By Lauren Davis | Director of Communication and Marketing
After more than a year of filming at Kidsave events, a new five-part A&E series called, “The Day I Picked My Parents" sbout Kidsave's Family Visit Model and its use was aired in September and has now been seen by about a million viewers.
It tracks ten youth who are participiating in Kidsave's Weekend Miracles Program as they search to find their forever families. Through Kidsave, they have a voice -- and a choice -- in picking their parents. The series has been received positively in the US child welfare community as well as by the public.
A viewer in Connecticut described watching the show. “I turned on the first episode and could not stop watching. It was so moving and inspiring,” Comments from other viewers have been similarly encouraging and many have asked, “how can I do this in my community?”
The series was re-broadcast on the FYI Network and is available on-demand on various cable networks and online. You can watch the series at: https://www.kidsave.org/the-day/. It has led to inquiries from child welfare leaders across the U.S. about the Kidsave Family Visit model and possibly implementing it in their jurisdictions. Inquiries are coming in from Arizona, Georgia, Arkansas, Ohio, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee and Washington. Beyond Los Angeles, many other counties in California have expressed interest in the program.
On a national level, Kidsave met with 18 congressional offices calling for support of the program at the federal level and held a screening of the series' first episode for congressional staff in Washington, D.C., in October.
Randi Thompson, Kidsave’s Co-Founder and CEO, said that, “While these journeys to finding permanent homes often have many twists and turns, we hope viewers were inspired by the resilience, personality and potential of these kids. We hope that more people will decide they too want to make a difference in the lives of foster youth, after watching “The Day I Picked My Parents.”
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