Dave Thomas Foundation Grant Supports The National Center for Adoption Law & Policy at Capital Law School

Dec. 5, 2002

The National Center for Adoption Law & Policy at Capital University Law School has been awarded a $200,000 grant from the Dave Thomas Foundation to support the Center's core operating costs.

The National Center for Adoption Law & Policy was founded at Capital University Law School in 1998 with seed funding from The Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption. The Center seeks to improve the laws, policies and practices associated with child protection and adoption systems. The Center uses research, advocacy and education to bring about improved adoption systems and practices throughout the nation.

"We are grateful to the Thomas Foundation for its continued support of the Adoption Law Center," said Kent Markus, director of The National Center for Adoption Law & Policy. "This grant will help sustain our key activities which are targeted toward realizing the goal that all children will have safe, healthy, permanent homes."

The Center's core activities that the grant will help support are: 1) an annual symposium held each spring which brings together a wide range of professions and diverse perspectives within the child welfare and adoption worlds; 2) a National Summer Jobs Clearinghouse which matches law students from across the nation with public, private and non-profit child welfare and adoption agencies; 3) Adoption Academy for prospective adoptive parents, offered in conjunction with Columbus' Children's Hospital and the infertility support organization, RESOLVE; 4) the Adoption LawSite Project, scheduled to debut in January 2003, it will provide the web's most comprehensive online source for adoption law information; and 5) a free weekly adoption law news summary; and 6) the design of a mediation program for every jurisdiction in the U.S. that will provide strategic planning and expert technical assistance to juvenile and family courts across the country that are seeking to develop, improve or expand mediation efforts in the child welfare and adoption arenas.

For more information about The National Center for Adoption Law & Policy contact Assistant Director Margie Frazier at (614) 236-6527, or via e-mail at mfrazier@law.capital.edu. You may also visit the Center's web site at www.law.capital.edu/adoption.

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