The Los Angeles Adoption Day Program started in 1997 as a partnership among The Alliance for Children’s Rights, Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, the Department of Children and Family Services and Public Counsel Law Center. The innovative program began as a solution to the overwhelming number of foster children’s adoptions that were stuck in a backlog.

The idea was simple: on four Saturdays throughout the year, attorneys, court staff, and judges volunteer their time to complete hundreds of foster care adoptions in a single day. The backlog soon began to disappear, and the still-active program boasts the completion of over 20,000 adoptions to date.

In 2000, The Alliance, with support from the Dave Thomas and Freddie Mac foundations, took this program to the next step as a founding partner of National Adoption Day. National Adoption Day (NAD) is held annually on the Saturday before Thanksgiving, in an effort to bring foster children home for the holidays.

Over the past 11 years, The Alliance and a coalition of NAD partners have led a grassroots awareness campaign to grow the program in more cities around the country. Since 2007, all 50 states participated in National Adoption Day, with events held in over 300 cities.  NAD now completes the adoptions of over 4,000 foster kids in a single day!

Our Adoption Day volunteer program, Court Buddies, is available on NAD and Summer Adoption Day.