Kentucky’s First Lady Glenna Bevin will be visiting the region on Monday to promote her Uniting Kentucky Initiative, a support program for foster families and foster children.
Bevin will be in Ashland at at Rose Hill Baptist Church Monday, April 15, at 6:30 p.m.
Bevin says the purpose of Uniting Kentucky is to bring together churches, people of faith and community partners to support Kentucky foster children.
The initiative is a partnership between the first lady’s office, the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services, the Orphan Care Alliance, the Department of Community Based Services and Focus on the Family’s Wait No More.
Monday’s Ashland gathering, one of nine in Kentucky, is designed to explain how area families can take their Next Steps toward providing temporary care for children through fostering, growing their families through permanent adoptions or offering support and encouragement to 44 Lewis County foster care families.
Bevin, a mother of four adopted children, says the first attempt at adoption she and Gov. Matt Bevin made was less than ideal.
Glenna Bevin said an 11-year-old girl had been playing with her children in a Louisville park and Bevin wanted to meet the girl’s parents to schedule a play date.
The girl told Bevin she had no parents and lived in a Cincinnati orphanage.
The Bevins subsequently spent nearly two years trying to adopt the girl.
That adoption attempt was futile. “There was so much paperwork,” she said. “The whole process was a mess.”
The adoption was ultimately denied because the Bevins had five biological children.
“It was easier to go Africa and adopt than it was right in our own state,” Bevin said.
The Bevin family now includes four adopted children from Ethiopia.
Bevin hopes to streamline the process for families to foster and adopt children. She also hopes to garner support for those families from the community.
That support would come from the faith community and other families who can lend a hand in so many ways.
“Just helping that foster family to find clothes for the foster child, helping to provide a meal, helping with transportation,” she said. “Just supporting them.”
Bevin will also be in Pikeville Tuesday, April 16, at 6:30 p.m. at First Baptist Church.
To register for the Uniting Kentucky program, visit weareky.org/upcoming-events.
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