Putting focus on foster kids

Photo exhibit features portraits of youths who want permanent homes

Lauren Terrazzano | Life, With Cancer

October 16, 2005

At 36, Lauren Terrazzano was diagnosed with lung cancer. In three years, she has undergone chemotherapy, surgery, radiation, a brief remission, more surgery, two more rounds of radiation and more chemotherapy. (Photo by Veronica Marino)

He uses a metal walker and leg braces to get around, but in the black-and-white photograph taken by Marjorie Pillar, one of the most striking things about Anthony is a grin that stretches toward infinity.

For the 14-year-old Hempstead teen, who has been in foster care since he was an infant with fetal alcohol syndrome, this picture could be the most important one of his life.

He's looking for a place to call home. Permanently.

Twenty Suffolk and Nassau foster children, many like Anthony who are available for adoption, are being professionally photographed for an exhibit opening in Huntington on Nov. 4, part of a national program called the Heart Gallery.

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The project aims to find adoptive homes for the children, many of whom have lived amid uncertainty, bouncing from foster home to foster home or institution to institution. Nationwide, at least 200 of the 600 or so children photographed have been placed in permanent adoptive homes.

"We saw their photos and they just spoke to us," said Melinda Somerville, 50, of Edgewood, N.M., who adopted three young sisters through the program when it began in 2001.

There are about 125,000 children nationwide who are available for adoption. Statewide, there are 1,720, according to Brian Marchetti, a spokesman for the state Office of Children and Family Services. On Long Island, Suffolk has 39 children who are available for adoption, while Nassau has six children seeking permanent homes.

Most of the children photographed are older or have special needs, unlike the newborns or younger children who are more quickly adopted. The proliferation of foreign adoptions in recent years also has diminished the pool of prospective permanent homes locally, event organizers said.

They're hoping to draw attention to the children who are more likely to be forgotten.

"These photos speak to people in different ways," said Pillar, a professional photographer from Locust Valley who got the idea when she saw a story about the program in a photo magazine. "You get a real sense of the humanity of these children."

Pillar, 54, who has three adult children and teaches photography at Hofstra University, is part of the Foto Foto Art Gallery Collective in Huntington, where the show will take place from Nov. 4 to Nov. 27. She rounded up 19 photographers and contacted social service departments in Nassau and Suffolk with the idea. Less than a year later, the project came to fruition.

She was particularly touched by photographing Anthony, who is developmentally delayed and needs leg braces to walk because he has osteogenesis, otherwise known as brittle bone disease. He has lived with a foster family in Hempstead for the past seven years.

"When you read his bio, it's just overwhelming. In the image I shot of him, he's smiling. If anyone just got to know him, they'd be taken in on a different level."

Maneshia, 13, a foster child who had her photo taken over the summer, also is looking for a mom and dad and brothers and sisters. She has lived at Little Flower Children's and Family Services, a residential foster care center in Wading River.

"I want a house. I want somebody who could take care of me, give me nice clothes and shoes and help me when I'm down and help me with my homework," Maneshia said.

The passage of the federal Adoption and Safe Families Act in 1998 required that government not let children languish in foster care indefinitely while parents retain their rights. Now, if the children are not reunited with their families after a set timeline, they can be adopted. The result, experts said, has been more children becoming available for adoption.

The Heart Gallery project began in New Mexico in 2001, founded by Diane Granito, who is the adoption event specialist with that state's Children, Youth & Families Department. She said she was fed up with the mug shot-type photos or school photos often used in state adoption catalogs that never captured the essence of the children. The gallery photos, she said, are a way to empower the children.

"They have no decision-making power in much of their lives. They're in state custody," Granito said. "So we get the children involved in planning the photos and it gives them some ownership of their situation."

Forty-two states have done or plan to do their own Heart Galleries nationwide. The galleries have opened in Ohio, Connecticut, Texas, Oklahoma, Florida and Washington. Upstate Syracuse coordinated a Heart Gallery last year, but Long Island's upcoming event is the first downstate. In Connecticut, where the program debuted in November, 19 of 37 children photographed have been placed with adoptive families.

One is Jannae Somerville, 12, who, along with her two sisters, Vanessa, 9 and Vicky, 13, was adopted by Drew and Melinda Somerville of New Mexico, after the girls were featured in the nation's first Heart Gallery in Santa Fe. "It was so hard getting attached to one family and then having to move on. That was tough," said Jannae of her two years in foster care after the three girls were neglected by their biological parents.

The three sisters have lived with the couple, who have six biological children of their own, for the past four years.

Pillar is hoping the showing on Long Island will speak to potential adoptive parents.

"It's almost like these kids know these pictures can make a difference, and that makes your heart break," she said. "This is something they want so badly."