“I didn’t give up hope.”
Adame finds comfort in the little things: the gentle glide of a paintbrush sweeping across canvas; the soft strum of an acoustic guitar; and the sweet warmth of his grandma’s homemade bread pudding.
Above all, Adame finds comfort in belonging. But for most of Adame’s childhood, belonging and stability eluded him.
Adame was born with developmental disabilities and experienced significant trauma as an infant. When he was just 4 years old, social workers determined that Adame needed a higher level of care than his birth family could provide, and he was placed in foster care.
In Virginia, the average time children and teens spend in foster care is 22 months. Adame remained in care for 12 years, during which time his only certainty was uncertainty. He slipped through many of the cracks that inevitably exist in complex systems like child welfare. Adame endured failed foster placements, hospitalizations, and he lived for extended periods in congregate care.
It was a tumultuous childhood, to be sure. But like so many young people in foster care, Adame exercised remarkable resilience and remained optimistic that he’d find his forever family.
“I didn’t give up hope,” Adame said. “It was my goal to find a home, and I worked very hard.”
“It was our job as his family to bring him home”
Adame’s paternal grandmother, Faith, and her husband, Kirk, finalized Adame’s adoption on July 16, 2025. It was the outcome Adame had been longing for and the happy ending he deserved.
“He wasn’t put in that situation because he wanted it,” Faith said. “And it was our job as his family to bring him home.”
But lingering in the wake of the celebration were many rippling effects and one glaring reflection: Why did Adame remain in foster care for more than a decade when his birth family was actively working to bring him home?
“Shineforth had been assessing family and advocating for a kinship placement for Adame for years,” explained Kerry Graeber, a Shineforth Adoption Supervisor who first met Adame when he was 11 and who “definitely cried” when she stood side by side with him and his family five years later on the day he was adopted.
Kinship care is when family or fictive kin (individuals who have a close but non-blood relationship with the child) open their home. Kinship care has emerged in recent years as an increasingly reliable option for successful foster care placements and adoptions, but there’s room for improvement.
“A lot of Adame’s trauma is related to the unnecessary length of time he spent in foster care,” Kerry said.
“A fair chance to be with his forever family.”
Long before the adoption was finalized, Adame’s loved ones and Shineforth’s Treatment Foster Care and Adoption teams and other community-based programs were relentlessly pursuing solutions to bring him home. Progress was slow-going, however, due to system challenges and other obstacles that kept compounding.
“Faith, Kirk, and Adame’s biological dad are an awesome family, and we knew that all along,” Kerry said. “Family members on both mom’s side and dad’s side were advocating for Faith to adopt Adame through kinship. We all just wanted Adame to have a fair chance to be with his forever family.”
To be approved for a kinship adoption, Faith had to meet multiple requirement and complete extensive paperwork. It was an overwhelming process, Faith said, “but Kerry and everyone at Shineforth helped walk me through all of it. They were all wonderful, and Kerry went above and beyond.”
“It took a lot of advocating,” added Kerry. “When we finally were able to get reassessment, that was the turning point. One of the morals of the story is that people change and circumstances change.”
Faith committed herself completely to the kinship process and was so immersed that she chose to retire early and focus her full attention on Adame. Included in that were weekly 5-hour roundtrip commutes from her home in Richmond to a group home in Winchester, where Adame lived before the adoption was finalized.
“When I visited or we talked on the phone, all he ever kept saying was that he wanted to be with family,” Faith explained. “And I said to him, ‘Well, Adame. You got it.’ ”
97% Permanency: That’s the Success rate for children in foster care when placed with family, and it’s one of the reasons why Shineforth is all in on Kinship Care. Here’s how we’re promoting successful outcomes for youth in foster care.
Shineforth Child & Family Services has been deeply involved in Virginia’s child and family services community since our founding as a Methodist orphanage in 1900.
We strive not only to provide best-in-class services but also to amplify the voices of vulnerable children. Kinship care has emerged in recent years as a tremendously successful option for adoption and foster care, yet barriers still exist for many families who wish to pursue kinship placements.
Children placed with kin have a 97 percent permanency rate. By working closely with families and fictive kin, mission- and service-aligned partners, and the state legislature, we’re helping to ensure that the topic of kinship care remains top of mind for lawmakers, providers, and the community.
- Speaking Up about Kinship Care | Virginia ranks at the bottom for kinship. We can do better.
- Advocating for Kinship Care | Tracking progress of bill that would benefit potential kinship caregivers.
- Investing in Kinship Care | Virginia Invests $300,000 for Family-Finding Services.
- Celebrating Kinship Care | In September, Advocates Shine a Light on Advantages of Kinship.
“It’s nice here. It’s quiet and peaceful.”
When the day finally arrived for Adame to go home to Richmond, Faith and Kingston — her beloved dog and travel companion — made one last trek north on 95 and across the elevations of Route 17 to Winchester. “I won’t miss that drive through the mountains, especially at night,” Faith said.
Kerry wanted to give Adame a proper send-off and help Faith pack up his belongings, so she met them at the group home. She got to give Kingston scratches, too, which was the cherry on top. “Faith loves that dog,” Kerry chuckled.
That’s just one of the many endearing anecdotes from what was by all measures a monumental 24 hours for Adame and his family. And while Adame doesn’t recall every detail of the day, he remembers the important ones.
“Kerry brought me cookies,” he said with a smile. “Crumbl Cookies!” Kerry confirmed.
The cookies were “really good,” Adame said.
But nothing’s sweeter — not even Faith’s homemade bread pudding — than the feeling Adame had when he arrived home, permanently.
“It’s nice here,” Adame said. “It’s quiet and peaceful, like the painting I made for Grandma with the night sky, the trees, and the moon.”
What it Means to Provide Wraparound Care
Crisis can wreak havoc on a family. That’s why Shineforth offers more than a dozen partnerships, programs, and services, each of which is designed to address some of the complex challenges families sometimes face. Adame and his family touched six areas at Shineforth and have had a profound impact on the Shineforth community.
- Adoption Through Collaborative Partnerships (ATCP): A partnership between Shineforth and VDSS that provides adoption support services to children and teens in foster care.
- Intensive Care Coordination (ICC): Shineforth works with families, providers, and community supports to bring multiple resources together under one collaborative and comprehensive plan that’s tailored to a family’s unique circumstances.
- Therapeutic Foster Care (TFC): Shineforth’s foster care program supports children and teens in foster care who are working to overcome past abuse and trauma, or who are struggling with behavioral or medical challenges. TFC also identifies supportive foster families and provides extensive training and comprehensive ongoing support.
- Charterhouse School: Shineforth’s offers specialized education for grades K-12 at two Charterhouse School locations in Richmond and Edinburg. Adame attends Charterhouse School in Richmond.
- Project LIFE (Living Independently, Focusing on Empowerment): Through a generous grant funded by VDSS, Project LIFE provides support, resources, and skill-building opportunities for youth who are aging out of foster care.
- Richmond Post Adoption Consortium Services (RPACS): Through a grant provided by VDSS, Shineforth partners with other service providers to support adoptive and kinship families across Virginia. As the lead agency for the Central and Eastern regions, Shineforth helps ensure families have access to comprehensive resources.
