(Published November 7‚ 2003)

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) - Omijean Timmons is a single woman who wanted to share her life with a child, but didn't want to have a baby out of wedlock.

The Florence woman decided adoption was her best bet. After two years of legal wrangling, she formally adopted 21-month old Dashawn in August.

Timmons brought Dashawn to the Statehouse on Friday as Gov. Mark Sanford signed a proclamation declaring November "Adoption Awareness Month" and announced new initiatives by the Department of Social Services to encourage and speed up the adoption process.

Sanford knelt down to greet Dashawn, who stuck his hands in the governor's jacket and tried to root through his pockets.

"You learn about a lot of great things in a family. They're incredibly important," Sanford said. "Adoption is a vehicle toward continuing that important tradition."

In an effort to help adoptive parents like Timmons, Sanford plans in his executive budget to restore a one-time adoption incentive to $1,500 from the current $250.

Sanford also wants to make a change to give foster parents some of the same rights as biological parents. He wants to let state employees who are foster parents take sick leave, rather than annual leave, to care for ill foster children.

DSS also is enacting reforms to streamline and speed up the adoption process.

There are 1,300 children in foster care with a plan for adoption, but only 330 families certified to adopt, said DSS Director Kim Aydlette.

More people need to be encouraged to adopt, she said. To help in that end, DSS is unifying the certification process for adoptive and foster families.

"While the majority of our adoptive parents come out of that foster parent pool, we were making them go through a second bureaucratic process to become licensed as adoptive families," Aydlette said. The agency now has a single application, licensing, assessment and training process for foster and adoptive parents.

DSS also is working with faith-based groups to recruit foster families and is working with Court Administration to identify ways to speed up the process of terminating parental rights, which often holds up adoptions.

The agency also is running a series of public service announcements aimed at promoting adoption, Aydlette said.