Foster Children Looking for New Parents on TV

The three foster kids primped for the camera, Hollywood-style, as they sat for makeup and spent the next few hours looking adorable.

This is how Jasmine, 3, David, 4, and Armando, 6, hope to get adopted--by wooing prospective parents in a new twice-weekly TV show called “Wednesday’s Child.” It will begin airing tonight.

The new program is the latest step in the evolution of adoption--joining such innovations as adoption fairs, where potential parents can meet foster kids at city parks and shopping malls.

The show will be broadcast weekly on Fox News at 10 on Wednesday and Sunday nights. The idea started eight years ago with a TV program in Washington, D.C. “Wednesday’s Child” will replace the show “Sunday’s Child,” a similar program that has been airing on Fox for five years and is responsible for 23 adoptions.

The director of the Los Angeles County child services department, Anita Bock, said such efforts are needed more than ever. There are roughly 50,000 foster children in Los Angeles County.

“Government can’t ever and should never seek to provide what a community needs to do: Raise its children,” Bock said.

The prospect of finding adoptive parents is especially bleak for black and Latino boys who are 10 and older, as well as for youngsters with two or more siblings, county officials said. There are roughly 4,600 of those cases in the county, Bock said.

A recent grand jury report on the department found that poor training, mismanagement and heavy caseloads are endangering the health of foster children.

Anthony and Candace Soza, a Hawthorne couple, credit “Sunday’s Child” for their family.

Two years ago, Anthony Soza was watching the news and saw a profile of a boy that broke his heart. “He said he wanted to be a teacher so he could help others,” Soza recalled, “and a family that wouldn’t hurt its kids.”

The boy, who had been abandoned by his mother at age 3, is now Soza’s adopted 14-year-old son, Ray.

Sitting nearby at the Tuesday news conference, Ray shrugged at the retelling of the story. He had more immediate concerns.

“Can I take off my tie now?” he asked.