​John Bowman is a circuit judge based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. A professional with many years of experience, Judge Bowman was recently reappointed to the Florida Supreme Court Bar Admission Committee. Judge John Bowman is a staunch advocate of National Adoption Day.

An event to encourage adoption and awareness of the children who are waiting in foster care and orphanages, National Adoption Day takes place on November 19th and originated in the year 2000. Since its start, National Adoption Day has helped place more than 50,000 children and adolescents with new families. 

National Adoption Day is a community effort. Community administrators encourage local orphanages and foster care families to set up events on the day, giving them creative leeway in the planning and activities. 

After November 19th, new families are asked to participate in the One Day project to inspire future adoptions. The One Day project is a simple social media plan in which new parents and adoptees share their personal stories of the day they became a family.

​With a law career spanning nearly two decades, Judge John Bowman works as a circuit court judge in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, serving a jurisdiction of more than 1.8 million constituents. Judge John Bowman has worked to enact positive changes in his community. For instance, he has influenced cases of adoption, lowering the time it takes for local children to find permanent home placement from four years to six months or less.

Advocacy for children in the foster care system takes many forms. One type of effort, held annually across the country, is National Adoption Day. Launched in 1999, the one-day event happens each year on the Saturday before Thanksgiving in cities around the US. As a result of the multiple agencies and sponsors coming together on behalf of this mission, 4,000 children were adopted during National Adoption Day in 2015. It was the 16th-annual celebration of the initiative.

​Judge John Bowman serves as a circuit judge in the state of Florida. After noting several failures and inefficiencies in Florida’s juvenile detention and foster care systems, Judge John Bowman initiated several programs to help improve care for Florida’s youth. One such program is National Adoption Day, which he brought to Broward and other Florida counties.

National Adoption Day raises awareness of the many children in the American foster care system who need loving, permanent homes. More than 100,000 children across the country are waiting to be adopted. National Adoption Day helps make their dreams come true.

Responding to overwhelming need, lawmakers, advocates, and charities came together to create the holiday in 2000. Communities celebrate the special nature of adoption together through fundraisers, letter-writing drives, and public awareness campaigns. The festivities culminate in the finalization of many adoptions all over the country.

National Adoption Day is celebrated the Saturday before Thanksgiving each year. The 2015 event helped more than 4,000 children find homes, bringing the total number of adoptions to more than 58,500 since National Adoption Day was founded.

In 2016, the annual event will be held on November 19. People who wish to support National Adoption Day can get involved online at www.nationaladoptionday.org/get-involved.                             

​Judge John Bowman is a circuit judge and an advocate for underserved children in Florida. He works especially hard to support children in Florida’s foster care system. Early in his career, Judge John Bowman helped 145 orphaned young people find homes.

In the state of Florida, people who would like to adopt a foster child work through ChildNet, the state child welfare agency. Interested individuals and couples can attend open-house orientation sessions, held on the third Thursday of each month in Fort Lauderdale and the third Tuesday of each month in West Palm Beach.

After an orientation, prospective parents attend pre-service training classes. These classes introduce parents to Florida’s child welfare program and help them understand how to care for an adopted child. During this time, a home study and a thorough background check are also conducted.

Once approved, parents attend matching events, where they meet children who need homes. When they meet a child or group of siblings they want to include in their family, parents notify their counselor to move forward.

Children are initially placed with their new family for a trial period of no less than 90 days. A counselor visits monthly to assess the situation and see how everyone is adjusting. If all goes well, the adoption will be finalized in front of a judge, and the child will legally become a family member. 

​Judge John Bowman of Florida’s 17th Circuit Court has a long-standing interest in child welfare and particularly in child adoption. Earlier in his judicial career, Judge John Bowman reduced the number of children awaiting adoption in his division from 150 to five and promoted adoptions through media appearances and participation in National Adoption Day.

National Adoption Day is an annual event held in November to raise awareness about the thousands of children in U.S. foster care awaiting permanent placement with adoptive families. The National Adoption Day Coalition sponsors the event, which takes place in communities across the country.

The coalition consists of the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute, The Alliance for Children’s Rights, and the Children’s Action Network. The coalition provides resources for National Adoption Day on its website at www.nationaladoptionday.org.
Resources include:
• At-a-glance statistics about the number of children in foster care, the average wait time for a foster child to be adopted, and the number of children who age out of foster care annually.
• A step-by-step guide to adoption and links to additional information provided by coalition partners and other similar organizations.
• Access to volunteer, advocacy, and event-planning opportunities.
• Downloadable toolkits, including logos, brand assets, public service announcements, key messages, and fact sheets.

This year’s National Adoption Day is slated for November 21, although different communities may hold the event on other days. National Adoption Day facts and figures say that more than 400,000 children are in foster care in the United States and of these, more than 100,000 await adoption. The fact sheet says that on average, children wait nearly four years to be adopted and that 13 percent wait five or more years. The fact sheet says that more than 22,000 children reach age 18 without ever leaving foster care.

Judge John Bowman is a Circuit Court Judge in the state of Florida. Elected to the bench in 2002, he has made a substantial impact on adoption, juvenile crime prosecution, residential treatment facilities, and the judicial process in his jurisdiction. Among his numerous accomplishments is the implementation of technology to improve case tracking. Judge John Bowman holds an AV Preeminent rating from Martindale-Hubbell. 

Martindale-Hubbell Peer Review Ratings help those who are seeking legal services to evaluate and choose the best professional for their case. These objective ratings function as indicators of ethical conduct and professional skill. Ratings are based on a scale of 1 to 5 and focus on five key areas: Analytical Capabilities, Judgment, Legal Experience, Communication Ability, and Legal Knowledge. From these scores, a Certification Mark is generated. Those who receive the AV Preeminent ranking (a score between 4.5 and 5) are professionals whose colleagues feel that they have achieved excellence in their field. Martindale-Hubbell complements the Peer Review System with Client Review Ratings, which provide feedback on law firms and various legal professionals. The two systems work in tandem to help clients find the legal services they need.