ConnectforKids: Can you talk about how Adoption Saturday started?

Nash: We sought to develop a private/public partnership that would help us with this issue (of backlogged adoptions). Specifically we aligned ourselves with two advocacy groups, the Public Council Law Center and the Alliance for Children's Rights, here in Los Angeles. Those groups agreed to recruit, organize and train attorneys from throughout the city to handle these cases of children waiting to have their adoptions completed and they were going to do it on a pro bono basis.

ConnectforKids: Were the 6,000 children in some phase of the adoption process?

Nash: They had all been freed for adoption through the dependency courts and were in an adoptive plan in varying stages of the completion process. So the Alliance and Public Council agreed to provide the attorneys. Our court agreed to provide unlimited court access to handle these cases, and the department agreed to provide additional resources as well for their staff.

As we were beginning this process, a pro bono attorney by the name of Steve Meiers, with the law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, which had agreed to handle the pro bono cases, approached me with the thought that perhaps we could create some sort of an assembly line process here. One where the attorneys would meet with their clients on a Saturday, handle paperwork and then march them over to the courthouse to complete the adoptions. It was interesting idea, but obviously, to do all that in one day would not work.

So I suggested, perhaps, you folks could do your own paperwork day on a Saturday, and then on a future Saturday we can try opening our courts and see how that works.

In April 1998, Judge Nash and his colleagues conducted their first Adoption Saturday. They opened up five of the 24 available courts and processed 130 adoptions. Everyone, from the judges to the children and families, had, in Judge Nash's word, "a blast."

Nash: ..It really went well. Also, the department found out that because of the media coverage, there were more people calling to inquire about adoptions. So all around it was really a good thing and with all of that, at least for one day, it shined a positive spotlight on the foster care system, which as you probably know doesn't always get a positive spotlight or focus from the media or the community as a whole.

So after that we said, "Well, let's do it again." And we've done this two or three times a year since April of 1998. We've done as many as 600, around 650 in one day to as few as somewhere 200 in a day since then. And over that period of time, here in Los Angeles, we have completed pretty close to 7,000 adoptions, just on Saturdays alone.

ConnectforKids: So it went from being an idea that began in Los Angeles County and now it's national. How did that happen?

Nash: I started talking about it to my colleagues around the state and a few thought it would be a good idea and tried it. And then also I began talking about it with my colleagues involved with the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, and was asked to do several presentations at National Council events across the country. And courts sort of started to jump on the bandwagon, if you will.

At the same time, the Alliance for Children's Rights here in Los Angeles began an active program to recruit courts around the country and work with organizations to help spread the idea. And so, through the confluence of all those efforts, we now see hundreds of courts participating in or doing Adoption Saturdays, most of them doing at least one in November as part of National Adoption Saturday. And the reason that it has spread like wildfire is that everybody's experience is the same as Los Angeles."It's a tremendous experience for the judicial officers who volunteer, the attorneys who work with the families, the families. And of course the system, as I say, gets this positive spotlight that it doesn't normally get. It's a "can't lose" proposition.

In 2003, 38 states and the District of Columbia participated, with more than 120 jurisdictions completing the adoptions of 3,100 children. National Adoption Day is Saturday, November 20th.

National Adoption Day Resources