Important program update
The Family Resource and Training Center wishes to extend a heartfelt thank you to every one of you who has had such a caring heart for the youth we have served through this program for the past 10 years.
Please read the information below outlining how the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare plans to continue its diligent efforts to find permanency for all children in foster care in Idaho.
Please complete inquiries for any youth you are interested in as soon as possible so that we may process your inquiry before our website closes.
July 28, 2026
To Our Community Partners,
The Idaho Department of Health & Welfare has been proud to partner with Eastern Washington University (EWU) and other community partners to recruit adoptive families for Idaho’s children in foster care. Since Idaho’s Wednesday’s Child began over 25 years ago, the landscape of adoption from foster care has changed yet there continues to be a need for child-specific recruitment for youth most in-need of a permanent home. Over the years the department has reorganized how permanency cases are managed to address this need and to achieve timely permanency for children who cannot return home. These changes include permanency workers “teaming” earlier with family services workers and the addition of a Family Find team to help identify previously unknown relatives and connections for our youth in care. Meanwhile, advances in technology and social media have resulted in increased risks related to public profiles causing Idaho and other states to consider the long-term impact to the youth featured.
The Idaho Department of Health & Welfare is in a position to innovate practices for child-specific recruitment while demonstrating fiscal responsibility. With this in mind, the contract for Wednesday’s Child, Waiting Families and intensive recruitment services is ending effective 09/30/2026. These services will be provided through Youth Safety & Permanency team members beginning October 1, 2026. During this transition, the current website for Idaho Wednesday’s Child will be unavailable while an updated website is created for both our waiting children and waiting families. Idaho will continue to use the AdoptUSKids website during the transition to ensure ongoing efforts to achieve permanency for waiting children.
Thank you for your continued support and advocacy on behalf of Idaho’s children.
Thank you,
Jean M. Fisher
We’re so excited to help you get to know sweet Zakiya! This adorable girl is so much fun to spend time with. She’s currently in her “soccer phase” and wants to play soccer and learn new tricks as often as she can. Zakiya is really creative and has an incredibly fun imagination! She loves to get lost in stories and imagine that she’s involved in solving the mysteries she reads about in her current favorite books, the Magic Treehouse and the A-Z Mystery series. When she’s not playing soccer, Zakiya loves to jump on the trampoline. Eating pizza, telling funny jokes, cooking, and making yummy pancakes for people are also among her favorite things to do. She was recently gifted a new Beginners Cookbook and is really excited to try her hand at making other tasty recipes!
Zakiya enjoys school, particularly PE and graphing things out in her Math class. She’s fascinated by dinosaurs and thinks that she might want to grow up to become a Paleontologist. Zakiya tells us that she’s very good at family games and reports that she usually wins when she plays her favorite ones, Uno and Exploding Kittens. When she just wants some down time, she loves to watch Big City Greens and her all-time favorite show, Gravity Falls. Zakiya loves to sing and dance around to her favorite band, One Direction, and she can even play the Ukulele. She says that if she could have three wishes, she would wish for a magic carpet; a big mansion; and two dogs of her own! Zakiya gets really excited about holidays and loves for everyone around her to celebrate them in a big way, especially Christmas! Traveling to Disneyland, Lagoon and New York are on her bucket-list and she’s hoping to see all of those sights sometime soon with her new family.
Zakiya’s Permanency Team describes the best match for her as an active family who will spend a lot of time engaging with her doing the things she loves to do. Parents who are kind and affectionate, who can also set clear boundaries and realistic expectations for her, will be key to Zakiya’s ability to thrive and grow. It’s important that Zakiya has a family with an understanding of how trauma, grief and loss can affect a child’s physical, emotional and behavioral health so that they can meet her where she is emotionally and developmentally and help her continue to heal from her past. Zakiya dreams of being a part of a family who will love her unconditionally and will never leave her. If you believe that your family has what Zakiya’s Team is searching for, we hope you take a leap of faith and inquire today!
The Idaho Wednesday's Child Program prioritizes the safety and security of children, above all else. In an effort to protect the safety of the youth we serve, our process requires families to possess a current, approved adoption home study. Only families with a current home study can view youth's full profiles with videos and photos and submit inquiries, on the Secure Gallery Page.