TRENTON — New Jersey’s child welfare agency has severed its five-year relationship with the Heart Gallery, a nonprofit company that created nationally acclaimed traveling photo exhibits featuring hundreds of foster children in need of a permanent home, state officials confirmed. While crediting the Heart Gallery with helping locate sorely-needed foster and adoptive parents, the Division of Youth and Family...
Contributing photographer to The New Yorker magazine, Martin Schoeller photographs foster child Eminy, for the Heart Gallery of New Jersey in their project, "The 100 Waiting Children."TRENTON — New Jersey’s child welfare agency has severed its five-year relationship with the Heart Gallery, a nonprofit company that created nationally acclaimed traveling photo exhibits featuring hundreds of foster children in need of a permanent home, state officials confirmed.
While crediting the Heart Gallery with helping locate sorely-needed foster and adoptive parents, the Division of Youth and Family Services ended the relationship this month because it is changing its foster home recruiting strategy, according to Lauren Kidd, spokeswoman for DYFS’ parent agency, the Department of Children and Families.
“Children who currently need families are older teens for whom our greatest success has been with a hands-on recruitment process, concentrated on people with whom the adolescent already has a natural connection, such as extended relatives, mentors and family friends,” Kidd said. “We believe a recruitment program is an evolving process in which it helps to try new approaches.”
However, only about one-third of the 1,300 foster children in need of a family are more than 10 years old, she said.
The move puzzled Judith Meltzer, the court-appointed monitor of a massive overhaul of state’s child welfare system. Meltzer said state officials credited the exhibit with helping DYFS reach its legally mandated goal of getting more foster children adopted and enlisting more foster and adoptive parents. DYFS licensed 2,123 foster new homes in 2009, up from 966 in 2005.
“I’m surprised, and plan to follow up to understand the department’s decision,” Meltzer said. “In general, child welfare systems need to engage as many partners as they can in the difficult work of finding as many homes as possible. I wouldn’t give up on anybody who wants to help you."
Comprised of volunteer professional photographers and funded by donations, the Heart Gallery produced traveling photo exhibits featuring some foster children who were difficult to place with a family. One in 2005, included 328 children of all ages; another in 2007 focused on 100 “longest waiting” children in need of a permanent home.
“The Heart Gallery worked on so many levels — from children reconnecting with foster parents from years before, to people starting the process of becoming foster parents,” said cofounder Najlah Feanny Hicks. “We raised the level of awareness using social media that said hey, there are thousands of kids out there ... and you can look in your own backyard.”
Hicks said that based on information DYFS was contractually required to provide the Heart Gallery, more than 200 children photographed had been adopted. Kidd, the state spokeswoman, however, said she could not corroborate a number, “because what the Heart Gallery really did for DYFS was put a face to the children who were in need of an adoptive home."
Hicks said the state paid for about $100,000 in printing and video costs to publicize the 2007 exhibit.
DYFS staff and Heart Gallery volunteers did clash at times. When the Heart Gallery web site (heartgallerynj.org) and exhibit debuted, DYFS was inundated with calls, and people complained to the Heart Gallery when they didn’t receive a prompt response from the state. DYFS officials at the time said it took a while to educate aspiring adoptive parents about the complex process of matching children with families.
Hicks plans to contact private, nonprofit agencies who work with foster children to see if they would like to embark on similar, but smaller, projects. “What we’ve done with no staff and a minimal budget has changed the face of adoption in New Jersey and we would love to continue to be involved in the process," she said.
The Star-Ledger was an early coordinator and financial contributor to the Heart Gallery.