|
A 100-year legacyThe Gladney Center has been a haven for birth mothers and their children for more than 100 years.Originally opened as the Texas Children's Home and Aid Society in 1887, it is the oldest adoption agency in the nation. It has placed more than 26,000 children and worked with more than 36,000 mothers, according to its literature.In 2002, the agency posted $6.1 million in revenues and $26.8 million in assets and, the same year, it moved into a new, $17.5 million campus in far southwest Fort Worth.
Over the years, Gladney has been recognized for its newborn adoption and maternity services, which include providing pre- and postnatal health care, labor and delivery, food and housing, legal services, counseling, educational programs and job skills training."We are about building families. That is what we do," said Paige McCoy Smith, a Gladney spokeswoman. "We are all about finding permanent homes for children that have been entrusted to our care."Gladney also has earned a reputation as a powerful agency in the adoption world with influential supporters and adoptive families.President Bush and his wife, Laura, for example, have said they were planning to adopt a child at Gladney until the first lady became pregnant with their twin daughters. Later, the president's younger brother, Marvin Bush, adopted two children from Gladney.Former Fort Worth Mayor Kenneth Barr and his wife, Karen, adopted their daughter, Katherine, from Gladney in 1978."I think Gladney is an outstanding organization that has done miraculous things, and I don't mean to overplay it at all," Kenneth Barr said. "It's been very positive for everyone involved -- the children, the birth parents and the adoptive parents."Katherine Barr, 26, said it bothers her "a little" that she doesn't know her medical history. But she said that hers was a closed adoption and that her parents knew that from the start. She said she would never seek the records."I think the life I've had outweighs the concerns I have about my medical history," Katherine Barr said. "Not knowing my birth parents' genetics has not ever bothered me."With that kind of clientele came considerable political clout.http://www.theparentperspective.com/boards/thread-view.asp?threadid=219589&posts=7
|