Building the Support Foster and Adoptive Families Deserve

Eight Foster Homes Before Age Seven. Michael Sheaffer was born in Pennsylvania in the early 1980s, into a home shaped by poverty and addiction. He and his older brother often took food from a corner store just to eat, until the owner started handing them milk and bread because he knew. When the state stepped in, Michael was about four. His two younger sisters were adopted quickly. He and his brother went into foster care, and they went separately. He is one of hundreds of thousands of kids who pass through this system. More than 329,000 children are in the U.S. foster care system (Administration for Children and Families).

By the time he was six, Michael had lived in eight foster homes. He moved roughly every six months. He learned to treat each move as the next adventure and to keep people at arm's length because if you do not love, you do not lose. That survival skill protected him as a kid, and it made trust hard for years to come. The system does aim for reunion first, and it often works. About 46% of children who leave foster care return to their families (Christian Alliance for Orphans). For kids like Michael who cannot go home, the goal becomes a permanent family through adoption or guardianship.

 Adoption Is a Beginning, Not an Ending 

Michael says movies get adoption wrong. Hollywood ends the story on adoption day, with the happy music and the credits. In real life, that day is the start. A child who is adopted is home for good, and that is worth celebrating. It also means the fears and questions the child carried in foster care do not disappear overnight. The child is the same person the day after the papers are signed, still carrying what came before.

That includes identity. When Michael was adopted, his last name changed, and his Puerto Rican heritage went unspoken. He had been proud of who he was, and that pride had nowhere to go. His advice to adoptive parents is to keep a child's history alive and to consider open adoption when it is healthy. The need is real and ongoing. As of 2022, more than 108,000 children in foster care were waiting for adoptive families, and they waited almost three years on average (Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute).

 Support Changes What Comes Next 

Michael's turning point as an adult was not a program. It was a person. A mentor older than his own father kept showing up, without judgment, day after day. Michael puts it simply. You can pretend to care, but you cannot pretend to show up. That idea shapes his nonprofit, Welcome Home Youth Advocacy, which he started in Indiana in 2023. The group runs support groups, a free summer camp, a mentoring program, home repair help for busy foster families, and a clothing boutique that lets kids shop with dignity.

Support matters because the road is steep. Only about half of youth in foster care finish high school, and just 3% to 4% earn a four-year college degree (National Foster Youth Institute). Between 31% and 46% of youth who age out experience homelessness by age 26 (youth.gov). Michael believes many of these outcomes change when we help families upstream, before a child ages out alone. Community, mentoring, and steady adults are how the story bends toward hope.

 Family Means More Than One Thing 

Michael is honest about the hurt in his story, including an adoptive father who left. And he holds gratitude right beside it. Adoption pulled him out of a home marked by danger and gave him a stability he had not known before. It was not perfect, and he says it did not need to be. It was better, and he counts himself lucky. That mix of grief and thankfulness is what lets him sit with other families in their hardest moments.

Family, for Michael, is not a single thing. He recently found his biological brother after four decades apart, a reunion he did not expect to happen. His biological siblings are still his people, and his adoptive family gave him a home. Both are true. His message to anyone in the adoption triad is steady and clear. Your story is worth telling; you are not alone, and it does get better.

 Definitions 

• Foster care - temporary care for children who cannot safely live with their families while a permanent plan is worked out.

• Adoption triad - the three sides of an adoption: birth parents, the adoptee, and the adoptive family.

• Open adoption - an adoption where the birth family and adoptive family stay in some form of contact, when it is healthy for the child.

• Termination of parental rights (TPR) - a legal step that ends a parent's rights and can free a child to be adopted.

• Aging out - leaving foster care at the age of adulthood without a permanent family.

• TBRI (Trust-Based Relational Intervention) - a trauma-informed approach that helps children who have had hard starts build trust and connection.

 You Do Not Have to Do This Alone 

Michael's story is a reminder that adoption is not the end of a child's journey. It is the start of a family learning to show up, again and again. If you are fostering, adopting, or somewhere in the middle, help is closer than it feels. No matter where you are in your journey, you'll find people who understand.

Listen to the full episode, share it with someone who needs it, and Download Your FREE Guide to Adoption at VoicesofAdoption.org.

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