Valentine?s Day seemed like a good time for child-welfare officials to promote its Heart Gallery, a collection of professionally taken portraits of children up for adoption and considered hard to place.
“The photographers capture the aspirations, the dreams of these children,” said Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, who said the gallery generates both “tears of joy and tears of sadness.”
Brown choked up a bit at a State House ceremony when he talked about the “heart gallery” in his own office, a photo of himself and his then-5-year-old adopted son Jonathan, both wearing camouflage uniforms before Brown, an Army Reserve colonel, deployed to Iraq in 2005.
Rashida Brown, who helps coordinate the Heart Gallery for the Human Resources Department, said the children are motivated to have their pictures taken by a professional photographer.
The pictures of the children up for adoption can be seen online at mdheartgallery.org.
“They?re children in foster care, and it builds their self-esteem,” Rashida Brown said.
In January, Gov. Martin O?Malley and Rashida Brown launched an initiative to recruit foster parents in Maryland. Called “1,000 by 10,” the program seeks to add 1,000 foster homes by 2010 ? the same number of foster parents that dropped out between 2003 and 2007.
In last year?s budget, O?Malley increased the monthly stipend for foster parents to $735, up from $535 two years ago.
Many children who have been given up or taken from their homes due to abuse or neglect transition from foster care to adoption.
Among them are brothers Anthony, 4, and Xavier, 2, about to be adopted by David West and his wife after living with them in foster care for seven months. The Millersville couple have three natural children, ages 26, 21 and 16, and “we?ve already adopted another child,” West said, a son Jesse, 9, who is deaf and blind.
West said the children come into the home not knowing what to think, but at some point, they start calling him “Dad.” “Once you become a dad, that?s pretty cool,” West said.
“It?s great to experience Valentine?s Day every day of the year,” said Arnold Eby, president of the Maryland Foster Parent Association. He and his wife have served as foster parents for seven years, taking care of 53 children over that time. “I?ve gotten far more from the children than I could have ever given,” Eby said.
