A family court judge and an attorney, chatting outside an LA courthouse during a fire drill, came up with an idea that has changed thousands of children's lives: National Adoption Saturday. Cecilia Garcia looks at the history of the day, which falls this year on November 20th.

The redesigned Adoption Information Clearinghouse Web site has easy access to state contact information.

Teenagers in foster care recently shared their opinions on being adopted with Youth Communication's Represent magazine. In this reprint, Taheerah Mahdi gives us a peek inside her mind as she wrestled with her personal adoption decision.

This Urban Institute report looks at the changing characteristics of parents who have adopted children from the foster care system to help agencies identify and recruit adoptive parents. Of the children adopted in 1999, 56 percent were adopted by foster parents and 20 percent by relatives--a radical shift in child welfare practice, since until recently foster parents and relatives were rarely given opportunities to adopt. Children still awaiting adoption tend to be closest in characteristics to the children adopted by relatives--older, male and black. Prospective adoptive parents who have no prior relationship with the child are slightly more likely than foster parents to adopt older and minority children, but are significantly less likely than foster parents or relatives to adopt children with special needs.

Over the last few years, the Internet has transformed the way adoption agencies and child welfare departments go about finding adoptive homes for children and groups of siblings. Kathleen Schuckel reports on how children, prospective parents and agencies feel about the change.

For a child awaiting a new sibling, reality often replaces fantasy, especially when the new child has difficult behaviors that command parental attention. Here are some ideas and tips to help children who are anticipating getting a new brother or sister through adoption.

Stories on our site about the huge role electronic media play in kids' lives generated lots of responses over the past two months. And visitors were inspired to learn about individuals working to empower children—from a high school principal pushing young black men to achieve, to a fire chief in Alaska who has trained an all-girl team of emergency responders.

More than one-quarter of the children in foster care are teenagers. Finding adoptive homes for these children isn't easy, but three adoption workers in Brooklyn, New York, have taken up the challenge by starting You Gotta Believe!, an agency that works exclusively with youth ages 10 and up. Rachel Blustain looks at how they do it.

As growing numbers of families look to international adoption, formal and informal programs are springing up to help these families keep their children's cultural heritage alive. Connect for Kids' intern Althea Izawa-Hayden looks at how one Seattle family is taking steps to honor their children's Korean origins.

The Web site provides a national database of children awaiting adoption and families approved to adopt. The AdoptUSKids website allows families to search for children and workers to search for families throughout the United States. The site also includes comprehensive adoption information for families and many features to assist social workers.