Children's Bureau Express

Children's Bureau Express

New PSAs Spotlight Adoption of Siblings

The Ad Council, in cooperation with the Children's Bureau and AdoptUsKids, recently unveiled its newest media campaign to raise awareness of adoption from foster care. These new public service announcements (PSAs) in the form of television commercials, print ads, and radio spots use gentle humor to promote the adoption of one of the most difficult groups to place—brothers and sisters.

Research increasingly points to the importance of the connection that siblings share, a connection that is even more crucial to children in foster care, whose other family connections may be lost or tenuous at best. Siblings offer a lifelong connection to family, and child welfare best practice mandates that siblings be placed together in both foster care and adoptive homes, under most circumstances. The barrier to this best practice is the lack of adoptive families who are able or willing to take a sibling group.

The new PSAs are designed to let the public know about the need for families for brothers and sisters. Building on the successful theme of "You don't have to be perfect to be a perfect parent," the campaign adds the tagline, "There are thousands of siblings in foster care who'll take you as you are." Commercials show parents struggling to make experiences, such as camping, "perfect" for their children, but when the perfect experience is rained out or otherwise falls flat, the children still love it. The ads drive home the message that children—brothers and sisters—need parents who care about them.

Find the PSAs on the Ad Council website:

www.adcouncil.org/default.aspx?id=17