You Gotta
Believe…..
Every Child
Deserves
a Family
Our mission
To find adoptive parents for young adults, teens and pre-teens before they age out of the foster care system and run the extremely high risk of becoming homeless.
You Gotta Believe is the only organization in the U.S that solely limits its practice to finding young adults, teens, and pre-teens in the foster care system permanent parents and families. Over the past 15 years we have grown from a team of 3 to a team of 15 full time and several part time staff while placing hundreds of NYC area children in permanent homes.
Our vision
Every child aging out of foster care is part of an unconditionally committed, loving and permanent family.
But, we have a long way to go to achieve our vision as it is a very time intensive process to recruit, train and support the adoptive families. Even with our expanding team, in 2010 we still only had the resources to successfully place about 50 young people – only 5% of the children who could benefit directly from our service. We want to grow and we want to help even more youth before they age out of care.
People tend to associate the term ‘adoption’ with infants or very young children, celebrity parents or couples who can’t have children themselves. There is little to no attention paid to those children who are not adopted as a young child or who enter the foster care system at a later age with no permanent family to return to.
Each year nearly 1000 young people somewhere between the ages of 18 and 21are discharged from NYC foster care alone. Surveys of New York City homeless populations have reported that over half the homeless self-report that they have spent significant portions of their childhoods in the foster care system. Once homeless, the consequences are dire. Children who came to into our system for both safety and well-being are now in a position where they are neither safe nor well when they have to face the desperation of homelessness.
With a permanent home and family however, they have the opportunity and support to fulfill their potential and become happy, healthy, productive members of society.
