National Adoption Day is a collective national effort to raise awareness of the thousands of children in foster care waiting to find permanent, loving families. Nebraska courts have sponsored celebrations since 1999 by working with attorneys, adoption professionals, child welfare agencies, and advocates to finalize adoptions and encourage permanent, loving homes for children in foster care. National Adoption Day is celebrated every year on or near the Saturday before Thanksgiving.

On National Adoption Day, kids who have been in the foster care system get their adoptions finalized. By finalizing them on a Saturday, with a celebratory atmosphere involving balloons, treats and a teddy bear for each child, much more attention can be brought to the event. Regardless of whether the court has a significant number of adoptions, or if there are no adoptions to be finalized in November, the court has a party, inviting adoptive families from the previous year.

It’s attention – from the public and media – that’s needed if more children are going to find permanent placement in new families. According to Nebraska’s Adoption Day founder, Judge Wadie Thomas (retired)  of Omaha, “We need more families to step up and adopt kids. Adoption Day gets media attention for the issue.”

2019 National Adoption Day Celebrations

Nebraska Adoption Day Fact Sheet

November 9, 2019 Celebration:

 North Platte

November 23, 2019 Celebrations:

Omaha  |  Hastings  | Shelton  |  Norfolk  

December 7, 2019 Celebration:
Scottsbluff