids also needed teachers who understood how trauma shows up in the classroom, counselors who recognized adoption can carry both joy and grief, and peers who welcomed them without judgment. Only then could true belonging take root.
That is the work before us this month and every month. Adoption should be the beginning of a journey where children are surrounded by support, not the end of a process that leaves them on their own. Educators can seek training that prepares them to meet students where they are. Policymakers can invest in schools and services that put mental health and stability first. Neighbors and mentors can listen, encourage, and remind young people they matter.
Every child deserves not just a family, but a community that helps them thrive. That is how adoption fulfills its true promise: a future built on dignity, belonging, and hope.
Rob Scheer entered foster care carrying his belongings in a trash bag—a painful experience he never forgot. Decades later, when his own adopted children arrived the same way, he founded Comfort Cases® to change that reality. Since 2013, the organization has delivered more than 280,000 backpacks and XL duffle bages filled with essential and comfort items to youth entering foster care across the U.S., Puerto Rico, and the U.K.As someoe who personally experienced foster care, veteran, and adoptive father, Rob is a CNN Hero, author of A Forever Family, and host of the top-ranked podcast Fostering Change. He lives in Maryland with his husband, their five children, on a small farm filled with animals, from dogs to chickens!
