Thankful for family: Lubbock foster families celebrated at National Adoption Day event

Mason slept in his father's arms as one of the biggest moments in his life unfolded.

On the stage at Lubbock Impact, his fathers, Isaiah and Joaquin, stood before District Judge Les Hatch vowing to give their son a safe and loving home forever.

Hatch's gavel didn't even wake the toddler as it banged, finalizing his adoption, legally making him a permanent addition to the Casados family.

"He's always been ours," Joaquin said. "The way I see it, blood doesn't make family, love does."

But the process did take away the uncertainty for the couple, who have been serving as foster parents to children for four years.

"It is a big weight off of our shoulders, you know?" said Isaiah. "It's a scary process too, foster to adopt. We've had 15 kids in and out of our household and this is our first opportunity to adopt and go through. So this is a moment I never really thought was going to happen for us. So it means a lot and we're honored to be able to be here and to be able to officially be dads and officially have him as our son. He's our world to us. All of our kids are our world. We'll be here again for our other two."

Mason was one of 11 children to be adopted Nov. 18 as part of the National Adoption Day celebration in Lubbock. Ten families were called on stage one after another for their final adoption hearing.

This year's celebration was organized by St. Francis Ministries, which began supervising foster care cases in Lubbock since March as part of the states' move to a community-based care model.

The event aims to raise awareness of the more than 115,000 children waiting to be adopted from foster care nationally.

In Texas, 5,721 children await adoption, according to the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services. In the About 500 of those children are in the Lubbock region.

This year's theme was "There's no place like home," taken from the movie "The Wizard of Oz." St. Francis staff and members of the Lubbock Community Theatre dressed as characters from the movie including the Cowardly Lion, Dorothy and the Wicked Witch of the West.

"There really is no place like home," said Erin Baxter, the community outreach adviser for Saint Francis Ministries who dressed as The Scarecrow. "And everyone deserves a home, everyone deserves a loving family. So, it just made sense on National Adoption Day, to pick a theme that really the importance of being home."

Six of the adoptions involve children who were in foster care.

Children who enter the foster care system because of suspected neglect or abuse stemming from drug addiction or other issues that compel the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services to intervene and remove the children from their biological families.

The department assumes temporary custody of the children and begins the process of terminating the biological parents' rights over their children. However, parents have the chance to reunite with their children, provided they complete court-ordered instructions to create a safe home for the children.

"I see how hard they work. A lot of them really really want to kick their addiction or get their house in order, or whatever it might be. Some of them just can't for various reasons," said Judge Kelley Tesch, who presides over the South Plains Foster Care Court.

Meanwhile, the children are placed with relatives or, foster family homes, or group homes.

More than 19,700 children in Texas are in foster care as of October, according to TDFPS officials. About 1,240 of those children are in the Lubbock region.

"And we need foster parents that have been trained in special needs children," Tesch said. "The trauma that these children have sometimes experienced makes it hard for them to bond with other adults and to become part of the family."

If a court determines the parents are unable to provide a safe home for their children or the parents relinquish their parental rights, the children can be adopted.

Shelby Harris said she has wanted to take in her daughter, Isabella, who is a blood relative since her birth two years ago. However, the toddler was initially placed with Shelby's grandmother and she would visit her every month. Earlier this year, when her grandmother became ill and unable to care for the girl, Shelby and her husband, Blake, did not hesitate to take on the role as the girl's caregiver.

Shelby said Isabella was shy and standoffish during the monthly visits, but it didn't take very long for them to form a bond once she began living with them.

"It took her like a week and I was her favorite person," she said.

Shelby grew up in a blended family while Blake's parents took in foster children.

"We've always been in the 'foster not by blood' community and so it just wasn't that big of a deal to us adopting her," Shelby said. "We would treat her just like our own kid. "

Tesch said foster families are a crucial part of the foster care system.

"Without foster parents, these children would just languish, going from home to home to home, to center to center to center -- no permanency," she said. "(Foster families are) an excellent way for them to have what most of us had growing up: Mom and dad, or dad and dad or aunt and uncle that become mom and dad."

Wanting to be parents

Joaquin Casados said he'd always wanted to have kids, and as he and Isaiah searched for ways to begin a family, friends suggested they look into becoming foster parents.

"They did tell us ... there's that chance they may go back home, but there's also that chance they can be your forever family," he said.

Isaiah said his biological parents were cottage parents for children in foster care who were placed in group homes. He said he didn't realize what that meant until he was older.

"It just like broke my heart, and it just my heart just got open from that day, and I wanted to provide a home and give kids a fresh start or a new start you know and give them a good standard of living and structure," he said. "And we found out that's all kids actually want, is structure and love and they'll succeed in life."

Joaquin said the children's wellbeing comes first.

"One thing we don't do is label," he said. "In (foster care) they label kids ... that's key to bullying and so we tell these kids, 'We may not be your parents, but we can be your friends, we can be your uncles, cousins, whatever you want to call us, you will not be foster kid. You are family.'"

Tesch advised families considering opening their homes and hearts to children in foster care to understand that the initial goal is to reunite children with their biological parents.

"We're trying to get these kids reunified with their family, their biological family," she said. "And so, the foster parent has that hardest job of all to just love the child, but to keep that child available to release as well until we know that they can't go home."

She said loving and caring for children through that uncertainty is a thankless job; celebrations like the one held at Lubbock Impact show the community's appreciation for foster families.

"Nobody says, 'Thank you for being a foster parent,' - not very often," she said. "And these foster parents wanted to go all the way and make it a permanent lifelong commitment to these children so, a party for them? Absolutely. I think it's wonderful. "

Isaiah Casados said the benefits of opening their homes to children in need of families, however temporary, outweighs the heartbreak and challenges of being a foster parent.

"We've been blessed with all the kids we've had," he said. "They have all different personalities and we have so many memories and just know that as soon as the kids came to in our house, they're our family. They're Casadoses, and I know that we left a part with them, even if they went to the house, to their parents and whatnot. It's worth it."

This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Lubbock foster families celebrated at National Adoption Day event