Honoring National Adoption Month

Blog

Published: November 1, 2025

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Raising awareness to support children in foster care and families brought together through adoption

November is National Adoption Month, and here at Sellers Dorsey we are celebrating adoptive parents and recognizing families brought together through adoption from foster care. We are grateful to have leaders at the Firm who have experienced the unique journey of adoption from foster care first-hand, as well as leaders who are adoptees themselves. This November, Sellers Dorsey joins with national leaders, state agencies, child welfare providers, and courts around the country, to acknowledge the unique gifts and challenges of adoption from foster care.

Every day, dedicated kinship families, foster parents, and community members step forward as supports to children that they know and love, or that they haven’t met yet, to offer lifelong family commitments to children in foster care. Children who are awaiting adoption have often faced traumatic experiences including abuse and neglect. When life’s challenges prove to be impossible to overcome for their biological parents, legal connections are severed, and children must often navigate uncertainty, grief, and loss. When extended family, foster parents, and community members step forward to love children through the foster care system, they are committing not only to begin a new, loving, permanent family – they are also committing to walking alongside children through long-term physical and mental health challenges along with challenges to form an identity with new families. These families rely on strong healthcare safety net services to enable healing and ensure children adopted from foster care receive trauma-informed solutions and compassionate mental health supports along the way.

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, about 50% of children in foster care have chronic physical problems such as asthma, anemia, visual loss, hearing loss, and neurological disorders. Additionally, about 10% are considered medically fragile or complex, and many have histories of prenatal substance exposure and premature birth. As of 2019, up to 80% of children and youth in foster care experience significant mental health issues compared to 18-22% of the general population. Fortunately, children adopted out of foster care may continue to receive Medicaid-covered healthcare. At Sellers Dorsey, we focus on improving quality and access by strengthening Medicaid services to ensure children currently in or adopted out of foster care, and their adoptive parents, receive the healthcare services to help them thrive.

Ready to make an impact?
National Adoption Month serves as an important reminder that adoption is a profound journey that extends far beyond the moment of legal finalization. It’s about fostering lifelong relationships that provide security, belonging, and unconditional support for children who have faced significant hardships. As we recognize the challenges that children and youth in foster care experience, from physical and mental health issues to racial disparities within the system, it is crucial to support them throughout the adoption process and beyond. Sellers Dorsey helps bridge the gap between healthcare and child welfare. Whether it’s through training, technical assistance, consultation assessments, solution development, implementation, and more, our subject matter experts have decades of experience across the full continuum of child and family well-being services.

By raising awareness, advocating for improved practices, and providing resources to both children and adoptive families, we can help pave the way for healing, stability, and brighter futures for children in foster care, and their families brought together through adoption.

Contact our Experts

Katie Renner Olse

Katie Renner Olse’s impactful leadership in child and family well-being for both the public and private sector has left an indelible mark on communities across the country. Before joining Sellers Dorsey, Katie served as the CEO of the Texas Alliance of Child and Family Services (TACFS) where she supported the work of community organizations serving children and families in the child welfare system. There, she spearheaded critical initiatives and championed system reform efforts including oversight of the nation’s largest state network of child, youth, and family-serving provider organizations. Under her leadership, she launched the Texas Center of Child and Family Studies (TCCFS), which has become a model for supporting private child and youth-serving providers in other states and has grown to support hundreds of providers within the mental health, juvenile justice, and child welfare arena.

Katie also served as the President of the National Organization of State Associations for Children (NOSAC) where she worked with top leaders in state child welfare, juvenile justice, and mental health associations. Prior to her experience at NOSAC, Katie served as Deputy Commissioner for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS), a state-based agency with over 12,000 employees responsible for protecting Texas children from abuse, neglect, and exploitation. DFPS operates five major programs including Child and Adult Protective Services, Child Protective Investigations, Prevention and Early Intervention, and Statewide Intake.

Additionally, Katie was the Chief of Staff for the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (THHSC), an agency within the Texas Health and Human Services System that has hundreds of programs helping more than 7.5 million Texans each month live healthier lives. THHSC provides a wide range of services to Texans including assistance with aging, finances, food, mental health, substance use, and more. Before her tenure at THHSC, Katie was the Senior Policy Advisor to the Executive Commissioner for DFPS, and the former Department of Assistive and Rehabilitative Services.

Current Responsibility

Katie serves as Senior Director within the Firm’s National Consulting Practice. Katie utilizes her leadership experience across the full continuum of child and family well-being to offer innovative solutions to clients and increase impact on children and families nationwide. Her expertise resides at the intersection of child welfare and healthcare as she provides a wide range of insights to support clients including drivers of child protection involvement, community-based services and approaches to serving families, key state and federal child and family well-being initiatives, implementation of complex, cross-system initiatives, and more. She has a strong track record of forging, maintaining, and strengthening relationships with critical child welfare stakeholders including legislatures, providers, state associations, advocates, and public sector professionals. Her critical connections in this space help open doors for clients and support them in fulfilling their unique missions.

Education

- Indiana University Bloomington

Rachel Marsh

An attorney and social worker with more than 24 years of experience serving children and families, Rachel joins Sellers Dorsey from the Children’s Alliance of Kansas where she served as Chief Executive Officer working to transform child and family well-being systems in Kansas. Under her leadership the organization achieved multiple public policy accomplishments, impacting workforce retention, prevention of foster care, kinship caregivers, and youth with complex behavioral health care needs. Prior to her public policy work, Rachel served as a child in need of care attorney with a community-based child welfare provider for 14 years. She supported case managers and judicial partners in resolving complex child welfare matters, developed trainings for case managers, attorneys, and judges, and supported community and policymaker engagement in multiple states. In her early career, Rachel worked in research and social work education in Kathmandu, Nepal.

Current Responsibility

Rachel brings her extensive experience in Child and Family Well-Being to the firm’s work in expanding quality and access to care in the intersection of healthcare and child welfare. She supports the Senior Director and the Child and Family Well-Being team to develop strategic goals, provide internal and external subject matter expertise, provide client support and services, and execute activities key to the success of the division.