Kentucky says these children need families. So why is the state preventing it? 

Before someone can formally inquire about a child, that person generally must complete Kentucky’s foster/adoptive certification process: training, background checks, interviews and a home study. Kentucky tells families certification commonly takes six to nine months. Only then can the family formally inquire about the child who inspired them — assuming that child is still available. For a 17-year-old, that timeline is astonishing. 

Even approved families face barriers. To pursue a KAPE child, I need my home study. DCBS created it, approved it and stores it in TWIST. Yet I have been required to file an open-records request to obtain the Cabinet’s own document for its own adoption process. 

That home study may also be badly outdated. Foster homes are recertified every three years, but the original narrative is not rewritten. When I obtained mine after almost a decade, it still reflected my family as it existed years earlier. Yet that is the document the adoption review committee relies on when evaluating a match. 

Kentucky also limits families to one KAPE inquiry at a time, except for sibling groups. I cannot explore several potentially appropriate situations and determine where the strongest fit might exist. I must choose one child from a public profile containing very limited information about the child’s history, trauma and realistic needs. 

Then an adoption review committee gets up to 15 working days — three weeks — to decide whether it thinks the child is a good match for my family. 

The committee has never met me. It may be reviewing an outdated home study. I have limited information about the child, and we have not met. Yet if Kentucky decides we are an appropriate match, I am asked whether I want to move forward before receiving the fuller presentation information needed to understand the child’s history and needs.

The committee can have an outdated picture of the family while the family has an incomplete picture of the child. How is that meaningful matching? 

Kentucky already has approved foster and adoptive homes, yet it does not routinely appear to search that pool for every waiting child. Why are children sitting on an adoption website while approved families sit in open homes without a system bringing the two together? 

Perhaps most baffling is Kentucky’s decision to end the specialized Wendy’s Wonderful Kids recruitment model. Its recruiters knew the children and actively searched for permanent families. Kentucky’s own 2025–2029 Diligent Recruitment Plan calls the model evidence-based and says KAPE children receive child-focused recruiters. Yet Kentucky is now folding those workers into its existing adoption infrastructure. 

Keeping the employees is not the same as keeping Wendy’s Wonderful Kids. Kentucky should be expanding this model, not dismantling it. 

Wednesday’s Child brought public reach and privately raised funds for recruitment and matching. Yet it has stepped away from individual child features. I tried to connect its director with DCBS leadership. Her emails went unanswered. 

A couple of years ago, I explained these problems directly to the DCBS commissioner. She appeared surprised by how the process worked. Nothing substantial changed. I also contacted the governor’s office multiple times and received no response at all. 

Kentucky owes the public the numbers. How many KAPE children find families through KAPE? How many adoptions finalize? How long do children wait? How many families walk away? How many approved homes are proactively considered for each child? How many children age out? 

If those statistics exist, publish them. If they do not, how can anyone credibly claim this system is working? 

After a decade inside Kentucky foster care, I wish I could say this was shocking. It isn’t. Once again, common sense seems to have escaped Kentucky’s child-welfare system. 

Kentucky owes taxpayers the numbers, willing families a process that makes sense, and waiting children leadership that facilitates connections with families already willing to adopt them — rather than discouraging those families at every turn.