View: Wednesday's Child video for Patrick
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If you have completed an adoption homestudy and would like to have your information forwarded to this child's worker, contact us.

Legally free, PATRICK (10/93) is a young teen, who absolutely loves golf! He loves to practice and play golf. And he loves to visit different golf courses, look through different golf magazine, and follow the sport’s top players. If you are a golf aficionado, too, who also happens to be a prospective adoptive couple or single adult with past experience parenting, teaching, counseling, or coaching kids with high behavioral needs, you may want to learn more about Patrick. Of course, along with his enthusiasm for golf, he loves video games and describes himself as a “computer geek.” His love of drawing and artwork has him contemplating becoming an animator or a cartoonist. But first, he needs to have committed adults in back of him who will hang in there with him and help him develop the emotional, social, and relationship skills to get him going in the right direction.

Patrick, who came into care in 1999, is legally free for adoption. With the support of mental health counseling, Patrick is making slow but sure strides towards opening up more and talking about his anxiety about the future and his difficulty trusting and forming attachments. He is also working on building self-esteem and strengthening his personal boundaries. He is not only participating regularly in individual therapy with his counselor, he also has a therapeutic aide who comes into his foster home once a week to provide one-on-one support. Medication therapy is also part of helping him to manage his symptoms of hyperactivity. To support Patrick in positive ways his foster home has very clear rules, expectations, and limits, immediate follow-through for non-compliance and misbehavior, and 24-hour supervision.

The good news is that out of all of these efforts, Patrick has developed strong bonds with his therapist and aide, and with his foster family, especially his foster dad.

While there could be many benefits for Patrick in being adopted by a couple, his worker also wants to hear from single adults (especially dads!) who have strong support from family, friends, and community resources. Patrick’s responsiveness to his foster dad clearly underscores how important it is for this boy to have a strong, emotionally healthy male role model in his daily life. Having adoptive folks who have a good grasp of how early neglect and abuse amidst parental substance abuse can impact on a child’s sense of well being and safety and on his development would be very helpful.


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