LAFAYETTE, La. (KLFY) Foster Friends of Acadiana has joined forces with the Department of Family and Child Services in Lafayette to hold its’ first “Mass Adoption Ceremony and Celebration.”

Over a dozen children out of the foster care program in Lafayette were able to find a permanent home.

Over 100 children are displaced or disconnected from their biological families here in Acadiana. A Mass Adoption Ceremony marks a movement of placing foster children into forever homes.

“The truth is, they need us even more than we need them,” said Alisha and Dustin Lee. Alisha and Dustin Lee met one-year-old Tucker last-year. After an eight-week process of foster-to-adopt classes, they knew baby Tucker was the one.

“They called us the day before and said we have a newborn baby boy who needed a home. He would likely be adopted, given some of the circumstances,” Alisha Lee said.

The couple has two children of their own already but said there is a great need to find stable homes for Lafayette’s foster youth. “These children, have very difficult circumstances, a lot of them and its worth the risk because a child is always worth the risk to take,” Lee added.

Foster Friends of Acadiana partnered with the Department of Family and Child Services to match eleven families with fifteen children.

Families were sent to a private room where Judge Thomas Duplantier finalized it all.”It just breaks your heart when you hear their story because they just want to be loved,” said Roxeann Thomas from Foster friends of Acadiana.

There are several underlying reasons why some say the foster care system is a revolving door.”They’ve been abused or their parents are on drugs or sexual abuse. Ya know, the list goes on and on,” Thomas added.

Baby Tucker and the fifteen other children at today’s ceremony now have a place they can call home. “It is so exciting to know that he’s ours forever,” said Lee.

Foster care programs are working to generate more adoption cases, not only in Lafayette-but in parishes across the state.