North Dakota sees record adoption numbers, with a goal for 'every kid to have a home'

[2026/01/02] By  Robin Huebner / Inforum

FARGO — A Fargo couple never set out to adopt a child after they married and started thinking about a family, but fate had other plans.

Jon and Julia Asprey served as respite foster parents, stepping in temporarily to help share the load of other foster parents, and eventually took on the role full time.

A goal of foster care is reunification of the child with their parents, but for the boy the couple had been caring for, that was not possible due to certain circumstances.

It would be a happy, fortuitous turn.

“By that time, we just loved and adored him so much and couldn't imagine life without him. Very organic, is how it all happened,” Julia Asprey said.

Jon, 31, and Julia, 29, took the boy in as a full-time placement when he was 4, the same day they learned Julia was pregnant.

In January 2024, the couple adopted the now 8-year-old boy as a sibling to their now 3-year-old biological daughter, and have another biological child on the way, due in May.

Jon Asprey said the adoption came from a desire to live a life that benefits others.

“It’s an opportunity to give a kid what they deserve. They deserve to have a stable life and a sense of belonging and a family unit that is safe and loving and trustworthy,” he said.

The couple asked that The Forum not identify their children by name and not show them fully in photographs to protect their privacy.

Their adopted son is able to keep in contact with his biological siblings who live with another family, they said.

Julie Hoffman, adoption services administrator at the state Health and Human Services Department, said public agency adoptions like the Aspreys' increased by nearly 34% from 2024 to 2025, following an adoption redesign initiative undertaken in early 2024.

The move to streamline the process with reduced paperwork and shortened training for relative adopters has cut the average assessment time by 23 days, she said.

Even greater progress occurred among North Dakota Native tribes, where adoptions of children in tribal custody have risen more than 53% in the past year.

Hoffman attributes that to even greater collaboration and communication between the tribes and a program called Adults Adopting Special Kids, or AASK.

“That coordination is helping more children find permanent homes faster,” Hoffman said.

AASK is a program of Catholic Charities North Dakota, which is contracted by the state to complete all foster care adoptions like the Aspreys'.

Tesia Miller, lead AASK adoption specialist, said the agency finalized nearly 330 adoptions during the last fiscal year.

The bulk of those are identified adoptions, where the children are not able to return home but have potential adoptive options such as grandparents, other relatives or their current foster care providers.

However, there are between 20 and 30 “waiting kids” in North Dakota each year, she said, those where parental rights have been terminated but there’s no identified adoptive option.

Sometimes relatives don't want to be considered for adoption or there may be no appropriate relatives to consider due to safety concerns at home.

“That's where we come in to say, we need to do recruitment efforts. We need to do these things to try to find a family to hopefully match with the youth,” Miller said.

The Aspreys consider their adopted son as their first child, given they took him in full-time nine months before their daughter was born.

“I'm very glad it worked out that way, because that time that we got to spend, just the two of us and him, was very special,” Julia said.

Jon said their son is the youngest of his biological siblings but now the oldest child under their roof.

“It’s been interesting to watch him go from the baby of the family to now needing to be the role model and the leader of the kids,” he said.

Miller would like nothing more than to have all children settling in like that, with a family.

“We want every kid to have a home. We want to one day say there are no kids waiting for their forever family,” Miller said.

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