Please vote to OVERRIDE the Governor’s veto #164.
PLEASE TAKE IMMEDIATE ACTION!!!!
Dear Friends,
Governor Mark Sanford has vetoed the Family Service Center Special Needs Adoption money in the budget.
As you know, Children Unlimited ensures that children with special needs have loving, safe and permanent families and has placed over 500 such children in adoptive homes statewide. Unfortunately, SC DSS has recently determined that they will no longer utilize external agencies to place these high risk children. The funding for FSC’s Children Unlimited Special Needs Adoption Program will help recruit potential adoptive families and also help nurture and preserve these new adoptive families through various programs to ensure that the adoption is permanent.
With the funding, we can:
- provide each child on referral with a specific and targeted recruitment plan. The way to best achieve success with this population is to involve the child in the planning. They are mature and have many memories and experiences that may assist in the location of an adoptive home. These children deserve to have a say in their future
- develop child specific flyers for each referral. These will be professionally printed in mass numbers to reach a multitude of prospective families, including those communities that may know the youth already
- work with the states Photography Association to have professional photos taken of each child that in turn will better illustrate their “energy and inner spirit”
- work closely with the adoption team to coordinate and facilitate recruitment efforts. This will include public speaking with various community groups (school system, churches, support groups)
- contact past adoptive families via phone, mail and sometimes face to face contacts, specifically those that adopted older children, and assertively recruit for our current children on referral
- work closely with our Director of Marketing to develop an enhanced Special Needs Adoption area of the Family Service Center website to ensure that we are using all resources available to recruit successful adoptive families.
We need your help. Please contact your Senator and House member IMMEDIATELY. They will come in session at noon so they will be traveling to Columbia right now. If you can’t call until noon please call their lobby numbers: 803-734-2010 for House members or 803-212-6700 for Senators. You will have to leave a message for them to return your call. They will start voting at noon, so PLEASE MAKE THIS CRITICAL CALL NOW!
ASK them to please vote to OVERRIDE the Governor’s veto #164. It will take 2/3rd of the votes in the House and the Senate to override this veto. This means we will need 82 votes in the House and 30 votes in the Senate. Your FSC lobbying team will be working hard at the State house to make sure we have the votes to override.
Please contact your legislator immediately and let them know how important their OVERRIDE vote is. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Don Simmons
Family Service Center of South Carolina
Family Service Centers is a GREAT organization….best of luck to you nd to those you serve….
I try not to get involved in such matters and in full disclosure Family Service Center is a client of mine and has been for years, first I worked for them as a volunteer and then as a consultant on improving business processes and utilizing technology to reduce waste and improve their effectiveness in delivering services to the community that change people’s lives.
What I can tell you is this; they are the best of the best. The organization is run by a true fiscal conservative in Don Simmons. We appreciate Kenny Bingham, Nikki Setzler and others signing on to this important organization that provides our community with services that help folks pick themselves up by the boot straps and participate in our society and economy.
Please give this organization Family Service Center of South Carolina you’re up most of consideration.
http://www.fsconline.org/
~Jeffrey Sewell