20-02-2025
Dave Thomas adoption foundation hits milestone
COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — A local nonprofit dedicated to finding families for children in foster care has reached a major milestone.
The Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption announced that its Wendy's Wonderful Kids program has helped find permanent homes for more than 15,000 children and youth in foster care across the United States and Canada since 2004 — including nearly 12,300 children since scaling the project began in 2012.
A central Ohio girl named Samantha finally has a family thanks to the program which supports the hiring of adoption recruiters like Amy Rice who serve the longest-waiting children in foster care.
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'Typically, we're working with children that are harder to place and older or have a lot of special needs that makes it a little more difficult to find a family that can meet those needs,' Rice said.
Samantha was born with medical challenges and required a triple organ transplant. Rice, who was assigned her case, said Samantha spent half her life in the hospital.
'I began to go through her file and contact people,' Rice said.
The program uses a child-focused recruitment model where adoption professionals begin the search for a permanent family within the network of adults the child already knows.
That's how Rice found the McGregors.
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Ken McGregor, who is now Samantha's adoptive father, lost a son to medical complications in 2018.
'I thought that in my son's memory, that I could dedicate my time and help somebody else that could benefit from feeling love and stuff that I still had left over that I didn't give my boy,' he said.
It was a match made in heaven. Samantha was adopted by the McGregors at age 14.
'When she went to live with them, she just began to blossom and her personality and she just let down her guard and trusted them and was able to function like a normal child,' Rice said.
Prior to being adopted, Samantha's adoptive mother Aaryn said she had never even celebrated a Christmas morning.
'Oh, we took pictures of Samantha coming down the stairs and she stood with her hands up in the air shaking and screaming and 'look at all the presents,'' Aaryn McGregor said.
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While 15,000 children like Samantha now experience safety, comfort and love every day, adoption recruiter Lauren Rivers said there's still a lot of work that needs to be done.
'All children deserve a permanent, stable, safe home to go to,' Rivers said. 'And part of what our job is to help them get there and that way is through adoption and permanency. And so the value is just immeasurable.'
Rivers said one of the problems is there are fewer people fostering children.
'If she were to age out, she probably would've ended up in a facility somewhere,' Aaryn McGregor said. 'That would be her reality, so for us, one thing that I have said about her and that I will always say about the kids, and it makes me very emotional, is that they have definitely blessed us more than we could ever bless them.'
Ohio was the first state to fully implement the Wendy's Wonderful Kids program.
'Without that support of a family that can just help them through life and teach them, children that age out typically end up going to jail and not graduating high school,' Rice said.
Anyone interested in getting involved can click here.
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