TESTIMONIAL
Our Kids Graduation 2010

Hello,

After reading last week's Miami Times Article about your wonderful organization I felt absolutely compelled to contact you. I am an Assistant State Attorney assigned to our Community Prosecutions Unit. You may be familiar with the unit, I took over for Kionne McGhee who spoke at your ceremony. I just wanted to say I appreciate all your work with children in the foster care system. I am a product of the foster care system, born to a drug addicted parent I lived through some of my worst horrors while in the system. It was organizations like yours that provided services and support for both my mother and I. I was eventually reunited with mother and together we have experienced great success. I feel indebted to children who are living the same horrors that I lived. I share my story of surviving abuse in and out of the foster care system every chance I get. I am living proof that success is possible with help and support from people and organizations like yours. Please let me know if there is anything I can do to assist you in your efforts.

Thanks to everyone's hard work, our community finished the year with the most adoptions in the State of Florida - 402 in one year! One hundred of those children were between the ages of 10-17. Just as important, more than 13 groups of four siblings each were included this year. Since privatization in 2005, our community has enabled more than 1,800 children to find new, permanent, adoptive homes. We could not have done it without a great collective team effort, especially from our court partners: Department of Children and Families Children's Legal Services, the Guardian Al Litem Program, Foster Care Review, the AOC, our Judges, General Magistrates and the Clerk's office.

We are happy to report that through a generous donation from Voices for Children and Office Depot, Our Kids has received 6,500 new backpacks stuffed with school supplies. This is the 5th consecutive year that we have been the fortunate recipients of this great program. In addition, Our Kids and Voices have teamed up again this year to work with Neat Stuff to provide a week's worth of new school uniforms (3 shirts, 2 pairs of pants, socks, underwear and shoes) for our school age kids.

Voices for Children Website

Neat Stuff Website

Our community has a lot to be proud of and we should all be encouraged by the continued positive trends for children leaving foster care quickly, being adopted and adopted quickly, achieving permanency and remaining with their families. Here are some highlights:

• The number of children living away from their parents continues to decline (a drop of 49% since Our Kids began services in May 2005).
• The number of children living away from their parents for a year or more continues to a drop of 50% since July 2001.
• The average length of stay for a child in Miami or the Keys living away from their parents continues to decline.
• On average, 33 children are reunified with their parents each month and the majority of the children we reunify remain safely with their families.
• Virtually all children living away from their parents are safe from repeat maltreatment.
• Our Kids and our partners completed the most adoptions in the State of Florida this past year.
• In 6 of the past 12 months, we met or exceeded the state average for the % of the children adopted within 24 months.
• The number of missing children continues to decline steadily (a drop of 44% this past year).