Family Adopts 7 Siblings To Keep Them Together After Years In Foster Care

Georgia family adopts seven brothers and sisters after four years in foster care

Can you imagine wanting to grow your family through adoption, but then finding out there aren’t one or two siblings, there are seven? Some might decide they’re not up for the challenge, but one remarkable couple in Georgia didn’t hesitate.

After 1,359 days, seven siblings have been adopted all together to one Georgia family. Jessaka and Joshua Clark have been caring for the four sisters and three brothers since August 5, but this week they officially became a forever family.

The Clarks now have a total of eight children, including their biological son.

As you might imagine, on the day the adoption was to be finalized the excitement was more than anyone could contain. The family recorded an adorable video of them all in a van on the way to the courthouse and posted it on their Facebook page.

“We are all super excited,” Josh Clark says in the video. “They have been up since 6, screaming and running around the house.”

He endearingly calls the kids their “super seven” in the video. He told NBC 4 that he and Jessaka wanted the kids to be apart of a loving home.

“When we met the seven, or ‘super seven’ as we call them, we fell in love with them immediately, and it was super important to us that we kept all seven of them together.”

The seven have now become the “great eight” joining the couple’s biological son, Noah. Whose sign in this photo hilariously reads, “still Clark.”

Anyone that’s gone from one child to two knows how hard that transition can be, but what about going from one child to eight? The thought alone causes us to panic, but not rockstar mom Jessaka. She actually says the harder part was grappling with the age difference.

“The hardest part was going from having a 3-year-old to having a 14-year-old, and not knowing how to deal with teenagers, that was challenging and then figuring out school because we didn’t have school-age kids,” she says.

The couple says they’ve always wanted a big family, but admit they were stunned when they were initially approached about adopting seven at once.

“I saw the look on my husband’s face and he said, ‘What do you think about seven?'” she said in an interview with the Savannah Morning News. “A 7-year-old?” she asked. “Seven children,” he replied.

They’ve obviously gotten over that initial surprise and the Clarks say they aren’t done adopting children yet. The seven siblings have a baby sister in foster care still, but the Clarks aren’t allowed to adopt her until they have more rooms. A GoFundMe has been set up to help the family buy a new home as quickly as possible. At last check, they are only about $2,000 away from their $60,000 goal. It’s truly incredible.

There are an estimated 11,000 kids in foster care in Georgia alone, according to AdoptUsKids.org. The same site notes that siblings placed together experience lower risk of failed placements, fewer moves, and many emotional benefits. Additionally, siblings placed together often feel more secure and are able to help each other adjust to their new family and community.

May is National Foster Care Month which aims to bring awareness to how any family can bring light to a child’s life through fostering and adoption. According to the Clark’s GoFundMe page, the couple is not only trying to adopt the sibling’s baby sister, they want to adopt more children who need it.

The page says, “They have followed God’s call on their life to adopt and they believe that God is not done yet.”

If you’d like to help the Clarks in their journey to adopt children, go to their GoFundMe page and click “Donate Now.”

If you’d like to learn more about becoming a foster parent and adoption, head to the AdoptUSKids page.