Open your heart and your homes

There are currently about 10,000 children in the UK being looked after by their local council. Next week is National Adoption Week. On Wednesday (11 October), The Catholic Children's Society (Westminster), together with other agencies will be calling for more people to open their hearts and homes to children at present in local authority care. National Adoption Week 2000, organised by the British Agencies for Adoption and Fostering (BAAF), will be launching a number of events to highlight the issue. On Wednesday, besides launching National Adoption Week, The Catholic Children's Society (Westminster) are renaming their adoption team to 'Families for All'. Kriss Akabusi MBE, Olympic 400m silver medalist, who was himself in care will be the guest of honour at the launch party. Kriss said: "National Adoption Week was a great success last year, but this year we are hoping it will be bigger and reach out to even more people. We want to encourage more people to come forward to consider adoption, because we need adopters from all backgrounds to meet the wide range of children in care. We particularly want to find more adopters from black and ethnic minorities and families with mixed heritage. We also need families willing to accept older children and sibling groups. We urge anyone interested in adoption to get in touch with us today!" Anyone interested in adopting a child please contact: Families for All on 020 8969 5305.